Flawless. Heather Graham

allowed herself to run over, grab Gary by the lapels and throw him out on the street. But until the coffee refill, she hadn’t gone near the table. Mary Kathleen, a recent recruit from the old country and the love of Kieran’s brother Declan’s life, had been working the floor. She’d waited on the table, but she’d left at three. Which meant Kieran had no choice except to take over.

      The other two at Jimmy’s table were men Kieran had seen in the pub before but didn’t really know. One was dark and one was pale. They were friendly, polite and dressed in handsome business suits, like many of the pub’s clientele, who walked down from the Wall Street banks and firms where they worked.

      They all looked richer than Gary Benton, that was for sure. Maybe he was trying to learn how to join their ranks.

      Making a point of not looking toward the table, Kieran finished the last of her cleaning and the setup for happy hour while listening to Julie. Now that part wasn’t easy, and not only because Julie and Gary were in the middle of the sad dissolution of their marriage.

      Gary had wanted the divorce. Kieran knew things sometimes just fell apart. It was always difficult and distressing, but in this case, Gary’s treatment of Julie had seemed deliberately cruel.

      Julie needed her friends, and Kieran felt she had to be there for her.

      Don’t look over at Gary. Just listen to Julie, she told herself. Yes, listen to Julie and be a good friend.

      And clean up the pub without pouring something over Gary’s head. She might not care if Gary ever came back, but she didn’t want to drive Jimmy and the others away. Finnegan’s wasn’t her full-time job, but it was her family’s business and important to them all, herself and her three brothers.

      Finnegan’s was a true Irish-American pub. Her grandfather had bought it from a cousin when he’d come to the United States after the Second World War. It had actually been owned and operated by a Finnegan since shortly after the Civil War. Not only did they have a wonderful bar selection, with excellent beers on tap and high-end call brands, they also offered good pub-style food. People came to eat and drink, but they also came to socialize, to meet up with friends. Sometimes, during off-hours like this, that meant waiting around until the current Finnegan in charge of the place—her oldest brother, Declan, these days—or another family member or server came by.

      Although it wasn’t her real job anymore, she was always happy to help out at the pub. She had a career as a criminal psychologist now. But she hadn’t been working with Doctors Fuller and Miro long enough to conduct an extended phone therapy session with Julie, even if she considered this crisis in her friend’s life as something that could lead to a serious mental health issue. Luckily, she had the day off—Dr. Miro was at a conference, and Dr. Fuller had taken a vacation day and ordered the staff—Kieran and the handsome young receptionist and assistant, Jake Johnston—to do the same thing.

      “I was calm, Kieran, I swear,” Julie said. “You need to understand that. Calm—and clever.”

      That was good, Kieran thought. Calm. Since Gary had first started his hell-bent attempt to ruin their marriage, Julie had veered from wild rages to copious tears. Kieran couldn’t blame her. Gary had gone out of his way to be hurtful. He’d brought his new girlfriend to their home, made love with her in his and Julie’s bed, and somehow the girlfriend had “accidentally” left her panties there. He’d emptied their joint bank accounts and, possibly cruelest of all, told Julie she no longer attracted him sexually. More—he claimed he found her repulsive.

      “What did you do?” Kieran pressed warily.

      “Well—” Julie giggled again “—you’ll be glad to hear I didn’t somehow get hold of a gun and shoot him.”

      “I am glad to hear that. So what did you do?”

      “What he did was worse. I went to stay with my parents and left the house to him,” Julie continued. “He says he can’t stand living with me, but apparently I’m not supposed to leave, either. He called to tell me I’d better get back to feed my damned dogs. He kept them in their crates, hadn’t let them out at all! They were starving, Kieran, and covered in their own waste.”

      Kieran glanced over at the table where Gary was seated. He’d risen with the others now; they were on their way out, which was a relief. She wouldn’t feel tempted to inflict bodily harm.

      She watched him leave. He was a good-looking man, but Kieran had never been particularly fond of him. There was something...slimy about him, in her opinion. His quick, oh-so-charming smile usually meant he was planning something devious. He sold precious stones and jewelry at a high-end store in the Diamond District, and he’d often told Julie he had to take some woman out for dinner or drinks because a big sale was in the offing.

      Slime.

      She and her brothers had tolerated him for one reason and one reason only. Because they loved Julie, their friend since childhood.

      But he’d left the dogs locked in their crates?

      “That’s horrible. You should call the police on him. Either that or move out. I’ve told you to come and stay with—”

      “The dogs and I won’t fit in your apartment,” Julie said.

      That was probably true; Kieran’s apartment on St. Marks Place was the size of a postage stamp. But she didn’t care if she, Julie and the two dogs were all crammed in there. Animal abuse was never acceptable.

      “We’d make it work,” Kieran told her. “And if he’s actually being that horrible, you need to get out of there. I really think you should call the police. There are laws against that kind of thing.”

      “Oh, I don’t want the police involved.”

      Kieran winced at that. She wasn’t fond of police intervention herself, even though her new position would soon have her working with them often enough. While her oldest brother, Declan, had become a completely respectable citizen, her other brothers—her twin, Kevin, and their baby brother, Daniel, who was a whole year younger—still had “friends” involved with various street gangs. They were trying to go straight, but it was easy to fall back into their old ways. She’d had some bad times herself during her teenage years. Like Declan, however, she’d known that things could spiral downward, so she’d gone to college, majoring in criminology and specializing in criminal psychology. In a sense she was paying for her past—and making her past pay.

      They’d never done anything too terrible. Declan had made some “deliveries” for the McNamara clan, an Irish family that had challenged the Garcia gang. But after their father’s death, he’d decided he was going to be the head of a family that would live and thrive and succeed in NYC. Kevin had hung out with the O’Malley family, really just a loose connection of thugs. High-school stuff. Danny had actually joined the Wolves, another loose-knit group proudly based on the TV show Dexter, but without the murders. They stole from those who stole from others, sweeping up their cell phones and hacking their computers in turn. He’d come the closest to being in real trouble when a rival group had caught him and some hackers at the school library and started a massive brawl.

      Kieran remembered a time when life had seemed good and normal, even though they’d lost their mother when they were young. Then their father had died almost ten years ago. Declan had been in college at the time, and he’d felt the weight of responsibility for his siblings and to family tradition. He’d gone straighter than an arrow. Kieran, who’d only gotten occasionally involved with computer hacking and a few minor thefts, quickly followed suit, graduating from high school with stellar grades. Declan had made clear to his younger brothers that he had zero tolerance for bad behavior, so they’d realized they had no one to bail them out of serious trouble and struggled to keep their noses clean. They’d been doing that, as far as she knew. The problem with Kevin and Danny was that they both believed in justice—their version of it—even when the law didn’t.

      “Kieran, are you there?”

      “Yes, yes, and I want to hear the end of the story.”

      Julie