Chapter 6
6
PATRICK
F iona Ingram is a girl who is used to getting her way.
She wants to pile all of Madden’s clothes in his bathtub, douse them with cooking oil, and set them alight with a match.
I tell her no.
She wants to call the local cops, report a man who looks like Madden lurking by an elementary school, say he’s jerking off near the kids.
I tell her no.
She wants to take her red Mini Cooper and drive all the way to Boston, with me riding shotgun in that tin can.
I tell her no feckin’ way.
But I agree to call Rory O’Hare and have him park the Mini out at his place. And she agrees to pack. She’s quick and efficient, filling just a pair of suitcases and a backpack. She eats both slices of toast I make for her. She sees the logic in wearing my clothes for the long drive north, not forcing her bruised body into her usual dominatrix gear. Once we’re back in my car, she only tries to change the radio once, before I tell her we’re listening to classic jazz.
She harrumphs, which makes me crank the music. That turns out to be a good thing, because Fiona Ingram isn’t much of a talker.
What do I know? Maybe she usually has a lot to say. Just not when her father’s dropped dead in the middle of the night. Or when her eejit of a boyfriend beat her bloody. Or when she’s feeling kidnapped by a mob enforcer she’d never spoken to twenty-four hours ago.
I keep an eye on her while I drive, using the passenger-side mirror so she doesn’t feel like an animal in a zoo. The ice and the arnica worked wonders. Her eyes are still puffy, like she’s coming off a twenty-four-hour crying jag, and her lip is scabbed over where it split on Madden’s fist. She’s got a constellation of black and purple and deep dark green around both bloodshot eyes. But she looks a hell of a lot better than I thought possible when I found her on the floor last night.
Half an hour outside of Boston, we pass bright blue signs for a rest area. “Pull over here,” Fiona says, like I’m a feckin’ cab driver.
But she shouldn’t have to beg for a chance to piss. And I wouldn’t mind stretching my own legs before we get to Southie. So I negotiate the lane changes and guide us through a crowded parking lot. The car falls silent, my ears still ringing with Miles’ trumpet asking So What?
Fiona climbs out and swings her backpack over both shoulders. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
I nod and open my own door. My spine pops as I unfold from the driver’s seat. My knees register a protest when I straighten my legs. My arse has fallen asleep, and I get a stitch in my side when I stretch.
There was a time when an uninterrupted five-hour drive was just a warm-up. I could make a midnight run to North Carolina, fill a truck with cigarettes, and get home before noon. I’d sleep a few hours in the truck, then spend a night drinking and whoring at Mimi’s place, getting back to my apartment just in time to watch the sunrise.
Getting old’s a bitch.
There’s a reason Warlords are supposed to sit in offices and manage naive young enforcers who’ll do just about anything to become made men.
A minivan pulls into the space next to mine. Before the harried guy behind the wheel can cut the engine, both side doors glide open. Half a dozen ankle-biters spill out, dressed in identical green-and-white uniforms. Three boys start kicking around a football— soccer , I know they’d call it. The other three pound toward a water fountain like zebras at a watering hole. They’re shouting loud enough to wake the dead, their voices sharp and clear like wrens.
I tell myself I’m grateful I don’t have to wrangle the pack. But I don’t believe a word of it.
Athawn would be just a few years younger than the man driving the team. If Athawn had survived being cut out of my dying wife. If I’d had only one body to bury, not two. Three, if I count my own mam, all in the space of one week.
Boston’s plucking at my brainstem like a kid stripping wings off a butterfly. For all I know, if my son had lived, he might refuse to coach kids sport. He might be setting his roots as a doctor or a lawyer, too busy to launch a family. He might be?—
Christ.
He’s gone, and his mother, and my mother too, and there’s no use dreaming otherwise. No use thinking things would be different if I’d kept away from the Crew in the first place, if Da’d never done the things he did, if I’d grabbed Jenn’s keys before she could drive off in a fit of rage and disappointment.
Fuck Boston.
Fuck the Crew.
And fuck my da for turning everything to shite .
A muscle starts to twitch deep inside my jaw. That’s the first sign my meds are wearing off. But If I dose now, I’ll never sleep tonight—even after sitting up all last night to watch Fiona.
