Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

40. Alex

Chapter forty

Alex

When Alex heard footsteps, his hand tightened on Ryan’s and anger prickled through him. Anger at being interrupted during a moment he had waited his whole life to have. Anger at what they’d done to Ryan. Anger that they were coming back to do more.

He looked down and found Ryan’s good eye open and looking up at him. It was difficult to read his expression with how swollen his face was, but Alex could feel his fear in the way his body tensed. He slipped his hand under Ryan’s head and helped him slowly sit up.

Then he stood and slipped his hand into the front of his trousers where he had a small knife secreted in a sheath against the right side of his abdomen. It wasn’t a butcher’s knife, but it could cause the right kind of puncture in the right sort of place.

The footsteps drew nearer and his ears sharpened. They were quick, light, and off kilter. A limp. Alex’s heart jumped for a moment at the thought of Lindsay being here. But that was nonsense. There was no tapping of a cane. And these footsteps were lighter than his, not the steady, measured rhythm that Alex had come to know so well.

He could hear the keys clanking, though, and his hand tightened around the short handle of his blade. He steeled himself, waiting–

“Saoirse?” Ryan said behind him in a voice distorted by his injuries.

“What the fuck did they do to you?” Plain as day, Saoirse stood there on the other side of the cell, holding the key ring in one hand and gripping one of the bars tightly with the other.

Beautiful like her brothers, with a long shock of hair that put theirs to shame, she had a hardness to her that Lindsay lacked. A quality Alex had always respected, but she was no more interested in allowing him to lay a finger on her than she was walking across broken glass.

She treated him with a hostile tolerance that he’d come to find endearing on a good day and annoying on a bad one. Today, though, he had never been more glad to see anyone.

“Open the door,” Alex said, moving quickly forward to grasp the bars. “How did you get the keys?” As her fingers moved quickly between the keys, trying one after the other to get the door open, Alex did not miss the smear of blood on her knuckles.

“I found them,” Saoirse said with a finality that Alex understood .

He couldn’t help but smile as he turned and went quickly back to Ryan. Saoirse stood outside of the cell, holding the door open and craning her neck to look down the hallway, watching for any interlopers.

“Come on,” Alex breathed into Ryan’s ear. He slipped Ryan’s left arm over his shoulder so that Ryan could cradle his damaged hand against his belly. Though Ryan was larger than him, Alex had little trouble wrapping his arm around Ryan’s waist and helping him to his feet.

“My god,” Saoirse breathed as she watched her cousin walk slowly out of the cell. She moved forward and raised her hand as if to touch his face. Even in the dim gaslight of the corridor, Alex could see tears glinting in her eyes. In spite of them, her face was hard and frigid with her fury.

“Who did this?” she asked, looking at Alex.

“Some foppish Lieutenant,” Alex said. “We need to leave.”

“Roberts?” Saoirse said, speeding up to walk a little ahead of them.

Ryan spat in reply.

“That’s the one,” Alex agreed.

Saoirse looked over her shoulder at them. “He’s been taken care of.”

“By who?” Alex said, readjusting his grip on Ryan’s wrist. He glanced down at the wadded up white linen jacket that was marred with dark russet and wrapped around Ryan’s hand and felt a wave of dark satisfaction at the news that Saoirse was giving him .

“Walter Stanley,” she said, walking as briskly as her limp would allow. Alex sped up a little, as fast as Ryan could manage, to keep up with her.

“Wait,” she said when they came to a junction in the corridor. She looked in either direction and then tilted her head to the left.

“It’s late,” she said in a low voice over her shoulder. “We should be able to get out of here without anyone seeing us.”

“You saw Walter Stanley?” Ryan said. He pulled his arm from around Alex’s shoulders and swayed a little, but he managed to keep himself upright and keep walking on his own.

Searing disappointment stabbed through Alex, but he relinquished his treasure and settled instead for hovering near Ryan’s elbow as they walked in case he grew unsteady and needed to be caught.

“No,” Saoirse said shortly. “Roberts told me that Walter Stanley stabbed him and took Evelyn with him.”

“And what did you do with Roberts?” Alex asked, knowingly.

“I left him there,” she said with a hard edge to her voice.

“Good,” Alex said.

Saoirse let that pass without comment, but it seemed to Alex that something like camaraderie had just passed between them for the first time, well, ever.

They found a side door and slipped out into the night. Saoirse closed it carefully behind them, letting them out into an alleyway. Voices came around the building close by, men talking and laughing. Probably some idiots in uniform, acting like clowns while they waited around to ruin someone else’s life. “This way,” she said, turning and walking toward the back of the building. When they reached a dark corner overgrown with crepe myrtles, she turned back to them and said, “Wait here. I’ll pull the car along this side street here.”

“Hurry,” Alex said. Ryan swayed a little beside him and he slipped his arm around Ryan’s waist again. Ryan didn’t bother to fight him. Alex didn’t bother to pretend like he wasn’t inhaling Ryan’s scent, blood, sweat, and all. It was intoxicating. Enough to make his mouth water, even with the acute and present danger. Ryan’s hard, warm body under his hands was an unparalleled pleasure and it took everything he had not to let his hands wander.

