Fade To Midnight by Shannon McKenna Page A

Mamma’s death. Every muscle hurt. He had a headache, from grinding his teeth. He hadn’t gone into Lost Boys since Kev’s episode, yesterday morning. They were managing fine without him, thank God. He’d be useless anyhow. All he would do was snap, growl, and criticize.
    Truth was, he was not terribly surprised by the recent series of events. There had always been something precarious about Kev’s very existence. A sense of lurking danger. The unknowns, the questions, the bizarre violence wreaked upon him. Bruno had been waiting for the other shoe to drop since he’d met the guy. It had finally dropped, over a three-hundred-foot waterfall. And the sky was coming down along with it.
    Even Kev’s inexplicable flashes of genius were unnerving. Just when Bruno thought he knew the guy front and back, whammo, he’d discover that Kev had some new freakishly overdeveloped skill, or rocket scientist body of knowledge. Kevlar, International Man Of Mystery, strikes again. Maybe the guy was actually a stranded space alien.
    Huh. Actually, that hypothesis would explain a whole lot.
    Too bad that trip over the waterfall hadn’t knocked some plain old common sense into his head. It was the one thing Kev lacked. So far, Bruno filled the gap, but only because Kev didn’t care enough to stop him. Like with money. Kev sincerely didn’t give a flying fuck about it. He’d invent some ingenious marketable thing on some sleepless night, play with it for a few hours, toss it in the closet and forget about it.
    Kev’s gizmos had given Bruno the idea for Lost Boys Flywear. They’d opened seven years ago as a stunt kite outfit, to exploit some of Kev’s kite designs, and branched out from there into quirky educational toys. Kev provided the brilliant ideas, artistic designs, manufacturing plans. Bruno took care of the business, the marketing. The scut work. Everybody had his gift. His was for making money.
    The venture worked. He’d arranged for Kev’s designs to be patented, to significant profit. Lost Boys was going strong. Neither of them was hurting for dough, or had any reason to hurt for it for the rest of their lives, if they were careful. And minimally practical, of course.
    But Kev just wasn’t. He was as likely, today or tomorrow, to give it all away to a stranger he met on the street.
    Bruno figured he should cut the guy some slack. He was brain damaged, after all. Something had to give. But it was like watching somebody set hundred dollar bills on fire. It made Bruno’s ass twitch. It came from growing up on the uglier side of Newark. Bruno liked a big, wide safety net. Lots of soft, puffy financial cushions under him.
    Kev was happy to dance on a wire over the lion cage.
    Like those poker winnings. Tens of thousands of bucks every night, stuffed through the letter slot of whatever charitable organization happened to be on his walking trajectory. Crazy shit. But he loved the guy. Goddamnit. Right now, he wished like hell that he didn’t.
    â€œHe’s barkin’ up the wrong tree,” Tony said heavily.
    The words startled Bruno out of his unhappy reverie. “Huh?” he said, grumpily. “What tree?”
    â€œLooking for this Otterman fucker,” Tony clarified.
    â€œOsterman,” Bruno corrected.
    â€œWhatever. Looking for some lily-white scientist prick is a waste of time. Brain experiments, my hairy old ass. He was tortured by a professional. It takes practice and a hard stomach to do what they did to him. That says career criminal. That says mafia. Believe me, I know.” He glanced sidewise at Bruno. “So should you, kid.”
    Bruno shrugged that off. He disliked references to the mafia turf wars his mom’s boyfriend Rudy had been embroiled in when Bruno was a kid. Bruno’s Mamma, too, by association. Thinking about it made him feel like shit, so he tried hard not to. Tony had run away from the life himself,