Chapter 5
Logan
Taking a moment to rein in my instinct to take Nuala straight to Connor, I take a right instead of a left.
“What’s your name?” she whispers.
I frown, realizing she has no idea who I am except an O’Neill. “Logan. Logan O’Neill.” Ex-father Logan O’Neill.
“Fionnuala Quinn,” she mutters.
“Pretty name. Related to James Quinn?”
She shakes her head, staring out of the window. “I didn’t do this.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know who did this.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you abducting me?”
“I’m not abducting you, Nuala.” I glance in the rear view mirror and debate my next action. Truth over lie by omission wins. “We are being tailed. Whoever did that, knows you are still alive and can potentially identify them.”
“Tailed?” she asks, her eyes wide as she turns around to stare at the back.
“I wasn’t sure until that last turn. Now I am.”
“How are you so calm?” she says, facing front again and sliding lower into the bucket seat.
“Panicking helps no one. Especially in this life.”
“This life. I’m not in this life. I was in my own life, and I want to go back there.”
“To die?”
“You don’t know they’re following me. No one saw me. I was in the toilet with a dead woman.”
My head snaps to the side. “Dead woman?”
She nods absently. The shock that was descending in the club has pulled back, but now she is struggling to process, possibly in denial.
“Who?” I demand. I check the rearview. The lights behind us flare brighter. They are close. Too close.
“I don’t know,” Nuala stammers. She looks at me, eyes wide and tracking the road. “She came in earlier for the banker’s meeting. When I was on lunch, she came back for her notebook. She was frantic. Then she was just... sitting there. Dead on the toilet.”
“On the toilet or on the toilet?” I ask.
She glares at me. “Sitting on the toilet lid.”
“Like she was hiding?”
Nuala blinks and looks away again. “Maybe, who knows?”
I glance in the rear view mirror again. “Hold on.”
I wrench the wheel hard to the right. The tires bite into the tarmac. I cut across the nose of a delivery truck. The horn blasts, a long, angry note. I gun the engine, and the Porsche shoots forward.
Nuala gasps, her knuckles white on the door handle. “You maniac!”
I check the mirror. The truck blocks the lanes behind us. The tail is stuck.
“Lost them,” I say. I ease off the gas, blending into the flow of traffic on the secondary road.
“You nearly caused a crash,” she accuses, pressing her back against the door.
“He has brakes.” I glance at her. She looks small in the seat, hugging that bag to her chest. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long was she sitting there, dead?”
“How should I know?” she squawks. “I’m not a fucking forensic expert!”
I sigh. “What I mean is, what time did you last see her alive?”
“Oh,” Nuala mutters. “Around twelve thirty, maybe? I don’t really know. After twelve, before one.”
“Good,” I say, changing my tone to one more soothing. The one Father Logan would use. “That’s good, Nuala.”
Her shoulders slump, and she leans her head against the window.
“Did she have the notebook with her?”
“On the toilet? No.” Her tone is flat. She is shutting down. Fast.
“So, she was killed for it? How did they off her?”
“Off her?” she turns to me. “Off her?”
I shrug. At least it brought her to again, if only to be appalled at my use of language.
“Strangled, I think. There was a line across her neck.”
Garrote. Sounds like she was placed on the toilet as opposed to sitting there when she died.
“I don’t know. I don’t… know.” She lets out an ugly sob, and I feel bad. But it tells me one thing. She isn’t acting. She truly has no part in this. She is lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, or she would be dead.
“Did you look in the notebook?” I ask carefully.
She shakes her head.
Dammit.
“Anyone else see?”
“I don’t know.”
I kill the headlights and slip off the main road into a side street.
I cut through a housing estate, then back out to the canal.
The water runs black in the dark. I take the ramp into an underground car park and stop in a space that isn’t marked.
I sit there a beat, checking the mirrors. Nothing moves.
“Out,” I say.
She clutches her bag tighter. “Where are we?”
“Safe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” I hit the locks and get out.
I circle to her side and open her door. She hesitates.
I hook a hand under her elbow and pull her up.
She staggers, legs shaky, but she keeps moving with me to the elevator.
Tendrils of blonde hair have escaped her bun, and I resist the urge to curl them back behind her ear.
She glares at the chrome. “You live here?”
“No.”
The elevator doors close, and she flinches at the small space. Her breath comes fast. I put myself between her and the door, crowding her a little on purpose. She focuses on me instead of the walls. It works.
“You got your phone?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Give.”
Suspicion spikes. “No.”
“They can track it.” I hold out my hand. “You want them at your door?”
Her jaw works. She digs it out and slaps it into my palm. The screen is spiderwebbed. I turn it off and drop it, bringing my foot down heavily on it.
She flinches. “That’s my only phone.”
“I’ll get you another.” The doors open. I scoop up the phone and pocket it.
We step into a concrete corridor. No signage. No cameras that anyone can see. I lead her down to a steel door with a coded lock and punch in the numbers. Inside is a short hall and a second door. I open it and usher her into a small flat. One room, a kitchenette, a couch, a table. Clean. Bare.
She hangs back. “Whose place?”
“Ours.” I deadbolt the door and slide a chair under the handle. Overkill looks like paranoia until it saves your life. I move to the window and open it. Pulling out the phone, I fling it into the canal. I hear the splash and close the window.
Nuala hovers by the wall, hugging her bag. The white shirt is wrinkled, with a smear of something down the front. Her eyes track me as I move. Skittish but stubborn.
“Sit,” I say.
She doesn’t.
I point at the couch. “Sit, Nuala.”
She drops onto the edge of it like she’s ready to spring. Her hands twist in the strap of the tote.
She shoots me a look, like she expects shackles. I sigh and take my jacket off, keeping the gun in reach.
“You’re safe,” I say. “Door’s triple locked. Only I have the code. Anyone who comes through that door doesn’t leave.”
“Comforting,” she deadpans.
“Go clean up,” I push. “You’re in shock. Wash your face. Breathe. There’s a bathroom through there.”
She stares at me like I’ve asked her to walk into traffic. Then she stands, moves like a puppet with tangled strings, and disappears into the narrow bathroom.
I give it ten seconds, then start moving. I check the peephole. Nothing. I check the windows, and then I wait for Nuala.