Chapter 19
Skye
The words stayed with me long after Irish left the library.
It means it's time I went home.
He hadn't said them dramatically, and somehow that made them heavier.
There had been no declaration that Ireland held answers, no promise that going back would fix anything, and no attempt to disguise what the decision cost him.
He had simply looked at County Clare glowing on Cipher's screen, covered my hand with his, and accepted something he had spent fifteen years refusing to face.
I had watched him walk out of the room afterward with Trigger following several steps behind, neither man speaking, and for the first time since meeting Callum O'Brien I had understood that silence could be more frightening than anger.
Ireland wasn't another location on a map to him.
It was a place he had survived by leaving, and now the same investigation that had brought him into my life was forcing him toward it again.
I wanted to follow Irish almost immediately, a realization that arrived quickly enough to irritate me because Isla was sleeping only three doors away.
Isla was sleeping three doors away after twenty-three days of captivity, and my first instinct should have been to remain beside her until she could stand without assistance, sleep without waking frightened, and look at a locked door without needing to test it repeatedly.
Instead, part of me had already tracked Irish's departure from the library and was wondering whether he had gone outside, whether he was alone, and whether anyone had remembered the warning Toxic gave him about turning Ireland into something he believed he needed to carry by himself.
I hated how naturally he had become part of the list of people I worried about.
More troubling was the fact that I no longer wanted to change that.
I returned to Isla's room rather than chase him.
She was awake when I entered, lying on her side beneath a heavy cream blanket with one hand tucked beneath her cheek.
The intravenous line had been removed after she complained about it for nearly an hour, and a glass of water now sat within reach on the bedside table beside several crackers she had eaten only because the doctor promised to stop asking if she was nauseated afterward.
The room itself was deliberately ordinary, with old floral wallpaper, a wooden wardrobe, and a window overlooking a narrow garden rather than anything remotely clinical.
The door stood almost closed behind me, exactly where Isla had left it.
Her eyes opened fully when she saw me.
"You look worried."
I pulled the chair closer to the bed. "That's rich coming from you."
"I look terrible. Different problem."
Despite everything, I smiled. "You look like someone who needs to sleep."
"I've slept."
"For forty minutes."
"That counts."
"It absolutely does not."
Her mouth curved faintly.
There she was—not completely, and perhaps she wouldn't feel completely like herself again for a long time, but enough of the Isla I knew remained beneath the exhaustion that I could see her whenever she forgot to protect everyone around her from how frightened she really was.
I sat down.
"How do you feel?"
She considered the question seriously rather than giving me the automatic answer she would have used before Croft House.
"Tired. My head feels wrong. Everything is too loud even when it isn't." She looked toward the window.
"And I keep expecting someone to walk in and tell me I've done something I wasn't supposed to do. "
My throat tightened.
"Nobody here is going to do that."
"I know."
Her fingers moved over the edge of the blanket. "Knowing and believing aren't always happening at the same speed."
I nodded because anything else would have been pretending I understood more than I did.
For a few moments we sat without speaking.
Then Isla looked toward me again.
"Something happened."
"What?"
"While I was asleep."
I shouldn't have been surprised that she noticed. Isla could wake from a fever and tell me somebody had moved a lamp two inches.
"Cipher found records."
Her expression sharpened despite the medication and exhaustion. "From Croft?"
"Yes."
"Did they get the transfer files?"
The question made me sit straighter.
"You knew about them?"
Isla closed her eyes briefly. "Some."
"How?"
"I heard things. Saw things when they moved me. Croft wasn't careful around people she thought were sedated."
My anger returned so quickly I had to force my voice to remain calm. "You don't have to talk about this tonight."
"I know."
"Then don't because you think you owe us information."
Her eyes opened.
"I don't."
The answer was stronger than I expected.
"I want to tell you because if they're moving people again, waiting might matter."
That was different.
I leaned forward.
"Okay."
Isla took a slow drink of water before continuing. "Blackridge wasn't where it started for me either."
I thought of the Alderwick House sample label.
"We found that."
"You found Alderwick?"
"Yes."
"Of course you did."
Her smile disappeared.
