Chapter 27 #2
That explained Declan's extension. The plan wasn't showing a corridor terminating inside a thick wall; it was showing a route descending beneath it toward the old service tunnel. I took the pencil from beside my notebook and began sketching the likely grade.
"If the chapel sits higher than the infirmary, the tunnel could meet a lower level that doesn't appear as a basement from the front."
Brigid watched me.
"You really do read buildings."
Irish answered before I could.
"Annoyingly well."
I looked at him.
"Compliment accepted."
"Wasn't one."
"Too late."
The front door opened again before he could argue.
Eamon called from the hall, "You two in here?"
Irish's body tightened slightly at the sound of someone else entering the farmhouse, then eased when he recognized Eamon's voice. The reaction was small, but it mattered.
Eamon appeared in the doorway wearing work boots and a dark waterproof jacket, his attention moving first to Irish and then to the open bookcase.
He stopped.
"Well."
Irish folded his arms.
"Helpful."
"I was going to say your da was a mad bastard, but I thought I'd ease into it."
Brigid snorted.
Eamon came closer and studied the archive without touching anything.
"What did he hide?"
"Everything," Irish said.
Eamon's face lost its humor.
Irish showed him the Saint Brigid's plan.
"Da wrote your name here."
Eamon took the page carefully.
For almost a minute, he said nothing.
Then his expression changed.
"I remember this."
Irish's shoulders tightened.
"What?"
"My da got a subcontract out there. Not inside. Retaining wall on the north slope. Saint Brigid's management didn't want their regular contractor handling it because there'd been some argument about costs."
"When?"
"Year or two before the place officially closed."
He traced the section Declan had marked.
"Your da came out twice."
"Why?"
"Thought our excavation exposed something."
"What?"
Eamon looked at me now.
"Stone arch."
My pulse quickened.
"How wide?"
"Maybe five feet. Too narrow for vehicles. Plenty wide for people."
"Tunnel."
"Aye."
Brigid nodded. "Told you."
Eamon glanced at her.
"Apparently I should've asked Brigid before spending two weeks arguing with surveyors."
"Most men should."
Irish rubbed his forehead.
I focused on the plan.
"What happened to the opening?"
"Management told us it was an old drain and ordered it closed."
"Did you?"
"No."
Irish looked sharply at him.
Eamon's mouth curved faintly.
"My da thought their engineer was an arrogant prick and didn't trust his instructions. He filled the visible excavation and built the retaining wall in front of it, but he left the arch intact behind the backfill."
I nearly smiled.
Irish actually did.
"Your da too?"
"Aye. Apparently stubbornness was the county's main export."
"Could the tunnel still be reached?"
"From the outside? Maybe. You'd need to come in behind the north wall and remove part of the later fill."
"Quietly?"
Eamon studied me.
"Depends what you call quiet."
"No explosives," I said automatically.
Irish laughed.
Eamon looked between us.
"That a recurring problem?"
"You have no idea."
I drew the retaining wall beside Declan's plan, and suddenly the Saint Brigid's geometry made more sense than it had ten minutes earlier.
The chapel corridor wasn't merely longer than the modern plans acknowledged.
It connected into a lower service route that could explain both the hidden infirmary level and the Order's ability to move people through the property without using the main entrance.
"Could vehicles reach the north wall?" Irish asked.
Eamon shook his head. "Not directly. Old farm lane stops perhaps a quarter mile out. Then foot access."
"Hawkeye can verify from distance," Irish said.
I pointed toward the plan.
"If they're moving people tonight, this could be an alternative way into the concealed section without crossing the primary residential wings."
Irish's expression hardened.
"We're not going in tonight."
I looked at him.
He held up a hand.
"Not because of you."
"Good clarification."
"We don't have numbers. Don't know where Vale is. Don't know Harrow's current position. And Da's records may tell us exactly what the lower level was built to do."
I nodded.
He was right.
More importantly, he had explained rather than commanded.
Again.
"Then we finish the archive."
Eamon looked toward the hidden room.
"You want help?"
Irish hesitated.
The old version of him would've said no before considering the question.
I watched the decision happen.
"Aye."
Eamon nodded as though the answer hadn't surprised him at all.
Brigid picked up the food she'd brought.
"Then everyone eats first."
Three grown men looked toward her.
Nobody argued.
That might have been the most impressive display of authority I'd seen since joining the Flaming Skulls.
