Chapter 31 #3
Nobody answered because none of us knew, and that uncertainty was the most frightening answer available.
The next several hours disappeared into controlled chaos.
Survivors were transported in small groups according to need rather than convenience.
Grace and her mother chose to remain together at a protected location instead of going to separate medical facilities.
Daniel's ankle was badly sprained but not broken, and when he learned that fact he announced he was never climbing another window again unless the building was actively on fire, at which point Raze told him that sounded like an extremely reasonable standard.
Irish stood nearby. He laughed. Actually laughed.
The sound startled Daniel enough that he smiled too.
By midnight, the fire was contained. The east wing was destroyed.
Part of the chapel roof was gone. The hidden lower corridor had survived well enough that investigators would eventually be able to enter, although nobody would be going back inside until structural engineers cleared it.
More importantly, Cipher had saved enough of the digital archive to preserve the identity mappings and transfer records.
Harrow had tried to burn decades of evidence.
He had failed. Again. I found Irish near the edge of the grounds after most of the officials had moved inside temporary command tents.
The rain had finally stopped, leaving everything wet and shining beneath portable lights.
He stood facing Saint Brigid's with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking less like the man who had wanted to chase Harrow through County Clare and more like someone whose entire understanding of the past had been dismantled in less than forty-eight hours.
I approached slowly. He heard me. Didn't turn.
"Shoulder?"
"Bruised."
"Head?"
"Still attached."
"Smoke?"
"Apparently I am required to admit if I begin dying."
"Good policy."
I stopped beside him. For a while, neither of us spoke. Then he said, "They're reopening it." Not merely that it might happen; he already knew it would.
"Brennan called the regional major investigations unit. Da's letter and the surveillance memo were enough to start the process."
"How do you feel?" He gave me a dry look.
"Terrible question."
"Accurate." He looked back at the damaged building.
"I thought I'd feel... something else."
"Vindicated?"
"Maybe."
"You don't?"
"No." His voice went quieter.
"It doesn't bring them back."
"No."
"It doesn't give me fifteen years."
"No."
"It doesn't make Da less dead because people finally admit he was right." I turned toward him.
"No." Irish looked at me. The grief in his face was open now, neither hidden nor weaponized, simply present.
"But it gives him his name back," I said. His brows drew together.
"He wasn't a paranoid contractor who got mixed up in something nobody understood. He wasn't a possible robbery victim in a case that eventually went cold. He found people being hidden inside buildings and kept asking why. He documented it. He tried to expose it." Irish swallowed.
"He was a whistleblower."
"Yes." The word affected him. I saw it.
"Declan O'Brien found something terrible and refused to look away." Irish looked toward Saint Brigid's again.
"Got him killed."
"Maybe." His jaw tightened. I continued before the old guilt found a new shape.
"But that responsibility still belongs to the people who chose murder as their answer." He exhaled slowly.
"Aye." This time there was less resistance in it. I slipped my hand into his. He accepted it.
"Croft's in custody," I said.
"Aye."
"You let her go." His gaze shifted toward me.
"At Croft House."
"Aye."
"You chose the patient."
"Aye."
"And Croft still got caught." Understanding moved through his face.
"You're enjoying this lesson."
"Immensely." His mouth almost curved. I leaned my shoulder lightly against his arm.
"You didn't have to choose between saving someone and justice. You only thought you did because you believed everything depended on what you could personally stop." He looked at our joined hands.
"Getting philosophical again."
"Occupational hazard."
"Interior design?"
"Very deep profession."
That finally earned the smallest laugh. We stood there until the lights from the emergency vehicles became ordinary enough to ignore. Eventually Irish said, "We need to go back to the farmhouse." I looked toward him.
"Tonight?"
"Aye."
"Why?" His fingers tightened around mine.
"Finn's case." We had almost forgotten Finn's case in the fire and everything afterward, but it was waiting exactly where Eamon had taken it, untouched and still another piece of Declan's insurance against silence.
"All right." Irish didn't move immediately. I studied his face.
"Something else?"
"Aye." He looked toward Saint Brigid's one last time.
"I want to sleep there again." He meant the farmhouse, not because evidence required him to stay or because I happened to be in his bed, but because he was choosing it for himself. I smiled.
"Then let's go home."
The word came naturally. Irish looked at me.
I realized what I'd said only after it was already between us.
For one dangerous second, I considered correcting myself.
His expression stopped me. He didn't look frightened exactly.
He looked as though I had handed him something he wasn't certain he deserved but wanted badly enough to try holding anyway.
"Home?" he asked. I could have softened the word, made it a joke, or called it temporary. Instead, I squeezed his hand.
"If you want it to be." The answer took a long time. Then Rory Callum O'Brien looked toward the road that would carry us back to the house he had spent fifteen years avoiding and finally nodded.
"Aye," he said quietly. "I think I do."