Private Dicks (20 page)

Eric glanced at him quickly, his expression appraising. "Any chance you might be able to get a fix on where he is?"

Jason shook his head, massaging his wrists to regain feeling. "I know when thing happen, not where things are. At best, I can maybe help us avoid confrontations in the hallways."

Eric nodded. "I think I might have an idea where he'd be. It might be better if you—"

Jason glared at him. "Don't even try to tell me to wait here."

"All right." Eric thankfully didn't try to argue the point. "Try to stay quiet, stick to the walls, follow me, and do what I do. And let me know if you sense any problems."

As they exited the basement, Jason was surprised to find that the house was bigger than he'd expected. He spared a thought to wonder why he hadn't been guarded, but then again, they probably didn't consider him to be much of a threat. Eric guided them surprisingly quickly and accurately through the house, as if he already knew the layout. As they moved around, they checked several rooms, some of which were locked. Luckily, Eric seemed to be highly skilled at lock picking, but it was still nerve-wracking to have to wait in one place for several minutes while he picked the locks. After the third room they tried, Jason started wondering why they hadn't run into anyone yet.

They went up one more flight of stairs and checked several more rooms before they finally came to a small, sparsely furnished one with Liam curled up on a bed, apparently asleep.

Jason felt a surge of relief until he tried to wake Liam up and nothing happened. Liam had always been a light sleeper.

"Something's wrong," he whispered.

Eric frowned, moving closer and doing a cursory check. "He might be drugged," he offered after a long, distressing moment.

"What? Why the hell would they do that?"

"Hard to say," Eric shrugged, and in the dim light Jason thought he looked as confused as Jason felt.
"Can you carry him?"

Jason nodded, and Eric helped him awkwardly position Liam on his back. Thankfully, Liam seemed to be somewhat reactive, clinging loosely to Jason's shoulders.

They made their way much more slowly through the dark halls, still unimpeded. Jason hoped that everyone in the house was just asleep. They made it down and through most of the second floor without a hitch. Halfway down a hallway, Liam shifted restlessly, which hopefully meant he was waking up.

Right as they were about to start down the second floor staircase, Jason started getting a vague premonition. It felt significant, but he couldn't really pinpoint why.

"Eric, I don't think we should—"

"This is the fastest way to get back to the first floor," Eric cut him off, tone low and even, crouched just in front of the doorway. "Do you have anything specific?"

Jason closed his eyes, tension tightening his brow, but he couldn't get a clearer sense of what felt wrong. Liam moved again but still didn't wake, so Jason ignored him. Finally, he reopened his eyes and shook his head. "No."

They made their way cautiously down the stairway, which lead to a closed door. Eric opened it slowly, revealing a large room ostentatious in wall and floor design but sparse in furniture, possibly a dining room. To pass through required crossing the entire length of the room. Unfortunately, the exits were being blocked by nearly half a dozen armed men.

A surge of adrenaline hit him so hard that Jason thought for a brief, panicked moment he might be having a heart attack.

"Unfortunately, your little adventure has come to an end," Llewellyn said, standing at the forefront and center, his dramatic flair apparently undiminished. He motioned to one of his gun-carrying lackeys, and Jason felt an icy tendril of fear creep along his spine. "Kill the intruder; secure the boy. Try not to kill the brother, but I'm not feeling picky."

In a panic, Jason's eyes flew around the room, trying to find something they could use to defend themselves. He looked at Eric and was startled to find that Eric seemed to actually be
smiling.
Confused, Jason turned back to Llewellyn and his lackeys, who were ... doing nothing.

Llewellyn frowned, turning to face his men. "What's wrong with you? I gave clear orders. Deal with this at once!" Two of them looked just as confused as Jason felt, hesitating awkwardly. The other three men were smiling almost savagely. Jason recognized two of them as the ones from the basement that had let Liam have a minute to talk to him.

"I don't think that will be happening," Eric said mildly.

"Beg pardon?" Llewellyn was obviously trying and failing to maintain his composure.

"Well," Eric said. "This might help."

