Burden (9 page)

“Shit.” Brennan flopped his head back on the couch. “So stupid.”

“Dude, even a normal man could forget that crap. I’ll get it.”

“N-no. I will.” Brennan stood and stomped off to the kitchen to grab the paper towels. The mewling from the opposite corner made him grimace. He’d forgotten all about the little shitheads. Who wouldn’t after the mind-blowing day he’d had. “Come on, guys.” He lifted them out one at a time, twice having to retrieve the paper towels from sharp-ass claws.

“Ah, noooo.” Keegan’s wail from the living room made Brennan smile. He figured shithead number one had just attacked some bare toes. “Damn it, Bren. Get ’em off me.”

“Why are you so afraid of m-my kitties?”

“Those are not kitties. Those are man-eating lions.”

“They w-weigh like a pound a piece.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Keegan scooped a brown one off the floor and settled it on his lap. The other three clambered on his pants legs trying to get the same attention. “Annoying little shits. Couldn’t you have chosen
one
of them instead of all of them?”

Brennan looked at him, horrified. “And b-break them up?” He picked up a scraggily cream-colored one currently trying to claw his way through the couch. “What if there w-were four of you and…and…someone wanted to break you up?”

Keegan visibly shuddered. “I can’t imagine four of me.” He stroked the fur between the cat’s eyes, and then bopped his nose with one finger when the furry beast went after him with his teeth. “No teeth.”

With his free hand, Brennan flipped a pillow out of the way and sat again. The kitten launched itself off Brennan’s lap and attacked the pillow with a whining mewl. A third shithead tried to climb into his lap by inserting its claws through his jeans and into the skin of his leg. Brennan shook him off.

“Seriously. These things are like wild beasts. If I were you, I’d be afraid to sleep here alone.”

Brennan snorted. “I’ll keep the d-door closed, if it’ll make you happy.”

Keegan wrapped a hand around Brennan’s neck and tugged until their lips met. “I’d be happier if you weren’t alone.”

The man’s murmured words made Brennan hard all over again. Must be the previous long lack of nooky. He couldn’t help but make a dig. “I’ll ask my aunt if she can sleep on the couch.”

“Fucker.” Keegan plastered his mouth on Brennan’s, melded their lips and made their tongues tangle.

Only the demanding growl of Brennan’s stomach broke them apart, reminding them they were both starving.

Sandwiches stacked, baseball game on, both of them lifted their bare feet to the coffee table and lounged back to eat. Brennan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so relaxed. So unworried about remembering what the hell he was supposed to be doing. In fact, now that he thought about it, he rarely went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and didn’t stand there staring at the food, wondering why he was standing there staring at the food. He glanced at Keegan, whose jaw bunched as he chewed, his gaze on the TV. He pumped his fist with a “Yes!” when the Rockies got a key hit.

What was it about the guy that made Brennan feel more grounded than he had in the last year? He swallowed past a lump in his throat just thinking about the implications brought on by the sudden appearance of Keegan in his life. Was he ready to finally discover what had happened on that mountain a year ago? Ready to face what his existence had really become? To move on?

“Rockies suck this year. You wanna go to a game?” Keegan continued watching the game, one hand idly stroking the sleeping kitten in his lap, the other holding his sandwich.

“If they suck, why w-would you want to go?”

Keegan looked at him as if he thought Brennan had lost his mind. “It’s America’s pastime, Bren. You go to baseball games, drink beer, eat hot dogs and cheer your team on even if they’re dead last and aren’t ever going to win. Please don’t tell me you’ve never gone to a baseball game.”

Brennan rolled his eyes. “I’ve been to lots of games. N-not in awhile, though.”

“I get the feeling there’s a lot of things you haven’t done in awhile.”

The kitty next to Brennan gave a cry, and he turned just in time to see him riding the top of a brown, paper-wrapped box as it slipped off the couch and onto the floor. Scared, the kitten—either Bob, Bobby or Robert—batted at the box and jumped backward, adopting a pseudo attack pose. Tiny sharp fangs cleared his drawn-back lips, his little butt shot up in the air, and his claws dug into the carpet in front of him.

“Bad box,” Keegan admonished, his mouth curving into a smile. “You never did open it.”

“Hmm.” Brennan glared at it, knowing he was supposed to do something but couldn’t fathom what.

