EIGHT
THE CLOSER THEY got to the city, the harder her heart pumped. The increasing darkness cocooned them, deepening with each minute that passed. Welcome darkness. Night meant activity, meant hope. The people she needed to see, the man she needed to see, thrived in the dark.
“Where am I going?” Strat asked from the driver’s seat. “Yours, mine, the cop’s—”
“I’ll take Dad back to mine,” Lachlan said. “We need to talk.”
Have at it. She’d gone beyond her tolerance level for “alone” with their father. Lachlan deserved his own stretch. There would be a lot they’d want to say to each other that she didn’t need to hear. Besides she wanted to get alone with Strat. And alone with her guy, wherever he was.
“That’s your old place, right?” Strat asked and she nodded.
“You live with him? McDade?” Ronald demanded with pure outrage. “Permanently?”
“That’s a good way to define it, yes.”
Her jaw pushed forward. All she had to do was get through a few more minutes. Thank God she wasn’t armed. Though the club, Stag’s basement, sprang to mind. What would her guy do to get some time alone down there with the good superintendent? What would she do for the same? If any of her people, those that knew her, were in there… God, she needed them to be.
Conn told her she’d never be refused entry to Stag again. What if he was gone? What happened then? Would whoever assumed control grant her access? Would she ever know the truth? This was what she did. Inhaling determination, she had to hold on, couldn’t lose it, not yet. Not until he was with her, until they were together again.
“Every minute I learn—”
“You don’t learn, Dad,” she said on a sigh. “You haven’t learned. Still you sit there judging me. How is me living with the man I love worse than you selling out every citizen of this city?”
“You believe the McDades deserved to win that vote; that their vision for our home was better. I believe the Manzani vision is more appealing.”
“Is there anything you don’t tell yourself to justify your betrayal? You sold your soul to the devil for nothing.”
“What did you sell yours for?”
“Ask me again tomorrow.”
Strat stopped the car at their destination, which couldn’t have come quick enough.
Lachlan’s head appeared between them from the backseat. “You staying with her tonight?”
“I’m staying with Conn tonight,” she said before Strat could answer.
“Checking you’ll be safe, sister, not trying to chase you off your hunt.” He kissed her cheek quick. “We’ll get you a phone tomorrow.”
“You can call Strat if you need me. He’ll know where I am.”
“Yeah, I’ve figured that out about him.” Her brother actually smacked Strat’s shoulder like they were buds. “Keep me in the loop.” Her brother urged Ronald out. “Let’s go.”
They sat there in the car, her and Strat, even after father and son had gone inside.
“You sure you want to do this tonight?” Strat asked. “It’s late.”
“The club’ll be open.”
“I know—”
“No, I mean…” Her focus tracked to him. “I need the club first. Please.”
Her sanctuary. The place he’d taken her to find her equilibrium when she’d spiraled before. Without question, Strat peeled away from the curb.
“If he’s hurt bad—”
“I can handle it.”
“You gonna let me finish a sentence?”
Sealing her lips, she pushed them to the side. Yes, adrenaline coursed through her. Fear, hope, anger, need, so much of it swirled in her veins, she couldn’t settle on exactly how to feel.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Okay. We have to think about this is all. If he’s hurt bad, he won’t be anywhere the other families can get word about it.”
Because losing Conn damaged the family. Weakened their position, unless someone else had taken the wheel. Conn would want the family strong. Any inference of the opposite would stoke his short temper.
“No,” she murmured. “They’d keep him out of view, off the streets. Only those closest to him would know…”
Not only where he was, but how bad he’d been hurt. She couldn’t say the latter out loud, it might jinx them. If she believed in that. Her faith in the man and the myth ran deep.
“Step by step,” Strat said. “We take this one step at a time.”
Yes, good, she could handle that. “After Ronald and me left your parking lot, you went to the club?”
“I went to the loft, where you were supposed to be, where Ire was supposed to be.”
Where they had been until her father’s call. Would she ever forgive herself for dragging Conn along?
“You couldn’t get in.”
“So I went to the club. Was closed by then. A ghost town.”
“Could be everyone was just asleep.”
“Maybe, I didn’t feel like breaking in to find out.”
“Then you went to Lach…”
“If you were in trouble, in danger, Ire would fucking gut me for not going to him first. When I couldn’t find him… any of them…”
She squeezed his arm. “Conn wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
“Sure, that’s why he took a bullet for you. Thing is, if he’s off the table, who’s around to look out for you? You can be damn annoying, Scamp. Sometimes I want to shoot you too.”
They rode a couple of blocks without words. Whatever thoughts he was lost in, she could only stick on one.
“He can’t be dead. I’d know if he was dead, right? I’d feel it?”
“Yeah,” Strat said. “One fucking bullet’s not gonna take down a guy like Ire McDade.”