Immediately after he'd spoken the words, Eric's features seemed to distort for a moment, blurring in a way that was hard to look at directly, before finally settling into the form of a stranger. Even the hair color was off. There were some minor similarities, but the man standing next to him was no longer recognizable as Eric Donahue. There was something oddly familiar about him, but Jason wasn't sure what until he saw the monochrome Tuatha eyes. There were only so many people with Tuatha blood, even in a larger city like Boston, and only one of them made the news frequently enough to be recognizable on sight.

"My name is Shane O'Neil. You may have heard of me."

While Jason was still reeling from that revelation, one of the men suddenly turned and shot another in the kneecap. The man screamed and went down, dropping his gun in the process. Everything was silent for one short moment. Then chaos began. Eric—or no, Shane—handed Jason a gun that seemed to come from nowhere and quickly joined the fray himself. Jason took the gun, wondering how Shane had known that he could use one, but didn't hang around to see what happened. Instead he held tighter to Liam and made for the nearest exit back the way they'd come, making sure to close the door behind him.

"I'm awake," Liam said suddenly, making Jason jump and almost drop him. "You can put me down."

Jason let him down, then turned and tersely asked, "Anything I should be aware of?"

"Police are outside. Might want to hide the gun and go out hands up once we hit the entrance," Liam calmly reported. A beat later, he added, "In case you didn't pick it up yourself, your boyfriend'll be fine."

Jason swatted him on the side of his head. "Not my boyfriend."

Liam just grinned. "Yet. Should we make our hasty exit?"

Jason rolled his eyes, already steering them down the hallway. He held his gun at the ready until they found an exit, just in case.

*~*~*

Jason quickly made sure the SWAT team outside knew he and Liam weren't involved
,
a task simplified by the fact the police seemed to already know the situation.

The rest went down pretty much like television had led Jason to expect that sort of situation to work. There was a flurry of voices and men making hand gestures as the team burst into the doorway. After that came several long minutes of silence. Someone checked Jason and Liam over for injuries, and a police officer started asking them a few questions, taking notes on a small pad of paper. At some point, several paramedics rushed into the house.

Shortly after that, things got loud again. The paramedic team came out of the building with the three men who'd been traitors to Llewellyn. They were followed not long after by armed men escorting several handcuffed individuals: some of the more loyal lackeys, as well as the man himself.

Llewellyn was limping badly and looked as if he might literally explode from rage. Jason was glad to be standing with several police officers far, far away from Llewellyn as men from the SWAT team maneuvered him with some difficulty into a police car.

Shane came out shortly after, meeting up with an older member of the police force who greeted him heartily. The man's face looked vaguely familiar until Jason suddenly placed it as the face of Boston's chief of police. Since Eric was Shane, and Shane O'Neil was the son of the police chief, that meant the man was Shane's father. They spoke for a long time, too far away for Jason to hear what they were saying. Liam was in an animated conversation with one of the officers who was standing with them, from which Jason managed to pick up that everything had worked out ever so perfectly for some kind of long term operation the police had been trying to run to take this gang down. Jason ignored them in favor of staring at Shane.

He tried and failed to reconcile Shane O'Neil with the man he'd thought was Eric Donahue. He couldn't figure out how he felt about it. If anything, he felt numb. A memory floated briefly to the surface of his thoughts, and he nearly snorted. Eric had 'met him, sort of,' indeed.

Eventually, he decided he was angry. Once the thought entered his head, he found the emotion growing stronger with every passing moment.

"You okay?" Liam asked worriedly, apparently done with his conversation. Jason hadn't even noticed.

"Fine," Jason returned shortly. Liam recoiled, and Jason immediately felt awful and tried to calm down. "Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?"

"I'm not the one who looks like he'd be lighting fires with his mind if he could," Liam returned, staring down resolutely at the ground. He raised his head briefly, looking at Jason from the corner of his eyes. "Just try to go easy on him?"

"Butt out," Jason replied. It wasn't Liam's fault that 'Eric' had been lying to him—to everyone—for months.

