Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

2. Ryan

Chapter two

Ryan

“Let Joey deal this time.” Lindsay narrowed his eyes through the haze of cigarette smoke, frowning at Ryan across the card table. “Ryan’s cheating.”

“I’d never.” Ryan crushed the Lucky Strike he’d just finished smoking and lit another one. “You’re just bitter because you’re bad at poker, Linds.”

“Hard not to be bad at poker when someone’s cheating,” Lindsay fired back.

“Shut up, Pony.” Alex, whose arm was draped around the back of Lindsay’s chair, lifted his hand and snapped Lindsay’s suspenders lightly. “Cheating is part of the game.”

“He’s always been a tattle tale,” Ryan said, smirking at Lindsay while he raised his glass of applejack to his lips, ice clinking against the crystal.

“Oh, gimme the cards, Ryan.” Joey gathered up the pile of playing cards and began to make sense of them, shuffling them with effortless grace. “Can’t a man just win some cash without all this squabbling? This is a poker game, not a quilting circle. ”

“I resent that,” Lindsay said, ignoring Joey’s statement, pointing directly at Ryan. “You just don’t like being caught.”

“Where’s Tommy at, anyway?” Joey said, words stunted by the cigarette he held between his lips as his hands worked to deal the cards.

“Should have been here a while ago.” Ryan drew a watch out of the pocket of his wool trousers and flicked the face open. “Couple hours. Probably got held up checking the quality of the product with the customer.”

A chuckle went around the table. Tommy was great at gaining and retaining customers, but he had a habit of overindulging with them.

“I’m sure Sandy will carry him in here in the wee hours of the morning,” Lindsay said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Ryan put the watch back in his pocket. The game started, but while he was trying to focus on strategy and betting, his mind was still on his brother. Even though it wasn’t unusual for Tommy to overstay his meetings, especially with new clients, there was a knot that had been forming in Ryan’s stomach all day. Apprehension. He didn’t know why.

“Come to think of it,” Lindsay said, taking a Lucky Strike out of the box that Ryan had discarded on the table. “Weren’t you going to go with him, Ryan?” He struck a match against the edge of the table and touched it to the tip of his cigarette until it glowed.

“I was,” Ryan said. It was typical for them to go together to meet new clients. “But old Granger called me up and asked for a last-minute delivery. Impromptu get together with friends.”

“Old Granger,” Joey said with a sigh. A notorious client of theirs, wealthy as Midas, but had a terrible time planning in advance and often begged for last-minute deliveries of hooch. As irritating as it was, it was also unwise to turn him down because he offered twice as much money for the trouble. And he sometimes paid more when Ryan delivered because he had a soft spot for him. A hard spot, actually, Tommy liked to snicker. And it was true that he was enamored with Ryan, but he never did more than press an outrageous amount of money into his hand and insist that he stay for a drink and share some stories from the War.

Normally, he took some degree of pleasure in his afternoon whiskeys with old Granger, but today when the old man called him up, there was that ominous feeling in his belly, like he shouldn’t leave this one to Tommy. And for the first time, he’d almost told Granger no. But, he reasoned with himself, Tommy was perfectly capable of handling this on his own. He’d done it before in a pinch. Sandy, who had arranged the whole meeting, would go with him, along with Henry for good measure.

“Fold,” Alex said, across the table, laying down his cards with a look of distaste. Their eyes met and Ryan felt something twist in his stomach. He looked away quickly as he always did, and waited for the strange, uncomfortable feeling to subside. Even after he averted his eyes, he could still feel Alex looking at him .

“Fold,” Lindsay said. With a sigh, he pushed his chair back and got up slowly, straightening the hinges on his leg brace. Then he took up his cane and limped around the table.

“Where the hell are you going?” Joey barked after him.

“To the commode, hell,” Lindsay said over his shoulder. “Can’t a man piss in peace?” The bathroom door snapped shut behind him.

“Got a mouth on him, tell you what,” Joey grumbled.

“Oh yes,” Alex said, looking directly at Ryan. “Yes, he does.”