Ryan leaned into him and this alone provoked gratification so intense that Alex had to suppress a shiver. His cock was half hard just from standing this close to him, from feeling the rippling muscles of his torso under his hand.

Alex could have stood there all night, but headlights crept slowly forward and the ticking sound of the engine reached his ears. For a moment he thought of Tommy. Tommy and his cars.

Then he tugged Ryan forward.

“Come on.”

“I can walk,” Ryan said, pulling his arm away. Stubborn like his cousin. A family trait, to be sure .

Ryan’s stubbornness didn’t stop him from stepping up to open the back door of the car for him.

“Move over,” Alex said.

“I’m–” Ryan started to protest.

“Move over,” Alex said again.

“Goddammit, Ryan, move over,” Saoirse said from the front seat.

Ryan relented and moved over with a sullen grumble.

Alex closed the door. “Go,” he said, looking through the back window to make sure nobody had noticed them.

Saoirse put the car in gear and pulled away as fast as the engine would let her. Alex breathed a sigh of relief and a knot untangled inside of him that he didn’t even know had been forming. He leaned back into the seat, trying not to think of all of the shit that was going to come down on their heads.

“Where does Walter Stanley live?” Alex said, leaning forward to talk to Saoirse.

“Down by the river,” Saoirse said. “But we’re going to the hospital first.”

Ryan sat forward with a vehemence that almost startled Alex. “No we’re not,” he said. “We’re going to get Evie.”

“You’re useless,” Saoirse shot back.

“And missing fingers,” Alex added tartly.

“Jesus,” Saoirse said.

“The fingers are gone,” Ryan said, impatiently. “I’m not in any danger of dying.”

“That you know of,” Saoirse snapped .

“I’m not in any danger of dying,” Ryan repeated. “I’m going to be fine. Evie is not going to be fine.”

“She’s probably going to be better off than you right now,” Saoirse said, reluctantly. “The man has been burning the city down looking for her. Do you really think he’s going to hurt her right this minute?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “And even if he doesn’t, it’s not worth the risk. Look at what he did to you. Look at what he did to Roberts. Look at what he did to the Crystal. He’s a fucking madman and I’m not going to let the woman I lo–”

Ryan broke off and sat back in the seat.

“The woman you…?” Alex said conversationally.

“Shut up, Alex,” Ryan said. “Saoirse, go to Walter Stanley’s house.”

“I agree that we need to get her away from him, but I think it can wait–” Saoirse said.

“It can’t.” Ryan’s voice was hard.

Saoirse sighed vehemently. “Okay,” she said. “But you’re staying in the car.”

“I am not–” Ryan started to say, but Saoirse interrupted him.

“Christ, what is with the men in this family?” she said, yanking the car around a corner so hard that it nearly went up onto two wheels. “You’re all stubborn fucking goats.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Alex said.

“Shut up, Alex,” the cousins said at the same time and Alex bit back a chuckle of amusement.

“You stay in the car,” Saoirse said. “Alex and I will go in. ”

“We’re going to get ourselves killed,” Alex said. “We should find a phone and call Malcolm.”

“We don’t have time,” Ryan said vehemently. “Saoirse, you can’t go in there, your ankle is–”

“I am as capable of shooting a revolver as you are, dear cousin,” she said, coolly. “And I’m far better at sneaking, twisted ankle or not.”

“Well, seeing as how you escaped through a window, maybe a window is our ticket back in,” Alex said, leaning his forearms on the back of the seat.

“Except that we don’t have a ladder on hand,” Saoirse pointed out, sourly.

“Not that window.” He scoffed. “But it’s the middle of summer. There’s got to be a window open or unlocked on the ground floor.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“And that man is probably arrogant enough to think that no one would dare break into his house,” Alex went on. “Especially while the lights are burning.”

“Okay,” Saoirse said after a pause. “So we enter through a window and, what, creep through the house until we get ourselves killed?”

“Let’s just case the place and see what we see,” Alex said, impatiently.

The fresh air coming off of the river hit him through the open window as she turned onto Riverside, but it did little to calm the pace of his heart. Alex had done his share of burglaries but he had never done anything so brazen.

“If I go into that house tonight, I’m not leaving until Walter Stanley is dead,” Saoirse said with a deadly calm.

“No,” Alex said. “He doesn’t deserve a quick death. And don’t get yourself killed, or your brother is going to have my head.”

“There are two of us,” Saoirse said suddenly. “And we should use that to our advantage.”

“Ambush,” Ryan said in a hoarse voice. Alex put his hand on Ryan’s knee. Ryan’s leg tensed a little under his touch, and then relaxed. Alex nearly swooned.

“He’s probably not alone,” Saoirse said, turning her head this way and that as she prepared to make another turn. “He always has his lackeys around. See if we can draw them out. One of us serves as a distraction, then the other can–” She made her hand into a pistol and made a popping noise with her mouth.

“You know,” Alex said, leaning forward onto his folded arms, “I’ve known you for years, Saoirse, and I never knew you were this practical.”

“You weren’t paying attention,” she said, primly.