Before long, Shane turned and approached them. Jason tried to glare a little less obviously.

“I talked to my father about having you both give statements tomorrow.” He paused a moment and glanced at Jason with what might have been wariness. “Can I give you two a ride home? The nearest train station is a ways away.”

"That would be awesome. Thank you so much," Liam said quickly, looking much more appropriately grateful than Jason.

The car ride began with a long, moody silence. Well, Jason was moody; the other two were just silent. Liam was sitting in the back, and Jason had taken the passenger seat by force of habit. It might not have been the best idea, but it was too late to change now. He stared out the window, glaring at the trees.

"I'm sorry," Shane finally said, breaking the silence. "That probably wasn't the best way for you to find out."

"You think?" Jason scowled, but didn't say anything more. It was tempting to go off on a rant, but he knew it wouldn't help. He wasn't in the best position to criticize people for having major life secrets. Also, even as resentful and angry as he felt, he knew that wasn't the problem. The problem wasn't that the man sitting next to him wasn't Eric Donahue. The problem was that Eric was Shane O'Neil, local hero, detective extraordinaire, son of the police chief, and, even if Jason had had a chance in the first place, completely out of Jason's league. The anger was useless and misdirected, but it helped Jason to not think about the embarrassment or the crushing disappointment he felt underneath that anger.

The car devolved back into silence. Jason sat brooding a while longer. Finally, he sighed with some resignation and spoke. "I'm sorry. You really don't deserve this shitty attitude from me."

Shane's tone gave nothing away as he replied, "Don't worry about it. I understand why you're upset."

"Why did you do it, anyway?" Jason asked, unable to filter the lingering sullenness out of his tone. "Pretend to be Eric Donahue."

Shane frowned and looked thoughtful, as if he were trying to compose a good answer. "Well, part of it was actually about this particular gang. They were trying to undermine the Irish syndicate, and to that aim they focused a lot of their activities on South Boston. We also knew they had a particular interest in psychic and paranormal things. I went undercover as a special class private investigator with less name recognition hoping that I might get a case that would give us something to take them down with."

"And me and my brother fit ever so conveniently into your stupid plan," Jason muttered bitterly.

"I do actually like to help people," Shane said, sparing a brief glance at Jason.

"So you lie to them," Jason replied before he thought to stop himself.

"Jason, would you have asked me to help you find your brother if you knew who I was?" Shane asked pointedly.

"Well, no," Jason admitted. He might have found someone else, but he knew he never would have dreamed of trying to contact someone like Shane O'Neil.

"It's why I became an S-PI in the first place, actually," Shane continued. "I like helping people. I'm not allowed to join the police force on account of being part Tuatha, and I've never really liked the BPI, which was my only other option for this kind of work. Being Eric Donahue was also a way to help people whom nowadays I normally can't."

"I'd like to thank you on my and my brother's behalf, Mr. O'Neil," Liam said, speaking up from the backseat for the first time since they'd gotten in the car. "I very much appreciate your assistance, and I know my brother does, too. He'll get over it. I think he's really just upset because he likes you."

"Liam!" Jason exclaimed in horror, twisting backwards to glare at him accusingly.

"Yes?" Liam had the innocent angel face down perfectly, and Jason just turned back around and made a noise of frustration.

More time passed before Jason felt up to speaking again. "I'm sorry I'm being like this. You saved Liam. Without you, I don't know if we ever would have gotten out of that."

"I'm glad to have been able to help," Shane replied. After a long pause, he spoke again without prompting. "Just … for your information, I suppose, I didn't actually develop a separate personality or anything like that. What you saw was me, just without the name recognition." He smiled slightly, and Jason was struck by the familiar expression on the unfamiliar face. It was just a simple facial expression, but it really brought home the fact that Shane O'Neil was Eric Donahue. Or that Eric was Shane. Not that it really mattered, Jason supposed. Shane was a big-time hero. Tomorrow he'd go back to being just that. He'd probably forget all about this one case among what must be hundreds, filing it away as that kidnapping case that took down some big vicious crime gang. The thought was depressing.