Instead, I focus on my breathing. In on a four-count. Hold for a?—
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I swear under my breath as Fiona emerges from the red brick building.
I’m not the only one who notices her. The six little footballers stop dead in their tracks, every last one covering his crotch like he’s defending a free kick. An elderly couple clutch each other, and I wonder how long it will take 911 to get here if they both stroke out. Three dude-bros wearing backward baseball caps and saggy jeans literally start to drool.
Fiona has poured herself into a sleeveless scarlet catsuit. The vinyl one-piece has a deep V at the front that isn’t working very hard at covering her generous tits. The thing must zip up the back, because there isn’t a hint of a seam from her sternum to her crotch. The shiny vinyl grips all the way to her ankles, showing off her five-inch-high black stilettos. Her arms are cased in tight black gloves.
None of that, though, is the reason I’m staring like a sex-starved teen-age boy. Over forty-six years, I’ve seen more than my share of tits and hips, of flat bellies and smoothed-over cunts.
But I’ve never seen what Fiona has managed with her face. Her face and her neck and the generous spread of flesh between those magnificent tits…
I sponged her clean last night. I rubbed arnica into her skin. I held ice packs against her body, beside her nose, under her eyes. She’s battered and she’s bruised and no single night of care could ever heal what Madden Kelly did to her.
But apparently makeup can.
“What the actual fuck?” I ask as she strikes a pose in front of me.
The young father in the minivan hollers for his charges. The octogenarians stagger back to their car. All three horn-dog bros gape at me like I’m a feckin’ god.
“How the hell…”
Fiona dips her chin, using the motion to look at me through eyelashes coated in a gallon of black goop. “I keep a few tricks up my sleeves.” Her rippling shrug is designed to deprive every straight man in a hundred-mile radius of all blood-flow north of his belt.
“Get in the car.”
Her lips are the exact same shade as the catsuit, and somehow twice as shiny. My cock knocks against my zipper as she pouts. “I didn’t have change for a soda. Will you buy one for me?”
“Get. In. The. Car.”
“I’ll pay you back.” Her sultry tone leaves no doubt about how she’ll make good on her debt.
“Fiona…” I glance around like I’m transporting moonshine over state lines. One of the drooling bros has his phone out, catching video. The thought of her headlining his spank bank tightens my fingers into fists. “Get in the car,” I choke out a third time. “And I’ll get you a soda.”
She smiles like I’ve just offered her the sun, the moon, and the stars. “Mountain Dew,” she says. “Diet.”
I wait until she closes the Land Rover’s door before I stalk to the vending machine. I make a point of bumping into the delinquent with the phone. We both hear the screen shatter when he drops it, but he’s not suicidal enough to say a word.
Mountain Dew. Diet. I flash a credit card at the machine and a bottle drops with a sound like a soul arriving in hell. Storming back to the car, I get in on the driver’s side. I shove the drink at her, hard, like I’m not afraid of any feckin’ vinyl.
She makes a sound like a kitten sighing. “No straw?” she asks.
“It’s a goddamn vending machine,” I growl. “Of course there’s no straw. ”
She sniffs and puts the drink in a cup holder. I jam the Land Rover into reverse and flee the parking lot like I’m driving the getaway car on a million-dollar bank heist.
We’re ten miles from Boston before my breath stops feeling like barbed wire in my throat. By the time I pull off the interstate, I’m angry with myself for playing her game. When we cross into Southie, into Old Colony Crew territory, I force myself to sound bored.
“What’s your plan here? Beyond painting your face and pouring yourself into that thing?”
She fiddles with the cap on the unopened bottle of soda. “We’ll go straight to the dún .”
The dún . The fortress. The house her father claimed in the heart of Southie, decades ago. I know it better than I’m willing to admit. I’ve seen a lot of blood flow there.
“And what?” I ask. “You’ll just waltz up to the door and knock?”
She gives me a look like I’m a poor eejit child. “I won’t knock . I’ll walk right in.”
“Just like that.”
“I’m Queen now. The dún belongs to me.” She lets me go another three blocks before she says, “Take a right at the next street.”