Joey snorted, realizing the trap he’d walked into. Ryan studied his cards carefully, and tried not to swallow audibly, the double meaning not lost on him. Heat was creeping up his neck–shame and anger. Could Alex never leave well enough alone?

He wished it had never happened between them in the first place. He’d disliked Alex since they’d met as kids when Ryan's mom died and he was sent to live with Tommy, a half-brother his own age he didn’t know existed.

Both he and Tommy were fathered by the same bad tempered blue eyed rogue. Ryan remembered little of him except for the way his eyes flashed before his hand whipped through the air, and the ring he always wore on his little finger. Little did Ryan know, the man had another child with another woman just miles down the road who was Ryan’s age.

He left them all behind when Ryan was seven, never to be seen or heard from again .

When Ryan and Tommy met, they were both bad tempered twelve year olds on the cusp of becoming men, and they’d immediately taken a dislike to one another.

And then, as things went with kids, they became allies without question when Tommy’s drunken mother came after him with a two-by-four one hot night, and Ryan saved him by ripping it out of her hands and throwing it onto the roof of the little house. They ran through the oak trees for what felt like miles, until they stopped, panting in the dark.

They didn’t say anything to each other for a long time until Tommy finally asked, “Think she’s passed out yet?”

They were inseparable from then on.

Ryan had no other siblings, but Tommy had Alex, a kid brother two years younger than him with whom he shared his bitch of a mother. Alex was short like Tommy and handsome, too, but unlike Tommy, he inherited his mother’s meanness. It was hidden under cool charm and charisma, but Ryan had seen Alex do hideous things to people who crossed him. He had also inherited their mother’s fair beauty, pale hair and pale eyes.

Ryan’s mother had told him often, with wistful longing, that he had his father's brilliant blue eyes. Tommy didn’t inherit them, nor his own mother’s blue eyes. His were, mysteriously, hazel. Ryan had dark hair, cinnamon brown, and skin that was nearly golden, while Tommy had fair hair and a fair Irish complexion to match, turned ruddy and weathered by the fierce Oklahoma sun. In spite of the differences, however, the family resemblance was still there in the features of their faces. Both of their mothers had reminisced at various times and with varying degrees of bitterness about how their father was a handsome man.

A whole lot of good it did him, considering that he was shot to death in a brothel in Oklahoma City some years back.

“Fold,” Joey said with a sigh.

Ryan’s lips quirked into a smile around his cigarette as he pulled the pile of winnings across the table.

“Well.” Joey checked his watch, bright against his dark skin. “Better get home to the missus.”

“Bunch of sore losers around here,” Ryan said, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, and paused scooping up the poker chips. “I thought you weren’t married.”

“Not yet,” Joey said, swelling with pride. “Nearly got enough saved to finish paying down her ring. Got a cousin in Greenwood runs a jewelry shop and he’s set aside something nice for her that I’ve been paying on.”

Ryan gave a low whistle. “She’s caught hook, line, and sinker.”

“When you know, you know,” Joey said, pleased with himself.

“Well, good luck with that.” Ryan gathered up the cards on the table and began to shuffle them.

“Gin poker?” Alex said, an impious smile touching his lips.

Ryan’s stomach flipped and he narrowed his eyes at Alex. He opened his mouth to say something, anything to shut him up. What happened between them was a mistake. A mistake they had agreed never to discuss with anyone.

But before he could say a thing, the front door of his house crashed open.

In the blink of an eye, he, Alex, and Joey were on their feet, pointing their revolvers at the source of the disturbance. Playing cards scattered everywhere and Ryan held his smoking cigarette between the fingers of his left hand while he took in what he was seeing.

Henry, gasping. Dark blood down the side of his face that looked sticky and unreal in the dim lamplight. He was hunched under the weight of a body draped over his shoulders.

“What the fuck!” Joey said.

Ryan moved at once, Alex his reflection as they both approached Henry.

