Chapter 41
KATE
The second night is harder than the first.
Cole brings back pizza, but I barely manage to choke down a slice. Cole eats two, and we give the rest to the Sawgrass men in the break room.
Mam has called half a dozen times, leaving increasingly unhinged messages.
At first, she claims to fear the Dogfight will start again, that the Canton Crew will be blamed for Tarasov’s kidnapping in broad daylight.
By the end of this second day, though, she’s telling her own truth: “I’m getting a migraine, I’m so worried about Niki. ”
Nothing about Da. Nothing about the Canton Crew. Certainly nothing about me.
When I hear her confession, I go online, searching for a website for the Forge and Anchor, the pub Robbie Malloy is said to visit in Donegal.
I find one, but it looks like it was last updated twenty years ago.
An Irish jig starts playing through my speakers as the single page loads.
An Eircom email address is printed at the bottom of the page, bright green text on a dark green background.
I can’t believe the address is still good. But the letter I posted to Malloy has gone unanswered. It can’t hurt to try reaching him online. I send an email, short and to the point:
I urgently need to reach Robbie Malloy about a matter that may cost Lynch men their lives.
With Mam lost, the Irish enforcer might be my only hope of saving my clan.
After I send the email, I try to get comfortable in my chair, using my fleece blanket as a pillow. When that doesn’t work, I shove keyboards aside and lean forward on the table. An hour later, I give up and sit on the floor, back against the wall, resting my head on my knees.
Sometime after midnight, Cole sits beside me.
He wedges his back in the corner of the room and pulls me onto his lap.
It’s still not an easy position—neither one of us is close to sleeping—but I take comfort in the steady thump of his heartbeat beneath my cheek. His chin rests on the crown of my head.
“What if we don’t break him?” I finally ask.
“We will.”
“But what if it’s not in time?” And when Cole doesn’t answer, I add, “What if the decree becomes final?”
“It’s a fucking piece of paper,” he says. “It doesn’t change a thing.”
But it does. It changes the world. “If Tarasov gets out of here, he’ll use it against us.
He’ll get his hands on me—don’t tell me he can’t!
He’ll pay some doctor to say I’m insane.
Or he’ll buy off his feckin’ priest, same as Pyotr did to get Breagha.
He’ll marry me and he’ll lock me in his fort on Butchers Hill and he’ll—”
Cole’s thumb is heavy on my lips. “He has to get through me to do any of that.” Shifting his weight, he wraps his arms around me more tightly. “You’re exhausted. Close your eyes. Get some sleep. We’ll break the motherfucker in the morning.”
We’ve been in this observation room forever. The Georgetown house feels like it’s on another planet. I know we have a bedroom there. I know we have the dungeon. But I can’t remember how any of it looks or smells or feels.
When I close my eyes, I can’t picture Nilsson’s face. Anna’s either. If Granny called me on my phone right now, I’m not sure I could recognize her voice.
I want to believe Cole. I have to believe him.
But in my heart, I’m terrified he’s wrong.