“How ’bout you see who it’s from.” Keegan leaned across Brennan’s legs, dispatching the cat to the floor, and reached for it.

Brennan watched in slow motion as long, tanned fingers stretched toward the rectangular package, and something out of place nagged at him.

A split second before Keegan touched it, Brennan grabbed his arm and yanked. “No.”

Chapter Ten

Keegan more often than not acted on his own instincts, so when a fellow cop—IA or not—unexpectedly latched on to his wrist and practically shouted
no
, Keegan heeded the advice.

“What is it?”

Brennan shook his head. “I don’t know. Something m-made me nervous.” He licked his lips in an uneasy gesture.

“Nervous is good. Nervous is better than dead any day.”

Keegan stood, suddenly wary when moments ago they’d been sharing a meal and watching the Rockies get pounded. Hands on his hips, he eyed the once-benign box turned devil incarnate all because of a gut feeling. “There’s no writing on this side.”

“There wasn’t any on the other side either, I don’t think.”

Keegan lifted his gaze, his eyes narrowing on Brennan’s face while a kitty gnawed on the cuff of his jeans. He toed it away when it left the denim for the paper-wrapped temptation.

“So you get unmarked packages often?”

“Never.” Brennan joined him in standing, each of them observing the otherwise-innocuous item. “Someone delivered it, right? It can’t be too touchy. Maybe if we just peel back a corner?”

“Or maybe that’s exactly what
someone
wants us to do. Next thing you know the whole thing blows up in our faces. Literally.”

Brennan dropped his chin to his chest and bit at his bottom lip, which only made Keegan want to shuffle him out of the apartment and into a ball of bubble wrap so that his own life didn’t interfere with Brennan’s healing process. If he’d been followed and had put Brennan or his aunt in danger, he’d never forgive himself.

“Fuck.” He slapped his thighs, making Brennan jump. “I could call a buddy of mine. He works with the bomb squad.”

“It’s a box.”

This time Keegan looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “From one cop to another…are you willing to stake your life on this being nothing more than letters from an old lover?”

Brennan cocked his head to the side and appeared to think about that. “I n-never had any l-long-term lovers, and since I haven’t heard from any of them in over a year, I kinda doubt they’d dump a box of letters on m-my doorstep. And…I don’t think I’d have written any in the first place.”

“All right then. Since I’m not real big on coincidences, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this might have something to do with me getting shot at yesterday.”

“Shit.” Brennan’s face paled considerably. His mouth moved, but nothing came out. Instead, he carefully picked his way around the box, giving it its due respect, and plucked the cordless phone from its holder on the end table. “Here. I’m so stupid.”

“What the hell?” Keegan gripped the other man’s shoulders and gave him a shake. “Stupid about what?”

“B-before, I w-wouldn’t have forgotten shit l-like what happened to you.”

“Hey.” Keegan tilted Brennan’s face to his and put a soft kiss on his lips. “Take a breath, slow down.”

“Fuck that.” He jerked out of Keegan’s hold. “M-my brain isn’t here. It’s gone. Like every other f-fucking thing in my life. I d-don’t see a bomb anymore. I see a goddamn box. I have fucking n-nightmares every night. I c-can’t talk right. I’m p-pathetic.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Keegan’s jaw hurt from grinding it so hard. He stabbed a finger into Brennan’s chest. “Don’t let me fucking hear you say that again.”

“’S the truth.”

“From what I’ve heard and seen, you’re getting better. It sucks that it’s taking so long, yeah, but you are getting better. Maybe if I keep you in bed, you won’t stutter ever again.”

Brennan’s depressed face cracked, and though he did his best to bite back a smile, Keegan saw it.

“Stop being a dick, and gather the shitheads so we can get out of here. Bring whatever they need to keep them corralled outside.” Keegan took the phone from Brennan’s death grip and put it back in its cradle before pulling his cell from his pocket. “Now, Bren. I don’t want to be here if that thing goes boom.”

“Right.”

But it took a gentle shove from Keegan to get the man moving.

Brennan hurried into the kitchen, snagging kittens as he went until his arms were full of fur and teeth and claws. Next came their box, which he plopped them into, followed by their food and water dishes, and a scratching post. He grabbed the whole thing and dragged it to the front door.