“T-Tommy!” Henry said, voice shaking. “He’s hurt, bad. I didn’t know what to do, I– I’m sorry. Lindsay– I thought he would know what to do. I didn’t know what to do–”

Ryan grabbed Tommy with Alex’s help and they pulled his dead weight off Henry’s back, who stumbled away from them.

“The table, Joey,” Alex said sharply.

Without further direction, Joey holstered his gun and swept his arm across the poker table, sending chips, cards, and crystal glasses crashing to the floor.

The two men laid their brother out on the table. The sight of him in the lamplight made Ryan bite down on his knuckles until they bled. Alex hissed and swore savagely under his breath.

Tommy was white as a sheet. Black blood soaked his pant leg, blooming from a gory, sticky wound on his thigh. He was wet with sweat, his fair hair dark with it and sticking to his forehead.

For one single, horrible instant, Ryan was back on the battlefield in France. But they’d survived. They’d both survived. A man didn’t survive the War to End All Wars just to come home and be gunned down on his own land, in his own city.

“Lindsay!” Ryan yelled as loud as he could.

But Lindsay was already coming, limping as fast as he could, the tap of his cane rattling up and down Ryan’s spine.

“Tommy.” Ryan leaned forward and began to slap Tommy’s cheeks lightly. He bent down until his face was nearly touching Tommy’s lips. Small breaths touched his cheek, which made his heart ache with hope.

“He’s alive.” Ryan stepped back as Lindsay approached.

“Oh God,” Lindsay said, smothering a groan. He dropped his cane and leaned against the table, checking Tommy’s pulse, his temperature, examining the wound. All the while his face grew whiter and whiter until his freckles were standing out in brilliant relief.

“What happened?” he asked in a shaking voice.

“A-Ambush,” Henry said behind them. Shaking like a leaf. Henry was the youngest of their crew, only nineteen years old .

“Ambush?” Ryan forced himself to relax his jaw after realizing he was grinding his teeth. “Ambushed by who?”

“I– I don’t know.” Henry took off his hat and wiped his forearm across his forehead. “There was a woman– She got out of the car. And then there was a– a sh-shotgun blast. They got Tommy in the leg.”

“The woman fire the shotgun?” Ryan said, eyebrows drawing together.

“N-No.” Henry shook his head and wiped his hands on his trousers. “No, th-this guy leaned out of the back window of the car.”

“They get you too?” Ryan said, nodding to the blood that had turned sticky down the side of Henry’s face.

“Think I’m alright,” said Henry, teeth clacking together. “I caught some of the spray on my scalp, I think, but that’s all. But Tommy, he’s not so good. He– He screamed. I got him in the car. Sandy ran away, I don’t know why. And Tommy– He just got quieter and quieter– I just didn’t know what to do!”

Ryan’s stomach clenched until he thought he would be sick. He looked at Lindsay, willing with all of his might for Lindsay to work a miracle like he’d done so many times, stitching bullet wounds and scraping shrapnel while the world imploded around them.

“How is he Linds?” Ryan said in a voice that was rising with fear, though he tried to keep himself calm. “He’s going to be alright, yes?”

Lindsay licked his lips then rolled them together. Shook his head and let his chin drop against his chest. When he looked up again at Ryan and then at Alex his eyes were glittering with tears. He said in a cracking voice, “No. He’s lost too much blood. His artery– They hit the artery in his leg.”

“Linds.” Ryan grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Linds you have to do something! You– They trained you, you know what to do for bullet wounds!”

“Ryan,” Lindsay said softly.

“No.” Ryan grabbed him by the front of the shirt. “So help me God, I’ll bust your other leg if you don’t do something!”

Hands came onto his arms. Henry and Joey pulling him away. Ryan struggled against them, rage and terror choking the air from his lungs.

“Ryan,” Lindsay said louder, more firmly, “he’s going now. Stop wasting your time–”

“I’m not wasting my time!” But nonetheless, he stopped fighting Henry and Joey. They let his arms go cautiously and he went to Tommy and took his hand, which Ryan noticed for the first time was blue. His lips, too, were blue. He was gasping for breath, each one coming further and further apart.

