Page 12 of The Irish Redemption

Cormac grunts. “You’re in the perfect line of work, then.”

“Sort of.” It’s all I can think of to say. My stomach writhes like a nest of snakes as the awkward conversation falls into a lull, but my feet don’t obey my desire to leave. I watch Cormac pour a full glass and then drain it in two gulps. He couldn't have been asleep long if I saw the other glass fall. I watch him pour another, then he glances at me again.

“Do you drink?”

“A little. Though maybe not right now.”

“I shouldn’t drink either,” he replies, lifting the glass. “Shouldn’t do a lot of things.”

As he drinks, it suddenly hits me why there’s something oddly familiar about this. My mother, as cold and distant as she was, had a period of drowning herself in wine after the death of my father. It made my teen years terribly painful, but the way Cormac bunches himself up as if trying to make himself small and drinks like the burn in medicine… It's familiar.

He’s grieving.

“That man,” I say softly, taking a cautious step forward. “He was important to you, wasn’t he?” Previously, I worried that Cormac was the killer, or someone around him was. His earlier desire to kill me would make sense if he wanted to hide what I knew. But I see it now.

He wears grief on his wrist like the ink on his arm. It’s just smothered in anger.

“He was my brother,” Cormac replies finally, his words ejecting from him in sharp bursts. “Family.” That word cracks out of him, and Cormac lifts his glass, but it doesn’t meet his lips. A subtle shudder moves through his entire form.

I’ve seen a lot at that motel over the years, and I know the signs of someone in pain. Closing the gap once more, I lightly touch his arm, and he jumps ever so slightly, but he doesn’t pull away. The glass lowers and he sends me a side-long glance.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say softly. For a moment, staring into those blue eyes, I choose to forget the kidnapping and the threats just to let him know that I am sorry. My description of what I saw in the bathroom takes on a colder truth when I realize I was describing this man’s brother.

Cormac holds my gaze, then his eyes narrow ever so faintly. “You should be telling me to go fuck myself.”

“Maybe,” I reply softly. “But I am still sorry about your brother.”

There’s a second where the world stops spinning, my heart stops beating, and a pulse of warmth rises between us. I can’t decipher its meaning. Maybe it’s just adrenaline from everything that’s been happening or a mixture of fear and something else.

Something like attraction.

Whatever it is, it passes in a split second before the door opens and the man who dragged me in from the car walks in. His brow lifts likehe’s surprised to see me, and Cormac draws away from me as he turns.

“What is it, Hank?”

“Your mother,” Hank says, and he holds out a phone.

Cormac accepts it, then glances at the silver watch on his wrist. “Hank, get Evelyn a change of clothes.” He glances back at me, and the hardened coldness has returned to his eyes. “Time for you to plant a little bug.”

5

CORMAC

“Do you have anything?”

My mother’s sharp tones pull my thoughts away from Evelyn as I stare after her, watching her meekly follow after Hank. What was that sensation that passed between us? Her touch was so gentle, so alien compared to what I deserve. Especially after what I’m putting her through.

Confusion swirls like fog in my gut, so I push it down and stride toward the windows overlooking a city on the cusp of waking up.

“I have the witness who found Brenden.”

“And?” Mom demands. “Do they have anything useful?”

“No,” I sigh. “But I can use them to get us to someone who will have something useful.”

“Good.” She pauses heavily, and her voice is softer when she next speaks. “I called your father. I wanted to let him know about Brenden but he… well, you can imagine. He didn’t know who I was, never mind his own son.”

An older shard of pain embedded in my heart sinks in a little deeper at the thought of my father. In my youth, he was a vibrant and loyal man, but sickness stole him away from us and that pain knows no end. Early-onset dementia quickly spiraled into Alzheimer’s. One morning, I woke up and the man I called my father was just an empty shell, unrecognizable even to my mother who had spent nearly her entire life with him. We made the decision to send him back to Ireland, hoping that being around his childhood scenery would help soothe his soul.

---