and the way he lit his cigarettes when he was tired. He’d let the smoke dangle from the side of his mouth while he searched for his lighter.
Don’t think about him.
Gray cleared his throat. “It’s a kid. Jayden Chapman. He’s eight years old and presumably hiding from CPS.”
Kellan furrowed his brow in thought and exhaled some smoke through his nose. “Chapman—I might recognize the name.”
It hadn’t occurred to Gray that maybe he’d known Jonas—who had spent years on and off the streets. How big was the Philadelphia underworld? “His older brother’s name was Jonas.”
“Was?”
Gray dipped his chin. “He died. Long story, but I promised him I’d find his brother.”
“Hm.” Kellan brought out his phone and set it next to his beer, and he pulled up an app that showed a blank page. Maybe it was one for taking notes…? “What can you tell me about the brothers that might help narrow shite down? They’re white, I assume. Religious? Part of a community? Did Jonas talk of mates he had here—family they stayed with sometimes?”
Pasts and futures hadn’t existed in the world where Gray had met Jonas. He shook his head, at a loss. He knew virtually nothing trivial about Jonas. Gray knew the guy had done everything to protect the innocent around him, and he knew he’d been in agony about having left his little brother behind.
“Sorry. I don’t have much to go on.” Gray rubbed the back of his neck, absently feeling the barcode and the digits below it. “He told me Jayden had been safe at the time—when Jonas left Philadelphia. But he wasn’t supposed to be gone longer than a summer.”
Kellan was writing something down.
Gray flicked a glance at the guy’s colorful tattoos. From the letters across his knuckles and the darkly shadowed shamrock with a broken leaf that covered his hand, to the quotes swirling around instruments and other motifs along his arm. There was a sawed-off shotgun with the words “May the rebellion in your blood save you from their shackles” underneath the barrel. The topside of the shotgun morphed into a violin on its back. The name Luna was written in cursive along the strings of the violin. A set of green eyes, a cliff with waves crashing up against it, an old-looking family crest… A Celtic cross inside a circle. Inside the circle, Gray read “The Sons of Munster.”
His other arm was much the same. Violence, Ireland, music, quotes, two bullet holes.
Kellan got comfortable once more and took a drag from his smoke. “You’re very invested in the brother of someone you barely knew.”
Gray nodded slightly, understanding why it came off that way, and he couldn’t say he had any desire to explain why this promise was important for him to keep. “We went through something together,” he said carefully. “His only goal had been to make enough money to be able to start fresh with his brother, but he didn’t get that chance.”
Kellan’s striking eyes clouded with pensiveness. “You don’t share his background. You’re not from the streets.” Gray had nothing to say to that. Kellan smiled a bit. “I admit, you have my interest.”
That one bugged Gray. He wasn’t here to be toyed with, and he was in no mood to stall if it wouldn’t lead to anything. “Are you capable of helping?” he asked with a hint of impatience lacing his voice. “This is a shot in the dark for me. The way Dominic phrased himself, I was under the impression I was meeting someone…I don’t know, more experienced.”
Kellan raised his brows, mildly amused. The amusement never really left. “It sounds like you’re saying I look young.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Kellan let out a laugh and took a final puff from his cigarette. “Years make up a life about as much as the page numbers make up a book.” Then he put out his smoke and leaned forward, absently cracking his knuckles. “I’ll help you, Gray. Only because it won’t cost me anything, and Dominic and I will be square.”
Gray kept his face composed and watched Kellan pull out a pen and scribble something on a new napkin.
“Nothing happens in Philly without at least one of my mates knowing about it,” he said, sliding the napkin over to Gray. “When it comes to children and family matters, this is the guy.”
Gray eyed the address—to a fucking church—and the name of a priest. Father O’Malley?
“If he doesn’t know where Jayden is himself, he’ll know someone who does,” Kellan finished.
Nothing happens in