He whistled as he walked, and I smiled to myself, liking the sound of it.
“Can you sing?” I looked at him.
“A little,” he said.
“I call bullshit.” Then I sucked in a breath and clutched the heart pendant when three men seemed to materialize out of the darkness, no warning.
One stepped directly in front of Kelly, and the other two stood on each side of him. Three guns were pointed at us.
Kelly nodded his head real subtle, behind him, and I caught it. I moved, standing against his back. “Move along, fellas,” he said. “Not here. Not now.”
“Maraigh might have given passes if the mark was out with family, but you know how we run things, Kelly. And it ain’t like your old man. That’s why he’s dead and you’re about to be.”
“We’ll make this simple, Kelly,” another one said. “The drugs. You tell us where they are. We’ll let the wife walk.”
I looked between Kelly and the three men. This was the first time I’d heard anything about drugs. I knew Kelly was a thief, one of the best, but drugs? Was that what he was stealing and then selling? Maybe the bullshit warrant wasn’t bullshit at all.
“Seems Kelly keeps secrets from the missus,” Guy Two spoke up, staring at my face, laughing a little. “You didn’t know, Red? Your husband steals drugs that don’t belong to him and then sells them in the streets for more than we do. He’s high class, the marauding tiger.” Guy Two hit Center Guy on the shoulder. “Then he lets the children of those parents he sold drugs to live at his place. How’s that for repaying a debt? At least his old man was honest about it.”
My thoughts went to Ryan, how small he was, how he could potentially be facing life-long consequences for his mother’s addiction, and my blood ran cold. I would’ve taken a step back from Kelly, but the seriousness of the situation kept me in place. These guys were not fucking around.
In my peripheral, I saw someone moving behind the three men. Someone they hadn’t noticed. Maureen. She had a bag of trash in one hand and a cigarette in another. She must’ve stepped out to sneak a smoke under the guise of taking the trash out. Her eyes connected with mine before she tilted her head a bit, maybe realizing what the fuck was going on.
Without trying to be too obvious, I turned my eyes back to the situation, but Guy Two had noticed. His head whipped around but Maureen had already gone.
Maybe she was going to get Raff.
Center Guy was demanding the drugs again. “Where are they?” He had started to sweat. He pointed the gun at Kelly’s head. “Where the fuck are they, Kelly?” When he didn’t get a response, the gun moved and trained on me. “You have two seconds, or you’ll be cleaning up your wife’s brains from the street you love so much. One.”
Kelly made a subtle move, one where either way he was getting the bullet, but on Center Guy’s count of two, Maureen swung the garbage bag with all her might, and it connected with his head in a sickening thunk! She must’ve filled it with rocks or something. The crack seemed to echo before all hell broke loose.
Kelly shoved me to the ground. He swept up the gun that Center Guy lost after he went down and shot Guy One point-blank in the head. Guy Two shot Kelly in the shoulder, but a second later, Kelly made two more head shots—one for Guy Two and one for the guy who got whacked by Maureen.
I’d never seen anyone move like that, so quick that it was hard to keep up. Bang. Bang. Bang. All three men were laid out on the concrete, blood spreading on the cement.
Kelly stood for a second, his breathing normal, but his eyes were so dangerous that it sent a spike of fear up my chest. It was the kind of look an animal got while hunting. The pulse in his neck was frantic, but it looked like it belonged to the tiger.
I lay on the concrete, my palms and knees burning from the fall. My elbow was bleeding. My ears were ringing. The scent of blood and gunpowder filled the night air.
Kelly seemed to snap out of his thoughts when Maureen picked up the trash bag. He held out his hand. “I’ll take it,” he said.