“But with his cousin, Biz, the bullshit he’s pulling with the Manzanis… What if they come for him? If he can’t defend himself—”
“Think about it,” he said and turned on the radio. “If Ire McDade had been found dead in your grandfather’s house, fuck, it would be everywhere. The guy accused of murdering the alderman is taken down in the same building? Shit, Scamp. And there’s you, granddaughter and girlfriend of the victims, gone.”
“Does that make me like a black widow or something?”
“It’s newsworthy. I don’t have to tell you, this is what you do every day. You telling me if you were outside this situation looking in, that you wouldn’t want it? You wouldn’t think there’d be a story to tell.”
“There is a story to tell. My father’s been trying to get me to tell it his way all week.”
“Point is, Scamp, if Ire died the night you left, if he died in that room, we’d know it.”
“All week my dad kept the TV off. I had no way to know if it was in the papers.”
“I’m telling you it wasn’t,” he said. “Yeah, me and the cop were on your tail, trying to track you down, but we were paying enough attention to know that. You and Ire’s names are linked now. Even if the world doesn’t know it, we do.”
She tried to take solace in that. “If they found him after he was gone, his people, they’d get him out of there. They wouldn’t let him be found like that, not to be a public spectacle.”
“You talked about it?” Strat asked. “What’s the contingency plan?”
“Closest we got to one of those was Conn making it damn clear he’d hurt anyone who tried to hurt me.”
And him saying she would never go before him, that he simply wouldn’t let it happen. Too bad she couldn’t deliver on the same promise for him.
“If the way you tell it’s right, he backed that up by taking a bullet for you.”
“Yeah, but don’t you see how frustrating that is? He has that power, those resources, what the hell have I got?”
“You think the McDades’ll shun you? If Ire’s gone, you lose that connection, that army?”
“Depends who takes his place,” she said and squeezed her eyes closed. “No talk of that, we’re being optimistic here.”
“Okay. So let’s say he’s alive. His people got in there, discovered him bleeding, then what? What’s the first thing they do?”
“Call Niall. He wasn’t there. None of our usual people were there.”
“So none of the guys on the street had the authority or smarts to figure it out. Okay, that’s good.”
“How is that good? That means they wasted time. Valuable time. What if they couldn’t get Niall on the phone? What if they waited for him to arrive?”
“They’ve gotta have a plan, a procedure, for what happens when McDades are hurt.”
Like a SOP. They weren’t exactly a corporation with an employee handbook.
“They have a doctor on their ledger,” she said. “When Daly was hurt, he rested up at the doctor’s.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know. I asked to visit Daly. Conn wouldn’t let me. I don’t know where the doc is, if he’s in McDade territory, or even in the damn city.”
He eased her hand from her leg, extricating her nails from the denim marked by her infuriation.
“We’ll get this. We’ll figure it out. Trust me.”
“You know you don’t have to do this. All of this, any of this. You don’t—”
“Yeah, ‘cause you’d walk away from me if the situation was reversed.” He flashed her a smile. “I’m in this. No matter how it turns out, I’m with you.”
“You better be because I’ll need a place to sleep.”
Strat laughed. “Better warn my daughter in advance this time.”
“How is she? Have you talked to Jagg?”
“My family drama’s got nothing on yours. You think Ire’s at this doctor’s?”
“I’m hoping he’s at the club, or at the loft. Someone will have to give us answers, won’t they?”
“If we get in.” His eyes cut to hers, mirroring her thoughts. “If he’s in the driver’s seat, you snap your fingers, you get what you want.”
“Then we’re fine.”
“Okay,” he said, bobbing his head in understanding. “If you’re confident, I’m confident.”
Cool air passed her lips, one breath, two. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“If Conn’s in charge, if he’s okay…”
“How come the McDades didn’t storm that motel room and take out your father?”
“Maybe he blames me,” she said. Funny that it would actually be better for Conn to be mad at her than not. Mad meant alive. “My father shot him, maybe he’s pissed at me too.”
“Did Ire say anything? After it happened? How bad was it?”
“There was blood. All I saw was the blood. On his chest.”
The slight press of Strat’s lips betrayed his concern. “That’s not a good area.”
“I put pressure on the wound, I tried to—it wouldn’t stop bleeding—didn’t and—my father ordered me away, cuffed us both. Me in the corner. Conn to the damn couch. I tried to keep him talking, tried to…” The memory stung her eyes and her temples. Pain. That’s what it was. Horror and devastation. “He spoke to me, like he does, in fucking Gaelic, so I can’t understand it.”
“Why would he—”
“It’s what he does, it’s…” Her inhale became a shaky staccato. “I can’t understand the words, but I always know what he’s saying.” The truth was hail on her sensitive skin. “He was saying goodbye.”
A double take. “Why the fuck—he thought he was a goner? Why wouldn’t he just say—because your father was in the room?”
“I love him, I would do anything for him. If he isn’t… If we find out he’s…”
“I know, Scamp. I know.”