Chapter 24 Ronan
RONAN
My phone pinged at eleven fifteen. I rubbed grit from my eyes and set down the blueprint I’d been staring at for the last hour.
Declan: Need to talk. We’re on the porch.
I blinked at the text, trying to understand it.
“Ronan, open up.” Finn rapped the front door in his signature five tap rhythm, then jiggled the knob. “Never mind, we’re coming in.”
I spun in my seat and dragged a bottle of whiskey from the shelf beside the sink, along with three glasses.
Finn smirked when he entered the kitchen. “Ah, you heard us.”
“Figured if Declan dragged you over here in the middle of the night, it was a whiskey kind of conversation.” I poured three glasses and slid theirs across the counter.
Declan caught his at the edge and straddled the bar stool.
Finn paced back and forth between my fridge and the dining table, the whiskey disappearing in a single swallow. “He refused to talk to me till we were together.” He slapped Declan on the back as he passed. “So talk.”
Declan lifted his whiskey, started to drink, then set it down with a clank. “Something happened to Bree’s car this morning.”
I stilled.
Finn’s gaze narrowed and he stopped pacing. “What kind of something?”
“Someone dumped Lucky Charms all over it.” Declan turned the glass around three times in one of Maeve’s old traditions to ward off bad luck, and drank with a hiss of breath. “The marshmallows melted into the paint. Bree tried to peel them off and took chunks of paint in the process.”
Damn. The wall clock behind me ticked down the seconds. I counted them, my hands tightening around the glass until it threatened to shatter.
Finn slammed his glass down on the counter. “Shayla’s car?”
“Yeah.” Declan rubbed the back of his neck. “I found her crying in the parking lot.”
Finn faced the window, giving us his back. His shoulders hunched around his ears, the tendons in his neck standing out in thick, ropy lines.
Poor Bree. She took every hit that came her way and kept her chin up, but the blows kept coming. I could only imagine her devastation at seeing Shayla’s car destroyed. I’d once cried for a whole day when I found a hole in one of my wife’s old sweaters. Grief didn’t care about being strong.
The fact that Declan had found Bree crying and trying to fix something that could not be fixed showed how badly it had shaken her.
“There’s more.” Declan stared past me toward Finn.
“I made a mistake last week.” He explained that he’d spent some time alone with Bree after the burst water pipe, how Dan had shown up early and he’d struggled to come up with an adequate explanation.
“Dan might’ve started another rumor, but I know for a fact Tammy suspects. ”
“Tammy isn’t a problem.” Finn shook his head. “She confronted me outside the fire house. We had a nice chat.”
“Which brings me back to the Lucky Charms.” Declan held out his cup, and I topped it off. “Bethany gave Bree a box of Lucky Charms as a welcoming gift.”
The name landed with the impact of an explosion.
Finn cursed until he lost his breath, sucked air into his lungs, and started all over again. All the reckless energy flooded out as he resumed pacing, tearing his hands through his hair over and over again. “You’re saying Bethany might be responsible.”
“I’m saying it’s an awful big coincidence.” Declan drank his whiskey slower this time.
Finn grabbed the whiskey bottle and turned it up, not bothering with the glass. When he lowered the bottle, fury blazed in his eyes. “I’ll handle it.”
“How?” I sipped my whiskey, self-deligating myself as the voice of reason.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“And tell her what?” I raised my eyebrows and opened one hand, silently demanding the whiskey bottle.
Finn slapped it into my palm. “You can’t accuse her.
You can’t tell her that we think she did it.
We have no evidence or Declan would be telling us about the police report he and Bree filled out.
Going after Bethany tells her exactly how close she got.
It tells her that she hit a nerve, and it hands her an opportunity to cause more damage with the story she’ll spin. ”
Finn’s jaw worked. I was right. He knew it, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow. “I will not stand by and do nothing.”
“We do not give in to our need to protect and put Bree in a worse position.” I drilled a finger into the counter, straight into the middle of the blueprint I’d drawn up of Bree’s apartment. I’d had some ideas for how to maximize the space but hadn’t finalized anything enough to show it to her.
Finn tracked the movement, some of the tension bleeding from him when he realized what he was looking at.
“I’m going to talk to Bethany. I won’t accuse her, but it’s time we had a chat.
In fact, I’d say it’s long overdue.” He crossed his arms, the mutiny in his expression daring us to tell him to back down.
I kept my mouth shut.
Finn was too volatile to order around. He took orders from his captain at the fire department to keep others safe. His instinct to protect wouldn’t be tamped down.
“And you think this chat will not give Bethany all the ammunition she’s looking for?” Declan snorted. “Think it through, Finn.”
“I am.” Finn dropped onto the seat across from me. “I know how to talk to Bethany in a way she’ll understand. Now what are we going to do about the car?”
“Where is it?” I met Declan’s tired gaze.
He gripped the edge of the counter and stretched, causing his back to pop. “Still in the lot behind the pub. She hung up the keys after coming back from the bank.”
I turned the problem around like I would a blueprint, checking it from every angle.
“My brother-in-law runs a body shop in Boston.” I hadn’t talked to him since the funeral, but we’d been close once.
“He specializes in dent repair, which means he works with paint matching on a daily basis. I’ve seen him work on cars older than Bree’s.
” I paused and swallowed hard as images of my wife danced through my head.
They still hurt but not in the way that used to wreck me.
“If anyone can match the original paint and make it look like nothing happened, it’s him. ”
Hope glinted in Finn’s eyes. “You think he’ll do it.”
“I think he loves a challenge.” And he’d been trying to get me to pay him a visit for a while. I’d let our friendship go when I lost my wife, his sister. It had been easier at the time. “I’ll call him in the morning. It’ll take him a day, maybe two.”
Declan straightened. “I’d like to get it there without her noticing.”
“Which means no asking permission.” Finn grinned.
“I’ll take it tonight. If I leave now, I can be there when he opens the shop. Maybe even get it back to her by the end of the day.”
Declan reached into his pocket and extracted a set of keys with Shayla’s green shamrock keychain and a fuzzy leprechaun hat attached.
I plucked them from his hand. “She’s not expecting to see me tomorrow, so all you have to do is keep her out of the back lot until I return.”