"I went there because Blackridge invoices were being paid from Edinburgh accounts. I thought it was fraud at first. Construction fraud, maybe money laundering through restoration contracts. Nothing like..." Her gaze drifted away. "Nothing like this."
"What happened at Alderwick?"
"Mostly records. Temporary storage. People came through sometimes, but I didn't know who they were.
I kept seeing the same room sizes on plans for buildings that supposedly had nothing to do with each other.
Same door hardware. Same ventilation. Same secure corridors hidden behind residential layouts. "
My pulse quickened.
"Croft House?"
She nodded.
"And another name."
I waited.
"Saint Brigid's."
The name hadn't appeared in any of the records Cipher had shown us before Irish left the room.
"Where?"
"That was the problem. Sometimes Scotland. Sometimes Ireland. Sometimes it sounded like a charity and sometimes like a property."
"Do you remember the exact wording?"
Isla closed her eyes again, concentrating.
"Saint Brigid's House. St. Brigid's Residential Trust. Brigid Recovery something." She frowned. "They changed names constantly."
"Did you see an address?"
"No, but I heard County Clare."
Everything inside me stilled.
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Because one of the staff complained about transferring residents there by ferry instead of flying. They talked about coastal routes being quieter."
The reference immediately reminded me of the routes Irish had translated from the ledgers—Liverpool, Holyhead, Dublin, and Cork—not routes for cargo but pathways the Order used to move people. I felt sick.
Isla watched my face.
"That's what Cipher found, isn't it?"
"Part of it."
"What else?"
I hesitated because whatever had happened to Irish's family wasn't my story to tell, but Isla knew me too well to miss the fact that I was holding something back.
"Skye."
"The records connect to Irish's father."
Her brows drew together.
"His father?"
"Declan O'Brien. Twenty years ago."
Isla went quiet.
I had told her almost nothing about Irish beyond the bare essentials because there hadn't been time and because much of what I knew belonged to him. Still, she had heard enough from our conversations over the last day to understand that Ireland was something he carried carefully.
"Is that why he left?"
"He hasn't told me."
"But you're worried."
"Yes."
"About him going back?"
"Yes."
She studied me.
"And you're going with him."
I looked toward the floor.
"I don't know."
Isla's expression changed in a way I recognized immediately.
"Oh, don't do that."
I looked up. "Do what?"
"Make that face."
"What face?"
"The one you make when you've already decided something but you're trying to argue yourself out of it because you think another choice would be more responsible."
I almost laughed. "You have been unconscious for half the day."
"And yet you're still transparent."
"That's offensive."
"It's accurate."
I leaned back in the chair.
"I can't leave you."
Her expression softened.
"There it is."
"You were missing for twenty-three days."
"I know."
"You've been out of Croft House for less than a day."
"I know that too."
"And now I'm supposed to get on a ferry or plane to Ireland because a man I've known for less than a week has to confront whatever happened to his family?"
"Is that what you're doing?"
I frowned.
"Following a man?"
"No."
"Then stop describing it that way."
I stared at her.
Isla shifted carefully against the pillows.
"You aren't thinking about Ireland because Callum is attractive."
"He's irritating."
"Those are not mutually exclusive."
I gave her a look.
She continued before I could answer.
"You're thinking about Ireland because the records are connected to me, to Blackridge, to Croft House, to Saint Brigid's, and apparently to his family.
You understand the buildings. You know the records I've seen.
And if the organization moved documents and people there after Croft House was compromised, then you're part of the investigation whether you like what that means emotionally or not. "
I hated that she was making sense.
"I still don't want to leave you."
"Then don't leave me."
"What?"
"Go to Ireland and stop treating distance like abandonment."
The sentence landed harder than she could possibly have intended.
Maybe because Irish would have understood it immediately.
I looked at her.
Isla's voice softened.
"I need you beside me, Skye. Not standing over me."
I swallowed.
"I wasn't—"
"You were going to."
She knew me too well to let the lie survive.
"If you stay here because you want to stay, that's one thing. If you stay because you think I'm incapable of surviving six hours without you in the same building, that's another."
"I don't think you're incapable."
"You almost told the doctor what I should eat."
"He asked."
"He asked me."
"Your judgment is questionable. You once lived on toast for four days because you were renovating a hotel."
"Exactly. A proven survival skill."