35. Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Five
D ai Qing’s phone pings as we head to the medical building. “He’s out of the medically induced coma and ready for visitors. Timing couldn’t be better.” She puts her phone into her pocket.
My stomach churns at seeing Malik and knowing Lorcan and Finn did the damage. Finn for fun and Lorcan in a misguided attempt to protect me. I run my sweaty palms along the sides of my jeans as we enter the building. He won’t blame me, but there’s a part of me that thinks I could have done better, somehow got him out quicker, realized Finn might round up people I heard nothing about.
“How are you doing, seeing him like this?”
She half turns and raises her eyebrows. “Of course I don’t enjoy seeing him like this. I don’t think that’s exactly what you’re asking.”
“Well, I’m aware you two had a… relationship.”
Dai Qing laughs. “Did he tell you that?”
“He implied it a few times. He never told me.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“I mean, he’s had a thing for you since you two first started working together. It’s been pretty clear to me, probably to him, you didn’t return those feelings.” She glances at me. “At least not enough.”
Unexpected heat climbs into my cheeks. “He’s—I—I care about him.”
“He knows. That’s why he told you he and I were together. I was the buffer—the beard, so he never had to admit you were who he wanted. The only person he wanted.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Not that I didn’t try.”
“So you and he…”
“I wish. But no. Never. He’s been very focused on you.” Dai Qing shrugs and opens the door to the hospital wing.
“I really wish you didn’t tell me that right now.” We come to a halt outside his recovery room.
“You cannot be so dense that you didn’t at least suspect.”
I stare at her for a moment, unable to say anything in my defense. Did I suspect? Yeah, sometimes. Malik played me the way I often play a mark. He expressed enough interest in me I realized the connection we had was mutual, but never enough to scare me away. I would have bolted if he’d told me what she’s implying.
Knowing he was in love with me, letting myself love him back the way he wanted, would have ruined me as an agent. “That must have been hard for him.”
She puts her hand on the doorknob. “It’s going to be even harder for him if he ever sees the way you look at Lorcan.” With that, she opens the door, and I have no choice but to follow her in.
Malik is only able to open one of his eyes when we enter his room. Two things object within my brain, at odds with each other. I want to know what happened in that basement with Lorcan and Finn. At the same time, I never want to know Lorcan’s part in it. But knowing Finn’s role might make it easier to kill him if it comes to that. It’s impossible to get one without the other, so I stay silent.
“You came,” he whispers. “Did they pull you out?” His eye strays to Dai Qing who says nothing. She’s waiting for my lead.
“Yes.” I lace my fingers with his. “They got me out.”
His body sinks further into the mattress, the tension going out of him. “It was all I could think about. I didn’t know what I said.”
Enough. Enough for Finn to know.
“Nothing. You didn’t tell them anything. I’m okay.” I use my free hand to gesture to my jeans and T-shirt. “Perfectly fine.”
He lets out a grunt as he tries to get comfortable. “That you are.”
A smile plays at the edges of my lips. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got run over by a train.”
“Thankfully, not a train.”
He squeezes my hand. “You sticking around for a bit?”
I concentrate on our linked fingers. “They’ve already assigned me somewhere else. You know, no rest for the wicked.” My insides twist at the lie. Given how he looks and feels, he wouldn’t understand why they’d let me go back.
His attention strays to Dai Qing. “You’re watching out for her?”
“As well as she’ll let me.”
His nod is almost imperceptible. “As soon as I can, I’ll get assigned to you.”
I glance over my shoulder at her. “There’s no rush. Work on getting better in the ways you need.” When I turn, his good eye is focused on me with laser intensity.
“What aren’t you telling me?” His voice is rough as though speaking is exhausting.
Dai Qing steps forward to come beside me. “We gotta get her slotted into place. You understand. Narrow windows of opportunity.”
His eye doesn’t leave my face. “Kimi.”
“Nothing, Malik. I-I feel responsible for what’s happened to you.”
“My fault.” He lets out a strangled cough. “Shouldn’t have gone to see your mom. I blew my cover.”
“I brought Lorcan there, and I shouldn’t have.”
She lets out a startled noise beside me. “You what?”
Ignoring her, he forges on. “I was in, you were in. I should have stayed away. I know better. Not your fault.”
A nurse knocks on the door and pops her head in. “He shouldn’t have visitors for too long.”
“Of course,” Dai Qing replies.
I take an extra moment to stare at Malik, really let myself see the damage Lorcan and Finn inflicted. His face is a mangled mess, and every time he speaks, his missing teeth make it difficult to understand him. The rest of his body is peppered with bruises and cuts. And there must be serious underlying issues for them to put him into a coma while they assessed him.
How can I be with someone capable of doing this? How can I like being with someone who does this to another human being? To Malik.
“We should go.”
“Yeah.” My gaze trails up to connect with Malik’s.
“I’ll be okay.”
Tears prick my eyes at how he almost wasn’t. And it would have been because of me. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezes my hand. “I’m glad you’re out.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” I extract my fingers from his grasp. “I gotta go, but I’ll try to come another time to see you when you’re better, when things slow down for me.”
“The job comes first.” There’s no bitterness in his voice.
His words ring in my head. It used to be the job came first; I didn’t think I had a reason to put anyone ahead of it. Now, I’m not so sure.
Once we’re out of Malik’s room and on our way, I say, “Am I going to make it home before Lorcan?”
Dai Qing takes out her phone, presses a few icons, and scrolls through. “Yeah. They’re detaining him under some bullshit reasons. It’s weird he isn’t lawyering up.”
