56. Keaton （Skee）
Keaton (Skee)
The elevator doors haven't even finished closing before I unlock my phone. The notification expands across the screen.
Cormac O'Donnell
Alert triggered. Warehouse confirmed.
I don't stop walking.
The tracking program I installed on his system to alert us to anything related to Ronan opens automatically, pulling the coordinates from the alert before I even touch the screen.
A satellite image fills the display. South side of Chicago. An abandoned warehouse tucked between two vacant manufacturing buildings. One thermal signature entered three minutes ago. None have exited.
The system highlights the source that triggered the alert. Exactly where I designed it to. Exactly what I've been waiting for. For months, every camera, license plate reader, financial flag, and facial recognition alert I'd quietly tied together has run in the background, searching for one man.
Ronan Gallagher.
He'd vanished after Maeve left him. No credit cards. No phone. No digital footprint. Until now. My fingers move across the screen.
Fifteen minutes.
The reply comes back almost immediately.
Understood.
Nothing else. Nothing needs to be said. Cormac knows I'll come. I know he'll already be there.
The rest... We'll handle in person.
I smile despite myself. Not because the situation is funny. Because 3 months ago...Cormac O'Donnell would've put a bullet in me before letting me within fifty feet of his daughter.
Now...He's trusting me to stand beside him while we end the worst chapter of her life.
I slide the phone back into my pocket as the elevator reaches the lobby.
Outside, my truck waits exactly where I left it.
Fifteen minutes.
That's all Ronan Gallagher has left.
****
The warehouse smells like rust. Oil. Rain that's found its way through a roof no one has cared enough to repair.
Ronan is exactly where the alert said he'd be. His hands are zip-tied behind a steel chair. A single light hangs overhead, throwing hard shadows across the concrete floor.
He looks up when I step inside. Recognition flashes across his face. Then confusion.
"You." His lip curls. "Where's Maeve?"
I don't answer immediately. Instead, I pull another chair across the concrete and sit down in front of him. Not close enough to touch him. Close enough that he has to look at me.
"I've spent the last few months trying to understand where you made your first mistake."
Ronan laughs, the sound hollow inside the empty warehouse. "My first mistake?"
"I initially believed it was the isolation." I shake my head. "It wasn't." "I thought maybe it was the cameras." Another slow shake of my head. "Not that either."
He shifts against the restraints, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth like he's waiting for me to get to the point.
"It was the assumptions."
Silence settles between us.
"You assumed compliance meant loyalty." His smile fades. "You assumed fear meant respect." His jaw tightens. "You assumed silence meant agreement." I tilt my head slightly. "The data doesn't support any of those conclusions."
He scoffs. "You don't know a damn thing about marriage."
"No." I don't. "But I know patterns."
I lean forward slightly. "And every pattern you built relied on the same variable." His eyes narrow. "You believed you were the only person capable of defining her world."
He laughs again. "She would've come back."
"No."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"How?"
For the first time since walking into the warehouse, I look directly into his eyes. "Because she had the opportunity."
He doesn't answer.
"I never asked her to stay. I never asked her to choose me. I never asked her to love me."
The silence stretches.
"She just did."
Something shifts behind his eyes. Not anger. Not fear. Confusion. As though the possibility had genuinely never occurred to him.
I stand. "I've spent my entire life studying systems." I gesture vaguely around the warehouse. "They all fail eventually."
His eyes follow me. "But people..." A small smile finds its way onto my face before I can stop it. "...people choose."
I think about the apartment. About the bedroom. About the way Maeve still reaches for my hand without realizing she's doing it. About the way she kisses the corner of my mouth when she thinks I'm worrying too much.
"And every single day..." I meet his eyes one last time. "...Maeve chooses me."
I turn and walk out of the warehouse while Ronan starts screaming behind me.
When I step outside my eyes find Cormac’s. “Not a word to Maeve.”
He hesitates for just a minute before giving me a small nod. “Not a word.”
****
The apartment is quiet when I unlock the door. A movie plays softly from the television. Maeve is asleep on the couch beneath the blanket she insists belongs there instead of folded over the armrest.
She stirs when the door clicks shut.
Green eyes blink open. "There you are."
I smile. "Here I am."
She sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Everything okay?"
I cross the room before answering. Then crouch in front of her, resting my hands lightly over hers.
I've rehearsed this conversation a hundred different ways. Every version sounds ridiculous. Too dramatic. Too little. Too much. In the end...The truth is the only thing that makes sense.
"I've reached a conclusion."
She smiles immediately. "That sounds serious."
"It is." I take a slow breath. "I've spent the last several months collecting evidence."
Her smile grows. "Oh?"
"I've reviewed it repeatedly."
"I don't doubt that."
"I attempted to find an alternative explanation."
"And?"
"I couldn't."
She brushes her thumb across my knuckles. "What did your investigation discover?"
I look into the green eyes that somehow became home. "My favorite place isn't this apartment." She waits. "It's wherever you are."
My throat tightens.
"I love you, Maeve."
The words are strangely easy once they're finally free.
"I don't believe there's a statistical model capable of measuring how completely you've changed my life."
A tear slips down her cheek. She laughs as she wipes it away.
"I love you too..." Her fingers slide into mine. "...Taibhse."
My fingers tighten around hers. For months, I'd believed the greatest flaw in every system was trust. Standing in front of the woman who somehow managed to rewrite every conclusion I'd ever reached… I realize I'd been measuring the wrong variable all along. It was never trust.
It was choice.
Every day...Maeve chooses me. And for the rest of my life...I'll make sure she never regrets that decision.