“Thanks, Pete.” Keegan stuffed the phone back in his pocket. “He’s on his way. Gonna bring the bomb dog. Then we’ll know one way or the other, and we’ll either dismantle a bomb meant for me or read your old love letters tonight in my bed.”

“Your bed?”

“Hell yes, my bed. I have a feeling I led my problem right to your doorstep. Somebody has to make sure you’re safe.”

And there was the real issue. It pissed Brennan off that in reality, he couldn’t take care of himself. Didn’t even own a gun anymore, at least not one he kept with him. He’d more than likely shoot himself in the foot.

Somehow they managed to get the whole kit and caboodle—no pun intended—down the stairs and out into the yard just as a cruiser came to a semi-screeching halt in front of the main house. The officer that got out came right to Keegan and shook his hand.

“First a shooter, now a bomb? Climbing to new heights, aren’t you, Monroe?” The man slapped Keegan on the back.

“Nah. Par for the course. How’d you get here so fast?”

The officer put his hands on his hips and looked down in the box of squirming kittens. “Was just down the road and heard your call for Pete. I wanted to see if there was really someone out there who could take you down.” He reached in, pulled out one of the shitheads and cradled him in the crook of an elbow. “Who’re your friends here?”

“The four Bobs. And this is Brennan McGuire.”

“The IA guy who saved your bacon yesterday?”

“That’d be him.”

Turning toward Brennan, the officer held out his free hand. “Chris Demon. Yes, Demon.”

Brennan stared at the hand and knew he was supposed to do something with it. Finally, after several awkward seconds, his brain recalled the information, and he met Chris Demon’s hand with his own.

“Brennan.” Great first impression. He couldn’t even shake a man’s hand without having to think about it.

“Nice to meet you. Anyone who can save this jack-off’s life is a friend of mine, IA or not.”

“I’m n-not.”

Chris raised a brow.

“IA. I’m not IA anymore.” That part of his life was well and truly over. He’d come to terms with it, and he wished other people would too. Yes, once he’d been with the hated Internal Affairs division, he’d investigated dirty cops, judged them based on what he’d discovered, and put a few cops out of a job. He’d even put a couple in jail. Now he was a nobody. Pitied more than feared or hated, and more than one time he’d overheard how karma had finally met up with him.

“Still. I’m glad you were there for Keegan.”

Brennan could only nod.

An ensuing awkward silence followed where Chris played with the kittens as if there were nothing wrong, as if there wasn’t a bomb lying on the floor of Brennan’s apartment, as if his world hadn’t been once again turned upside down. Yesterday morning he’d woken up to follow the path his life had taken him—buying a freaking drink he didn’t like and trying to remember how to take a bus. Twenty-four hours later he’d been involved in a shooting, had sex with a virtual stranger, and now there was a possible bomb in his living room.

Brennan let himself get lost in the following forty-five minutes of chaos. He’d thought Keegan had called in a friend. Instead, there were no fewer than six police cars in his aunt’s driveway, a man decked out in full-blown bomb gear, a German shepherd, and both men he’d met at the station yesterday. One had been at the coffee shop—Brennan couldn’t remember his name—and the other had been around later when they’d been interrogating him. He couldn’t remember that man’s name, either. Par for the course now. There’d been a time when he never forgot a face or the name that went with it.

He casually slipped into the background, keeping track of his little shitheads and making sure none of them escaped or got eaten by the German shepherd that took an interest in them.

“Brenny, what on earth?”

Brennan spun around at his aunt’s voice. She was charging across the yard like a woman on a mission. He guessed anyone would be with a lawn full of cops. Half the neighborhood was probably watching too.

“A bomb.” Damn it. He sighed and hung his head, sure he could have said something with a bit more subtlety.

“What?” Caroline’s hand went across her heart as she gazed up at her garage and apartment above.

“I’m s-sorry, Aunt Caroline.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“The box.” Brennan scooped up a Bob that’d clawed his way to the top of the box and threatened to jump to freedom. The dog salivated next to his master’s leg. Apparently he’d done his job and been relieved of duty.

“What box? Oh! The one on the steps? Oh my goodness. I carried a bomb? Is everyone all right? Where is your friend?”

“Aunt Caroline.” Brennan put his free hand on her shoulder and gave her a small squeeze. “It’s f-fine.” At least he hoped it was. “It didn’t go off.”