We ate in the kitchen around the same table Irish had avoided for fifteen years.
Eamon sat where Declan once had and we both noticed. For half a second I thought he might ask him to move. Instead, he sat across from his childhood friend and let the conversation continue.
Eamon told us what he remembered about the Saint Brigid's job.
Most of it sounded useless until details began connecting with Declan's documents: late-night deliveries the contractor wasn't allowed to inspect, ventilation work handled by a private company, a separate generator installed despite the property already having one, and a rear track that had been widened temporarily before being returned to agricultural use.
"Why didn't anyone question it?" I asked.
"We did," Eamon said. "Just never as one thing. Generator belonged to medical requirements. Deliveries were private because residents had trauma. Security kept people away because privacy laws mattered. Every answer worked by itself."
"Until you put them together," Irish said.
"Aye."
It was exactly what we'd seen at Blackridge and Croft House: different buildings serving the same habits and the same system of control.
When we returned to the study, Eamon recognized several contractor names. Brigid recognized surnames tied to local families and charities. I organized the structural information while Irish and Cipher cross-referenced financial records remotely.
Then we found the first real path to Finn's packet—not the packet itself, but the instruction Declan had left for retrieving it.
It sat inside the final pages of Declan's notebook, written in a shorthand Irish initially dismissed as meaningless.
F — B.K. 3/2. If needed, old place. Tell E only after.
Irish stared at it.
"What's B.K.?"
Brigid answered from behind us.
"Blackthorn."
Every head turned.
She frowned.
"What?"
Irish pointed toward the note.
"B.K."
"Could mean me. Could mean the pub."
"Three slash two?"
Brigid's eyes narrowed as she thought.
Then her face changed.
"Third cellar bay. Second stone."
Irish went still.
"What?"
"Old storage cellar beneath the pub. Your father helped repair it after a flood. He and Finn did half the pointing because the mason got sick."
My pulse accelerated.
"Second stone from what?"
Brigid was already reaching for her coat.
"Come find out."
Irish caught her arm gently.
"No."
She turned.
"Excuse me?"
"We don't all go charging into the pub cellar because Da wrote a note fifteen years ago."
Brigid stared at him.
I waited for the inevitable explosion.
Instead, Irish looked toward Eamon.
"You remember the cellar layout?"
"Aye."
"Any reason the stones would've been disturbed?"
"Depends which wall."
Brigid folded her arms.
"Do I get to speak about my own bloody building?"
Irish exhaled.
"Please."
"The rear cellar wall hasn't been rebuilt since your father worked on it. Painted once. Nothing else."
Skye's architectural brain immediately supplied the rest.
"If Declan created a removable stone or concealed cavity, it could still be there."
Irish looked at me.
"Could be Finn's duplicate."
"Could be."
This time, could was enough.
Brigid's expression had gone strangely soft.
"Finn used to disappear downstairs sometimes."
Irish looked at her.
"When?"
"That last year. I thought he was sneaking cigarettes."
"He didn't smoke."
"I know that now."
The room grew quiet.
Declan had written that Finn knew only enough to retrieve one packet if necessary.
Maybe that was what Finn had been doing in the cellar all those times: practicing the route, checking the hiding place, and making sure whatever his father had entrusted to him remained exactly where it belonged.
Irish looked toward the hidden archive.
For one moment grief moved visibly across his face.
Then he did something I suspected the man he'd been fifteen years ago would never have managed.
He looked at Eamon.
"Help me find it?"
Eamon didn't hesitate.
"Always."
The word landed hard enough that Irish looked away.
We didn't go immediately.
Cipher made us document the notebook first, because apparently technological sadism remained one of his core personality traits.
Once the pages were photographed and uploaded to the secure archive, we locked Declan's hidden room, left everything we had removed inside protective folders on the study desk, and drove back toward the village in two vehicles.
Irish and Eamon rode together.
I went with Brigid.
The arrangement was deliberate, not because Irish needed protecting but because I thought he needed a little time beside someone who belonged to the life he'd lived before America.
Brigid drove faster than I expected from a woman who complained about everybody else's decision-making and spent most of the short journey explaining which local officers were useless, which solicitors had cousins who couldn't keep secrets, and why nobody with sense bought bread from the new bakery on Tuesdays.
I let her talk.
Then, as The Blackthorn appeared ahead, she went quiet.
"Finn was a good boy."
I looked toward her.
She kept her attention on the road.