Ryan’s own breath was caught in his chest, each coming out in a shuddering, tangled mess. Something thick and sharp was stuck in his throat, making it almost impossible to swallow. Everything in the room dimmed around him–the light, the sound, even the sensation of holding Tommy’s hand that was frighteningly cold .

“Are you sure, Pony?” Alex asked in a voice that trembled with his effort to control himself.

Ryan raised his eyes slowly to look at Alex on the other side of the table. Alex didn’t touch Tommy, but he leaned over him, keeping his eyes fixed on his older brother’s face.

“I’m sure,” Lindsay said, softly. A tremor in his voice, too, though it was anguish instead of anger. “He’s dying.”

The very air around them seemed to hold its breath.

And then it happened–one instant Tommy was there, and the next, he was gone. Ryan felt it, though he would be hard-pressed to explain what it was he felt. He knew only that his brother was gone.

Lindsay leaned forward and checked his pulse again, lowered his face over Tommy’s mouth.

“He’s dead.”

The change in Tommy crushed the air from Ryan’s lungs. It beat him across his throat like a heavy iron chain and wound his body as tightly as a coil. A deep, ugly animal sound came from him, a sound he didn’t even know human beings were capable of making.

Breathing came harder and faster, so fast he thought it might kill him. More horrible sounds were ripped from his throat. He became deaf and blind to everything around him. Though he loathed to let go of Tommy, he had to move. The anguish was driving through him like a demon he had to exorcize. If he didn’t, it would kill him .

He released Tommy’s hand and turned away, gripping his hair in his hands until it felt like it would come out of his scalp.

A loud crash behind startled him only slightly out of the suffocated fog that was trying to hold the crushing weight of reality at bay.

Alex was tearing things off of the shelves in the living room, anything he could get his hands on. Hurling books against the walls, smashing knick knacks they’d collected here and there. He flipped the coffee table over and hurled Tommy’s baseball so hard into the wall that it left a hole. They all stood in stunned, hypnotic fascination while they watched him. Never in the years he'd known him had Alex ever shown such a display of feeling.

He smashed the mirror hanging over the fireplace with his fist and stifled a yell as blood began to flow down his hand, into the white cuffs of his pristine shirt.

“Alex,” Lindsay said, moving toward him.

“Don’t,” Alex said, sharply. “Lindsay, don’t.”

Ryan turned and looked at Tommy and felt another wave of anguish seize him. He gripped the edge of the table. “Fuck. Fuck.”

He should have gone with him. That feeling in his stomach all day, that there was something wrong, was a warning. His intuition telling him to do something about it. If he had just been there, he could have stopped this. It might have been him, but at least Tommy would have lived .

This fact yawned inside of him, an abyss swallowing up everything except his agony.

His whole body trembling, he slowly raised his eyes until he met Alex’s, sparkling with unshed tears. A fact that would have astonished Ryan if he could have felt anything other than anguish.

“He’s dead,” Alex said, voice trembling with shock. Then more quietly, staring at Tommy’s body, “He’s dead.”

They all stood there in a silence that was so deafening that Ryan thought his eardrums might collapse. Then, like a statue coming to life, Alex took slow, deliberate steps across the wreckage of Ryan’s living room, the bottom of his leather Oxfords crushing glass and paper under foot.

When he reached the table where his dead brother lay, his face twisted a little, then settled again. Eyes still glittering, jaw working while he looked up and down the body of his older brother, whose eyes were still half open. With a shaking hand, he gently pulled down each eyelid, closing Tommy’s hazel eyes for the last time. A surge went through Ryan, a great and terrifying urge to smash something. Instead he let it ripple through him and balled his hands until they ached.

Alex reached into his pocket and then opened his hand, two coins in his palm. He picked them up, one at a time, and placed them on Tommy’s blue eyelids with shaking fingers.

“For the ferryman,” he whispered .

Alex raised his eyes until he and Ryan were staring at each other, some indefinable, dreadful current running between them.

Tommy, their only family, was dead.