Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,60

bag with him. “Did he not throw his shit in there? I’ve got some things in the Rover he can borrow if he can get his big head through the opening in my T-shirt. I don’t buy them in extralarge ego.”

Ichi took another drag of his cigarette, then exhaled a thin, fragrant stream. “He doesn’t need anything more from you. Don’t you think he’s taken enough of your shit?”

My baby brother’s words stopped me short, a few feet away from the end of their SUV. In a lot of ways, Ichiro fit in nicely with me and Mike. He was an edgier version of my philosophies with our older brother’s Boy Scout morals. He was a conflict of contradictions, pushing the envelope for his art but pretty much traditional down to the marrow in his bones. His appearance in my life had been unexpected and unwelcome, but he kept after me, cracking open my resentment about our mother discarding us and leaving me with a father who hated me. Eventually he fell into place as my younger brother. I’d been angry and hurt when he and Bobby began their relationship and hid their developing love from me, but by then, I’d grown very protective of Ichi. He’d somehow become my innocent, rebellious baby brother while I wasn’t looking, and Bobby’s interest in him seemed a bit incestuous, taking into account my brotherly relationship with Bobby.

But with everything we’d been through, Ichi never once spat in my face, not like he was doing right now. And I sure as hell didn’t know what to do about it.

“What’s going on?” The parking structure’s floor scraped against the soles of my shoes, a shuffle of tiny bits of sand and gravel from God knows where. “Ichi, what happened?”

“Bobby fucking got stabbed, Cole,” Ichi hissed at me, pacing off the end of the SUV with a single stride. “That’s what’s wrong. Did you miss that part of the afternoon? When you were chasing whatever it was you’re after? Did you miss my husband getting stabbed?”

“It wasn’t like I did it.” For some reason, I fell into a whisper as if I didn’t want anyone to hear us arguing. I didn’t know what was going on in Ichiro’s head, but I knew how he felt. I’d sat by Jae’s hospital bed more than a few times and Bobby’s as well, not to mention the vigil we all stood when Mike was shot. “He’s fine. So he may not be able to swing from a chandelier during sex for a while, but—”

“It’s not a joke, Cole. This isn’t something to laugh at,” Ichi said, turning to face me. His kretek burned red-hot at the end when he took another hit, holding the smoke in for a moment before releasing it in a plume. “I don’t want him working with you anymore. And if I tell him that, he’ll push back at me because I don’t have any right to tell him how to live his life, but I can’t watch the two of you do this. If Jae is okay with you trying to kill yourself every day, that’s between the two of you. But I won’t let Bobby do that. I can’t. I never thought I would find somebody I would love enough to want to marry, and I was okay with that. Then I met him, and everything changed.

“And don’t get me wrong, I love you and Mike. You’re my brothers,” he asserted, “but he’s my husband. He’s my family. And we both know he’s older than I am, so every year I have with him is an even greater gift. He takes care of himself. He works hard to stay healthy so he can be with me as long as he can. So I don’t need you to try to kill him every time you take a case. I just can’t. So I’m asking you—if you love me as much as you say you do—don’t take him with you anymore. I love him, Cole. More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life, and if I lose him because of you, I’m going to lose more than my husband. I’m going to lose my brother as well.”

Fourteen

NO ONE ever came to Los Angeles in the last ninety years or so to look at the stars in the sky. Despite being the birthplace of packaged entertainment sold in long or short forms, the night above the glittering City of Angels rarely bared a