Smoke and Mirrors Read Free

he have anyone?” I was casually aware that he’d lost his parents, but a complete lack of family was… strange.
    Coincidentally so.
    C opened his mouth, his eyes never leaving Brad. Words failed him for a moment. Then he said, “The Firm takes care of our own.”
    “No. You go.” I couldn’t be absolutely certain what Brad would’ve wanted, but I didn’t imagine he thought of his boss as a parental figure. I certainly wouldn’t, and I’d lost my parents as well.
    In the end, I won and C left, but not before he said, “I was the one who brought the news about his father’s death to his mother. The shock of it–she couldn’t take it–killed herself. I’ve never forgiven myself for doing that to him.” He stared at the bed for a long moment. “I’ll come by in a few hours. Call me if he needs anything.”
    •   •   •
    But I wouldn’t call, because there was nothing anyone could do for Brad.
How do you bring back the dead?
I had already learned you couldn’t. So, I sat next to him, stiff and quietly desperate. I had never figured out how to comfort anyone. Even in my profession, notorious for its callousness, I had the bedside manner of a stainless steel cart.
    And as worse luck would have it, I fell asleep.
    “Miss?” The morning nurse – a cherubic-faced, northerner who couldn’t have been more than a minute out of primary school – had lightly touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I can’t change Mr. Milton’s bandages with you next to him.”
    I jumped up, smoothing my rumpled clothing, mortified to the core. “Sorry.”
    She smiled down at Brad, blessedly out-cold, impervious to our chatter. “You’ll have been tired after what you’ve been through. I saw the news, an awful thing to have happened and on their wedding day no less.”
    I swallowed hard. “What did the report say?”
    She pulled back the bleached sheets and changed his blood-soaked dressings with expertise that defied her youthfulness and uncultured accent. “It said the Bentley had a rare malfunction which caused it to explode. An antique fixed up the wrong way.”
    Her words droned into obscurity.
Did the news have it right? Was it just a horrible accident and coincidence to boot?
I hadn’t considered that, knowing what I knew about Nigel’s profession. Knowing about Samantha’s peculiar connections and her mafia father’s recent murder. But now I wasn’t sure. Something had seemed wrong in that second before I called out to Brad. For the life of me though, I couldn’t imagine what it was that triggered my terror.
    I made sure Brad was still asleep. “Did they say anything about the victims?”
    She adjusted the oxygen line beneath his strong nose and squinted sadly. “Nothing left to bury.” Done, she patted his hand. “Terrible for him, isn’t it?”
    An unfamiliar lump formed in my throat, and I tamped down an urge to panic. I couldn’t leave him now, but every fiber in my being wished to hell I had listened to C and run when I’d had the chance.

Chapter Three
    B rad sat at the edge of the chair opposite C. Though his head pounded and body burned with shrapnel wounds, it was nothing to the savage ache within him. “You’re saying there was no evidence of tampering, nothing that would lead our experts to believe it was sabotage?” It seemed unreal, because right now he needed to destroy the bastards responsible.
    “It was clean.” C shook his head, bafflement evident in his drawn features. “Just a rare mechanical failure brought on by metal fatigue and the wrong type of gas for an antique.”
    Brad rubbed his unshaven face, his elbow braced on the leather arm. He could see remnants of the unusually deep snow outside HQ. It was dirty, like Nigel and Sammy’s deaths. “Nothing blows up like that accidentally. You know what he was working on. What was left unfinished when he resigned.” He looked back at C. “What about Samantha’s father, Vasiliv? Has his killer been