“We killed Turant’s men.”
“To rescue me.”
“And you think he understands that distinction?” Win asked. “I made a deal with Turant when we were in Vegas. Safe passage in exchange for information. Once I saw they had your father—”
“You were on that call too?”
Win nodded. “They would have killed him. They would have killed your mother. They would have gone after us too. In simple terms, Bo Storm isn’t worth that. So yes, I gave him up.”
“That’s why they stopped hurting my father,” Myron said.
“Yes.”
“And, what, they stayed with him and checked out the Shanty to make sure you were telling the truth.”
“Yes.” Win rubbed his face with his hand, a gesture Myron had never seen him make before. “I messed up,” he said. Also words Myron didn’t think he’d ever heard Win utter. “I should have realized that they might track my plane. I miscalculated Turant’s desperation until I saw the gun on your father.”
“And giving up Bo was your only option?”
Win put his hands on Myron’s shoulders. “We are good, Myron — but no one is that good. I had no choice. It’s over now.”
“And what about Bo Storm?”
“A casualty of war.”
“I don’t know if I’m good with that.”
“Doesn’t matter if you are or not. You understand the stakes. If it makes you feel any better, killing Bo won’t help Turant. He needs Bo to tell the truth without appearing coerced.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I didn’t think it would.”
“You’re okay with all this?”
“This isn’t about my personal comfort. I made the choice. I don’t think it was a difficult one.”
“Suppose Bo was telling the truth. Suppose Bo did see Joey the Toe murder Jordan Kravat that night.”
Win smiled. “You do love your moral dilemmas.”
“I want to know if it bothers you at all. I want to know if you still sleep well at night.”
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Win said. Then he added: “And I never sleep well at night.”
Myron shook his head. “You’re something.”
“I don’t care about Bo Storm. I care about your parents. We all feel that way. Strangers don’t matter to us except in a theoretical way. We just pay the notion lip service.”
“You made the decision, so I didn’t have to.”
“This was an easy call for me. I would sacrifice a hundred Bo Storms to save your parents. And while you don’t want to admit it, so would you.”
It was an uncomfortable truth. “Dangerous way to think,” Myron said.
“Then you probably don’t want to know how many lives I would sacrifice to save you,” Win said. “Or maybe you would.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A few minutes later, Jeremy called. “Where are you?”
“I’m at my office,” Myron said. “How about you?”
“At Mom’s apartment,” his son said. “Can you come over?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Grace is here.”
Myron tried to conjure up the mental picture: Greg’s current soulmate at the apartment of Greg’s ex-wife Emily. “Grace is at your mom’s place?”
“She just arrived. She’s pretty upset. She says it’s urgent she talk to you.”
No doubt this was about her son Bo. “I’m on my way.”
He called his father’s phone on the way. No answer. He was tempted to call his mom, but Dad had made it clear that was not what he wanted. He didn’t like the idea of keeping the truth from her. When he was growing up, Mom had always seemed the stronger of the two, a force of nature, the one who argued and stood up for you and gave anyone in her way an earful. But Myron also got what his father was saying. There was a fragility there now, one both obvious from her Parkinson’s and one that seemed vaguer to him, something to do with aging and fear and perhaps seeing her own mortality. Either way, Myron was not about to go against his father’s wishes.
When he arrived at the apartment, Emily opened the door. Myron waited for her customary quip, but she looked at him with concern etched on her face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, why?”
She put her hand on his arm. “Tell me what happened.”
Seemed it wasn’t just his mother who could read him like a book. “No time now. It’s all okay.” He spotted Jeremy standing behind her, so he politely pushed past her. His son offered him a handshake. Myron took it and resisted the urge to pull him in close, settling for an awkward slap on the shoulder.
Grace Konners had her smartphone pressed against her ear. She turned away from them and kept her voice low. Myron looked a question at Jeremy.
“She’s staying at a hotel down the street under a pseudonym,” Jeremy said.
“And you’ve already met her?”
“Yes. I told you. They visited me when I was in Kuwait.”
Myron looked over at Emily. He remembered how concerned Emily had been, how she didn’t want to get Jeremy’s hopes up before they knew for certain Greg was alive. But he’d known. Jeremy had known for years. Emily met Myron’s eyes and gave a half shrug.
Grace hung up the phone, stood, and moved toward Myron. “Let’s you and me take a walk.”
“Don’t bother,” Emily said, her hand already on the doorknob. “I’ll take the walk. You guys stay.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She headed out and closed the door behind her.
“You lying son of a bitch,” Grace said. “You sold out my son.”
“That’s not what happened, but we’ll have time for assigning blame later. Right now, we need to contact Joe Turant’s people.”
“That was Bo on the phone,” she said.
That took Myron by surprise. “Is he okay?”
“They haven’t hurt him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Where is he?”
“They’re taking him back to Vegas.”
“But they let him contact you?”
Grace nodded. “They didn’t want me calling the police.”
That made sense, Myron thought.
“And they wanted to assure me that they had no intention of harming Bo.”
“How did he sound?”
“How do you think he sounded?”
“What can I do to help?” Myron asked.
Grace half chuckled at that. She looked over at Jeremy. “Now I know where you get it from.”
“Get what?” Jeremy asked.
“Your hero complex. It’s genetic. Your father — and by that, I mean — this is confusing as hell but I mean Greg — he only cares about us. That’s how most people are. But a few, like you two, insist on helping even if it hurts others. On the surface, you seem the better, don’t you? Sacrificing yourself for others and all that. But you’re not. You need to be the hero.” She turned to Myron. “You found out Greg was alive?”
“That’s what the FBI told me.”
“So you guessed that Greg faked his own death, right?”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, you realized that Greg had made the conscious decision to let you and the rest of the world think he was dead. And did you then honor his choice? Did you think, ‘Oh, Greg must have his reasons, I shouldn’t interfere’? No. Instead you turned his world upside down trying to rescue him. And now he’s in prison, and a bunch of sadistic mobsters have my son — all because you had to ‘help,’ consequences be damned.”
Myron had had enough.
“Hey, Grace?” he said.
“What?”
“Someone is murdering people out there. You and Greg and Bo are all tangled up in this. So if you’re trying to lay some guilt trip on me—”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Then why don’t we instead focus on getting Bo back safe?”
“Did you tell Turant’s men where Bo was?”