“It’s not weird.” I push my hair off my shoulders, wishing I’d put it into a ponytail. My fingers fumble for the elastic I keep on my wrist, but it’s missing. “If he lawyers up, Finn will realize he was here. Lorcan thinks he can beat the system, keep other people out of it.”
A chuckle escapes her. “Confidence for days.”
A wry smile twists my lips. “Neither of them has a self-confidence problem.”
“Will Finn be an obstacle for you?”
I ease my hands into the back pockets of my jeans as we come to a stop where we’ll part ways, so I can catch my flight home. “Only if he remembers.” I rub my cheek. “I need to play him better. He’s tough to get a beat on.”
“SOS as soon as it looks like it’s going south, okay? Malik will drag himself out of bed to murder me if you’re hurt.”
Tears spring to my eyes again, and I glance away from her.
“We can still pull you out. You’ll disappear.”
I shake my head, scooping up the couple of tears that manage to sneak out. “No. No. I’m fine. It’s been a long few days.”
She observes me for a moment. “I will trust you know what you’re doing here.” She shakes her head.
“I know what I’m doing.” With that, I push open the door and head for the landing strip to catch a ride to Boston.
It’s late when I get back to the house, and Sean is at the entrance to greet me.
“I’m going to pretend I know where you’ve been because Lorcan will be pissed if he finds out you went out on your own without protection.”
“I was hired as a bodyguard.” I dig my hands into my pockets as I wait for Sean to open the front door.
“You know that doesn’t matter to him at this point.”
“Anything come up while I was gone?”
“Still don’t understand exactly what happened. Finn is holding steady at the hospital. Ian is off running down a lead. I’ve been here. Where were you?”
“Checking into what kind of helicopter could have landed, who might own one, and so forth. Nothing dangerous, don’t worry.”
Sean snorts. “I’m not worried. You’re cold as ice under pressure, but I don’t like lying to Lorcan when he calls in. Next time, take a guy with you or tell someone what you’re doing.”
“It’s been a bit hectic since last night.”
“No shit.” Sean stops at the juncture between Lorcan’s wing and Finn’s.
“I’m going to Lorcan’s office to take care of a few things. Come get me if anything changes.” I’m headed down the hall when Sean’s phrasing twigs with me. “He called you?”
“Yeah, maybe an hour ago? He’s on his way here. Should be home in the morning.”
“Did he say where he’d been?”
“Chasing a lead. Like you, he doesn’t tell me much.”
I give a curt nod and head down the hallway to Lorcan’s office door. For a minute, I replay the numbers I memorized. Am I doing this? Before I can second-guess myself again, I punch in the code and enter the office.
The distinctive scent of Lorcan, a mix of tangy cologne and sweat hits my senses. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, letting myself soak it in for a moment. Snapping my eyes open, I force myself into agent mode. Even if I’m not intent on turning him in, I need to know if he had a role in the deaths of Chad or my father.
For months, I’ve been eyeing a series of filing cabinets behind Lorcan’s desk on the right, pushed up against the wall. Derry’s comment about a paper trail sinking the relationship between the O’Malleys and the Donagheys plays in my head. Would there be something on paper for either murder? Seems unlikely, but other than outright asking Finn or Lorcan, I’m not sure how else to get the information.
Opening a filing cabinet, I see it’s coded according to business deals. I understand Lorcan’s short forms for the various different operations, and if I was still looking to dismantle his organization, this would be a gold mine. There are more pressing things to have answered now. Once I’ve checked the drawers in that one, I move to the next one.
This cabinet is in alphabetical order. I scan through the Ls for Lee. Ho-Jun or Chad would be listed under that name. There’s nothing. Almost afraid to look, I let my fingertips dance to the Hs. Henhawk, Axel. My breath catches in my throat at his name. My father.
My hand covers the folder, and I stare at the gray wall for a moment before pulling it out. Whatever is in here could change everything. Sinking into Lorcan’s desk chair, I set the file on the desk’s wooden surface, leaving it closed. I lock my hands together and then unlock them, squeezing my fingers. With a deep breath, I flip open the first section. The file is full of photos of my father, my mother, and a single photo of ten-year-old Kimi. I was fifteen when my father died, not ten. For some reason, Lorcan’s family was watching mine for a while.
As I flip through the photos, it’s clear they checked in with us once or twice a year. It’s unreal there are photos of me up to the age of fifteen in this file and neither brother realized it. At thirty, I haven’t changed enough for these photos to be unrecognizable.
I keep flipping, hoping I’ll come to information other than surveillance photos. There, on the back, is a handwritten note. I don’t recognize the scrawl, so it’s not from Finn or Lorcan. It lays out my father’s efforts to learn Irish and their suspicions he was trying to gather intelligence on them even as they gathered it on him.
Bile rises in my throat. My father knew the Donagheys were involved in Chad’s death, and he was seeking his own brand of vigilante justice. Did my mother know? Did she support this foolishness? A lone man, unconnected, unprotected, after a Mafia organization. It’s almost laughable.
Except it got him killed. So he must have been on to something they didn’t want uncovered.
The final note is the recommendation. Elimination.
My heart thuds in my chest at that word. Underneath it is an amendment. As per family policy, eliminating the daughter and wife is also recommended.
A shiver runs through me, and goose bumps spring up across my arms. Tucking my hair behind my ears, I read it again.
I’m not dead, and neither is my mother, so what happened?