“I know how to get there.”
Surprise flashes across her face, but it only takes a heartbeat for her to tamp it down to boredom.
Fiona wasn’t even born when I left Boston. When Da… When Mam… When Jenn… When Athawn… When the Moran name turned to shite.
I take a left turn, and then a right.
The dún looks exactly as it did on the day I left. It’s a dark gray clapboard building. Three stories above ground, and one below. It fills a city block. That’s bulletproof glass in the windows. Walls reinforced with steel. Doors three inches thick.
No cars park on this block, on either side of the street. Cameras are mounted on telephone poles. They used to dump a grainy feed onto computer screens in the basement, but the equipment must have been upgraded by now.
Two kids stand on the closest corner, hunched in denim jackets against the late April chill. Their twins are at the far end of the block. Relaxed. Casual. At least until I stop the Land Rover in the middle of the road.
Two grown men flank the door. I don’t know them. I suspect I don’t know most of the Crew these days. But Fiona’s sharp little inhale says she recognizes the pair.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, not taking my eyes off them. They’re making no secret of the handguns they carry. They’re right-handed, both of them. Their shoulder holsters hold something heavy.
I’d put backup in the house across the street. Long guns on the second floor.
When I leave the engine running, the guy on the left taps an earpiece. His eyes don’t shift, but I catch a flicker of curtain across the way. Like I said, extra manpower across the street.
Maybe a sniper on the roof. You can’t be too careful these days. Southie’s a lot rougher than the Philadelphia suburb my boss calls home. And every criminal in Boston must be dreaming of an unexpected payday, now that the Old Colony captain’s dead.
Fiona has gone perfectly still.
“What’s wrong?” I ask again.
“They’re not Da’s men.”
I didn’t think they would be. Fiona’s told herself a fable. She believes in fairy godmothers and magic castles and unicorns farting rainbows across the sky. But she’s about to wake up to the real world.
“You know who they work for?”
She nods, a single tight jerk of her head. “Uncle Aran.”
Aran Dowd. Old Ingram’s Clan Chief, his second-in-command. A man I know far too well. A man I hate .
Her fingers scramble for the latch on her door.
“Hold on,” I say. My voice is sharp enough that she obeys. “You need a plan. You aren’t just walking in there.”
She shakes her head. “That’s exactly what I need to do. I’m not afraid of those two. I’m not afraid of anyone.” I wait for her to tell me she’s a killer, like that’s news. She misses the opportunity, which gives me a hint of just how thrown she is.
“You should be,” I say.
“He’s my uncle. He’s waiting to welcome me home. He knows this is what my father wanted.”
If her father wanted to make her captain in his stead, he’d have kept her close to Boston, not sent her down to Philadelphia. Not tried to marry her off like a broodmare, to a thoroughly uninterested Braiden Kelly. Not ignored her, when she stayed on with feckin’ Madden Kelly.
Her breath is coming fast now. She’s closer than ever to spilling out of that suit.
“Let’s think this through,” I say. “We can come back tomorrow. You can sit down with your uncle like equals.”
“We aren’t equals,” she says. “I’m his captain.” She’s like a child, announcing the Easter Bunny will deliver baskets after midnight. The Tooth Fairy will take her front tooth and leave her a silver dollar. Good old Santy will fill her Christmas stocking.
“Fiona—”
But I don’t get to say the rest. Because she pulls back firmly on the latch. She climbs out of the Land Rover, steady on her towering heels. She throws back her shoulders, and the light from the streetlamp cascades over her catsuit. She heads toward the dún like she’s Queen of all the Celts.
“Stop!” the guard on the right shouts.
Fiona doesn’t stop.
“You are not welcome here,” says the guard on the left, like he’s memorized one line for a school play.
Fiona keeps on walking .
“This house is the property of the Old Colony Crew,” the first man announces.”
Fiona pauses then, one foot on the curb. She cocks a hip. Twists her lips into a knowing smile. And she says very loudly, very clearly, carving out each syllable like a perfect diamond, “Then this house belongs to me. I’m Fiona Ingram. Queen of the Old Colony Crew.”
Gunshots echo down the street like the voice of an angry god.