Page 84 of The Kings of Kearny

I stepped through the sliding wall, carrying them, and out into the night air. It was nine o’clock, but it had to be at least eighty degrees still, and I was thankful that I’d changed into a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting tank top before dinner.

“Here,” I said, handing Jennifer her beer.

She clinked her bottle against mine. “Thanks. Cheers.”

I said cheers back and took a sip of my drink, wondering how to broach this conversation. “Jakob said it didn’t go well?” I hedged.

She shot a glance through the slider and then grabbed my elbow. “Not here,” she said, hauling me across the patio toward a screened-in summerhouse that sat right on the edge of the drop-off.

Holy shit, was their place actually bugged?

We stepped from the slate pavers onto a brick-lined path, and as the lights of the house fell away behind us, the night sky opened up overhead. The land was so flat here that it felt like the stars danced just out of reach, almost close enough to touch, so bright they shone like diamonds on a bed of black velvet. Crickets called out from the grass. Fireflies danced over the lawn like a living carpet of fairy lights. A cow lowed in the nearby field. It was peaceful, bucolic, completely at odds with the stress and worry that raged through me.

I kept my mouth shut until we were safely ensconced in the summerhouse. I could barely see Jennifer in the darkness, but at least the mosquitoes couldn’t get to us.

“One second,” she said, fumbling around near one of the wooden beams. A second later, a string of lights flicked on overhead, the antique-style bulbs bathing us in amber.

Jennifer let out a heavy breath and sank into one of the deck chairs.

I sat across from her and took another sip of my beer, waiting for her to speak.

“It didn’t go well,” she said. Her eyes were pinched, lips set in a hard line. “My husband, God bless him, thinks he’s smarter than everyone around him and can’t admit when he’s screwed up.”

I let out a shaky breath. So it was definitely Liam. But how much of it was him?

“He had my apartment trashed,” I said.

She grimaced. “Aye. I’m sorry for that. We’ll pay to replace everything.”

“It’s not about my stuff,” I said, my tone harder than I intended.

She sent me a sharp look. “I know. Maybe better than you might think. But it’s not me you should be angry at.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was. I’m just angry, in general, at this whole situation.”

She let out a humorless laugh. “We’re fine company then.”

“What about that guy in the elevator?” I asked.

“Not Liam,” she said. “That little prick he brought in.”

“And Dr. Perez?”

“That was Redding too.”

Relief washed through me. Was I pissed at Liam? Yes, but it was the kind of angry I might be able to work through if given a heartfelt apology and time to forgive him—like maybe a few years. Being attacked or putting an innocent woman in the hospital were two offenses that I would never forgive.

“Where did he even find Redding?” I asked.

“Through a friend of a friend,” she said.

“And let me guess, he hasn’t interacted with him much personally?”

She shook her head. “Not at all, from what he claimed.”

“Seems like an oversight,” I said. “No way to accurately gauge someone if you don’t meet them.”

Her green eyes gleamed in the soft light. “Right you are. No way to tell, say, if someone is a dangerous sociopath, one turn away from derailing the entire goddamn train.”

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