Bo laughed out loud, slapping his knees with both hands. He slumped beside her on the ratty tan shag carpet, letting his back slide down against the wall.
“I’m a lost cause, Doc,” he said. “Our folks were so proud of Jericho, especially when he got the appointment to the Academy. That was like a three-hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship, wasn’t it, Jer?”
“I don’t know. Something like that,” Jericho grunted without looking up from his rifle scope pointed across the street.
“Well—” Bo let his head fall to one side so he looked directly at Megan. “Everything our parents saved not having to pay for Jericho’s college, they got to use on my bail money.” He shrugged, maybe, Megan thought, a little sadly. “Like I said, a lost cause. Tough to live up to a brother like that one, I’ll tell you. I can barely string five coherent words together in English. He was rattling off three different languages before he got out of high school. We had a really cold winter his sophomore year so he stayed inside and learned to speak fluent Japanese. Funny thing though, he never could figure why the girls liked me more…”
“How about we stay focused?” Jericho said. He leaned back from the Remington 700 sniper rifle mounted on a short, tripod-like table and stretched his back. A box of cartridges that read .300 WINCHESTER MAGNUM sat on the table beside his left arm. Each looked the size of Megan’s finger. The room was dark and the curtains drawn but for a thin gash a foot in front of the rifle barrel. He sat far enough from the threshold so as not to be seen by anyone across the street.
“He’s been like this for as long as I’ve known him,” Bo went on, the edge of mischief sharp in his voice. A pistol bulged at the waist of his black T-shirt. The cuffs of his faded jeans rode up over heavy riding boots to reveal white socks as he rested his arms across bent knees.
“Don’t pay any attention to my wayward brother, doctor,” Jericho grumbled. “He doesn’t have the opportunity to talk to that many honest women.”
“As a matter of fact,” Bo said, “I’m not entirely certain such an animal exists.”
Megan smiled at that. “What did you mean when you said your brother’s been like this?” She dipped her head toward Jericho.
“You know.” Bo shrugged. “The responsible one. Taking care of things.” The muscles along his neck tightened as he spoke. Where Jericho’s strength was wiry and deceiving, Bo Quinn had thick, visible power like the knotted roots of a short but sturdy tree.
“Chair Force, you there?” Thibodaux’s disembodied voice crackled across the radio clipped to Quinn’s vest.
“Go ahead,” Jericho said.
“Just checkin’ in,” Thibodaux said. “I still got no movement out here.”
Bo took a BlackBerry phone from his belt. Using it like a walkie-talkie, he pressed a button and checked on all his men. Each reported no movement. Moon and Cujo covered the alley behind Navarro’s house. Ugly and Mean Jim waited up on Lafayette Avenue, toward Trinity Park about a quarter mile away, acting as a backup team in the event reinforcements were needed. They had the house surrounded.
“Bo’s guys report no contact,” Jericho said into his mike. “Nothing on this end either.” He didn’t say it, but Megan could tell from the tension in his voice that he was as worried as she was that Zafir might wait until he was contagious and spread the disease for a while before paying a visit to Navarro, if he showed up at all.
The sun had come up hours before. Heat waves were beginning to shimmer off the cars parked along the live oaks lining the curb. Modest homes, most built in the early seventies, were strung up and down the block, each with a familiar look of its cookie-cutter neighbor. The siding or brick color changed on every other house and some had scabbier lawns than others, but otherwise, they were the same. Two houses to the west, a bass boat loitered on a gravel pad alongside the empty driveway. It was faded by years under the hot Texas sun. The healthy crop of weeds and low tires on the trailer said few of those hours had actually been on the water. Several homes up and down the block had motorcycles in the driveway or parked along the curb. The Denizens’ Harleys wouldn’t cause a second look.
Returning the BlackBerry to his belt, Bo leaned back against the wall again and took a long pull on his bottled water.
“What’s all this about these guys gettin’ seventy virgins if they die for the cause?” He spit a bit of wood from his toothpick on the floor. “Pardon me, but that just don’t seem like Heaven in my opinion. Now…” He winked at Mahoney. “Promise me seventy experienced women and I might be willing to strike some kind of a deal…”
Jericho glanced up from his rifle scope long enough to shake his head. “My brother, the religious philosopher. .”
Bo ignored him. “So,” he said, grinning at Megan with a face that looked eerily like a more lighthearted version of his brother. Judging from the other members of the Denizens motorcycle club, he had to be leading a hard life, but he appeared to be absent the worry and stress Jericho carried around on his shoulders like a backpack full of moral responsibility. “You dating anyone?”
Mahoney shook her head, blushing in spite of herself. She wondered what she’d say if the other Quinn asked the same question. “No. My job… my life doesn’t lend itself to dating…” Mahoney wondered why that was true. Other doctors in her office dated all the time. Some of them partied like little rabbits. Maybe she’d never extended herself. It was depressing to think she was now in her thirties and had never really had a serious relationship. She would never admit it to this man, but though she was no virgin, she was far from experienced.
“Outstanding.” Bo put his hands on his knees.
“What?” Megan winced, suddenly afraid Bo Quinn could read her mind.
“I mean the part about you not dating anybody. After we’re done here, and we whack your little terrorist friend, how about you and me get some breakfast? What do you say?”
“Knock it off, Bo,” Jericho said. “She’s not your type. And by that, I mean she’s got a brain between her ears.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” Bo wagged his head back and forth. He winked at Mahoney as he got to his feet with the slow groan of someone who’d been in a recent fight. She caught the glimpse of a white scar, almost an inch wide, running above his right hip at the waist of his jeans and disappearing over his kidney. Hand on the butt of his pistol, he readjusted the tail of his T-shirt and leaned a shoulder against the wall to peer out a gap in the living-room curtains. He took care not to touch them and cause any movement that could be seen from the outside. “I always wanted to be like him, you know — when we were growing up… Except when it came to girls. He moved way too slow for my taste in that regard.”
“At least I had taste.” Jericho chuckled. “That was the difference.”
Mahoney closed her eyes. She enjoyed listening to the two men banter. Though they were fiercely competitive, there wasn’t an ounce of animosity passing between them.
“I guess it would be difficult”—Mahoney smiled, unable to resist the urge to pick on Jericho—“having a brother who goes around bent on saving the world all the time.”
Bo gave a little shrug. “Like I said, he’s been like that my whole life. It’s all I’ve ever known. Always watching out for the one weaker than he is.” A mischievous sparkle gleamed in Bo’s eyes. “He doesn’t like to talk about it, but there was this Eskimo girl back when we were younger—”
“I’m not kidding,” Jericho said, still glued to his rifle scope. “Knock it off.”
“Hey, Jericho.” Bo raised a brow. “You invited me here, remember? Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t there, too. This is my story as much as it is yours.” He turned back to Mahoney, chuckling and waving off the implied threat. “Anyhow, we were riding our bicycles along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. I think he was in the ninth grade at the time… fourteen or fifteen, and I was maybe eleven. I was lucky he would even hang with me. Well, not far from Westchester Lagoon, we rode up on a bunch of college boys harassing this homeless native gal. She’d had a little too much to drink, and the boys were probably high. It was sort of a perfect storm. They were… you know, shoving her around and calling her a muk…”