Lodestar
This was it.
The day had come.
I watched as the First Lady herself read the message I’d just sent her. The two small ticks had turned blue.
I’m a nurse at the hospice where Michael Byrne is dying. He gave me your number and begged me to message you. He wants to speak to you before he dies. He says he knows something about a guy called Cheile that Alan would be interesting in hearing.
I could almost imagine her panic.
The First Lady was a cheile, after all. Part of a terrorist organization that had been working for decades to unify Ireland.
Alan, her husband, was POTUS!
Of course she’d be shitting herself at the prospect of her one-time lover and her current hubs getting together over Michael’s imaginary deathbed.
It sounded like something from a spy novel, but life was funny like that.
One minute, you were reading something in a book, the next, you were on social media watching the practices of a secret organization unfolding before your eyes.
The second she clicked into my message, the worm I’d infected the SMS with went to work. It bypassed all the security on the device because I had no intention of reading her private correspondence.
It affected her GPS tracker and the call function.
From my desk in the building opposite Conor’s—call me a sap—I waited.
And I waited.
Did she take my bait?
Would she?
I needed her to if I was going to draw Eamonn Keegan, AKA ‘Dagda,’ out into the open.
He was skilled.
For someone who’d been in prison for decades, his abilities were envious, and I couldn’t run up against him if he stayed in hiding.
“Come on, bitch, bite,” I whispered under my breath, my knees jumping as I rested my elbows on them so that my entire being jiggled.
Michael Byrne was dead. I’d watched Conor kill him earlier this year and he’d agreed that I could take a sound bite and put it on the dark web in a place where the ECD would catch wind of it.
Eamonn Keegan knew, because of me, who had killed his sister.
Eamonn Keegan knew, because of me, that he’d been betrayed by his own side.
Now the First Lady was going to deliver him to me and I could scratch one thing off my bucket list—butcher the motherfucker who took Mom away.
Who ruined everything.
Who set me on this path.
Who destroyed my father.
Who shattered our world.
Who took the light out of it.
An alert pinged on my computer.
Surprised to note that the worm had infected her emails, I determined that if I ever saw Maverick again, I’d congratulate him.
This malware had monstrous capabilities. Especially when a quick trace revealed that it had inserted itself into the footnote of her correspondence, infecting whoever opened her message.
“Jesus Christ.”
Intrigued, I saw the emails flooding out from her Mail app and watched as they received replies.
When a private jet was booked and paid for on the Davidson’s family account, I realized they were keeping this on the downlow.
Then a man called Eric emailed her, and I learned that he was in charge of her security detail.
The terminology was civilian, but I reasoned he had to be with the Secret Service.
If they were talking off the books like this, did that mean he was a cheile too? Or was he a Sparrow?
God, as if life wasn’t complicated enough.
I went with my gut and used the worm to access Eric’s phone. The second it opened up to me, as simply as turning the page in a fucking book, I knew I was right.
He was ECD and at the top of the tree in the Secret Service.
Shit moved fast after that.
I tracked the jet in question after I hacked into the local airfield’s control tower and watched as it flew over to New York.
Because I had nothing better to do, I spent the two hours of that flight listening to the air traffic controllers.
The jet landed with no issues.
Then, there was swift movement across the city.
She was visiting the hospice.
A sweet kind of bitter joy hit me.
My plan was working.
I saw her stay at the hospice for twenty minutes, and then I had all the confirmation I needed.
She made a call and I listened in.
“Wondered when you’d deign to pick up the fucking phone, Elizabeth. Didn’t realize it would take nearly six goddamn months.”
Did I recognize that voice?
I felt sure that I did.
“I have more important things to be doing than speaking with mobsters,” the woman sniped.
Mobsters.
Jesus.
That low, gravelly tone—I’d heard it at the meeting Rachel, Rex, Nyx, and Priest had had with Aidan O’Donnelly Sr.
“So why did you decide to call me back?”
“You heard that Eamonn Keegan is out?”
“Old news. He’s been sighted in New York though. Your husband’s immigration policy really is as weak as they say it is.”
A hiss escaped her at the insult. “Michael’s gone missing.”
His reply was belligerent. “And?”
“What do you mean, ‘And?’” she snarled. “You’re supposed to protect him.”
“How the hell am I supposed to save him from cancer? If the bastard discharged himself to go and slit his wrists in private, well, he did the world a favor, didn’t he?”
“You’re a heartless bastard, Aidan,” Elizabeth growled. “You didn’t have any men guarding him?”
“Not my job.”
“You made a deal.”
His voice throbbed with anger as he intoned, “I made a deal with Michael, sure, but if he wanted guards, then he should have gotten his cheile friends to look after him. I’m not his nanny, Elizabeth.”
“You mean you don’t know where he is?”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t know where Michael is, now did I? Funny how you’re calling me. Someone whispered something in my ear recently about the pair of you.
“Imagine how surprised I was to find out you and Michael had a thing. Wonder what the president would have to say about that…”
There was silence down the other end of the line. “Do you, or do you not know where Michael is?”
“Even funnier that this is the first time you’ve asked about him. His cancer’s terminal,” he droned. “Thought his little woman would care about that.”
“We had a falling out,” Elizabeth bit off. “He’s supposed to be in a hospice, but there are no records of him—” She hissed under her breath. “Where is he, Aidan?”
Well, I had my confirmation.
How the fuck was Conor’s da involved with this?
Was it simply the obvious? The man believed himself to be more Irish than an Irish national and he’d never left the fucking US. Was he with the ECD too?
“Information like that comes at a price,” he taunted. “I’ll be at Greenwood Cemetery at three. I’ll meet you at my brother’s grave.” He gave her directions on how to reach it. “If you want answers, I’ll see you there. And don’t even think about bringing your guards along.”
“How am I supposed to get away from them?” she snapped.
“Not my problem. You want to know where your lover boy is, you know where to find me.”
And as that call came to an end, another started from Eric to someone listed only as ‘Private.’
“Eamonn? She’s heading to Greenwood Cemetery. Will be meeting at Padraig O’Donnelly’s grave.”
“Time?”
“Three PM.”
My plan was working. It was fucking working.
Eamonn Keegan was going to be in Greenwood Cemetery at three!
I had options—call this in, protect the First Lady, probably get a badge of fucking honor, rewrite my life, get on the right path.
Wait, watch how things unfolded, take my rifle to Greenwood, see if Dagda showed up, shoot him.
Options.
A future.
The First Lady would survive, Dagda would be shot for treason, and Aidan Sr. would… Well, I didn’t know what the fuck would happen to him, but knowing the Five Points, he’d get out within the hour.
Did he deserve that though? After he’d let that rapist attack an innocent woman just to tangle Nyx in his web?
The obliteration of the past.
The First Lady—traitorous scum—would die, and I’d free my country from that toxic presence in the White House. I could shoot Dagda, watch him die through my scope. My mom would be avenged…
Where would Aidan Sr. fit into that? He was ECD but clearly unfriendly with the First Lady.
Would Dagda keep him safe?
If I didn’t protect him, would Conor ever forgive me for that betrayal? Their relationship was fucked up, but whose wasn’t with their parents?
Mind whirring, still unsure, I packed my shit together and, beginning the race to Brooklyn, well aware that today could be my last day on this godforsaken planet, I sent out a text:
Me: It’s on. Greenwood Cemetery. Three PM. I’ll send you my coordinates when I get there.
Cyn: On my way.