Page 14 of Her Irish Savage

The coffee is hot and sweet, charged with enough sugar that I can pretend it’s a meal.

But I have a few things I need to take care of, before we can hit the road.

6

PATRICK

Fiona Ingram is a girl who is used to getting her way.

She wants to pile all of Madden’s clothes in his bathtub, douse them with cooking oil, and set them alight with a match.

I tell her no.

She wants to call the local cops, report a man who looks like Madden lurking by an elementary school, say he’s jerking off near the kids.

I tell her no.

She wants to take her red Mini Cooper and drive all the way to Boston, with me riding shotgun in that tin can.

I tell her no feckin’ way.

But I agree to call Rory O’Hare and have him park the Mini out at his place. And she agrees to pack. She’s quick and efficient, filling just a pair of suitcases and a backpack. She eats both slices of toast I make for her. She sees the logic in wearing my clothes for the long drive north, not forcing her bruised bodyinto her usual dominatrix gear. Once we’re back in my car, she only tries to change the radio once, before I tell her we’re listening to classic jazz.

She harrumphs, which makes me crank the music. That turns out to be a good thing, because Fiona Ingram isn’t much of a talker.

What do I know? Maybe she usually has a lot to say. Just not when her father’s dropped dead in the middle of the night. Or when her eejit of a boyfriend beat her bloody. Or when she’s feeling kidnapped by a mob enforcer she’d never spoken to twenty-four hours ago.

I keep an eye on her while I drive, using the passenger-side mirror so she doesn’t feel like an animal in a zoo. The ice and the arnica worked wonders. Her eyes are still puffy, like she’s coming off a twenty-four-hour crying jag, and her lip is scabbed over where it split on Madden’s fist. She’s got a constellation of black and purple and deep dark green around both bloodshot eyes. But she looks a hell of a lot better than I thought possible when I found her on the floor last night.

Half an hour outside of Boston, we pass bright blue signs for a rest area. “Pull over here,” Fiona says, like I’m a feckin’ cab driver.

But she shouldn’t have to beg for a chance to piss. And I wouldn’t mind stretching my own legs before we get to Southie. So I negotiate the lane changes and guide us through a crowded parking lot. The car falls silent, my ears still ringing with Miles’ trumpet askingSo What?

Fiona climbs out and swings her backpack over both shoulders. “I’ll be a few minutes.”

I nod and open my own door. My spine pops as I unfold from the driver’s seat. My knees register a protest when I straighten my legs. My arse has fallen asleep, and I get a stitch in my side when I stretch.

There was a time when an uninterrupted five-hour drive was just a warm-up. I could make a midnight run to North Carolina,fill a truck with cigarettes, and get home before noon. I’d sleep a few hours in the truck, then spend a night drinking and whoring at Mimi’s place, getting back to my apartment just in time to watch the sunrise.

Getting old’s a bitch.

There’s a reason Warlords are supposed to sit in offices and manage naive young enforcers who’ll do just about anything to become made men.

A minivan pulls into the space next to mine. Before the harried guy behind the wheel can cut the engine, both side doors glide open. Half a dozen ankle-biters spill out, dressed in identical green-and-white uniforms. Three boys start kicking around a football—soccer, I know they’d call it. The other three pound toward a water fountain like zebras at a watering hole. They’re shouting loud enough to wake the dead, their voices sharp and clear like wrens.

I tell myself I’m grateful I don’t have to wrangle the pack. But I don’t believe a word of it.

Athawn would be just a few years younger than the man driving the team. If Athawn had survived being cut out of my dying wife. If I’d had only one body to bury, not two. Three, if I count my own mam, all in the space of one week.

Boston’s plucking at my brainstem like a kid stripping wings off a butterfly. For all I know, if my son had lived, he might refuse to coach kids sport. He might be setting his roots as a doctor or a lawyer, too busy to launch a family. He might be?—

Christ.

He’s gone, and his mother, and my mother too, and there’s no use dreaming otherwise. No use thinking things would be different if I’d kept away from the Crew in the first place, if Da’d never done the things he did, if I’d grabbed Jenn’s keys before she could drive off in a fit of rage and disappointment.

Fuck Boston.

Fuck the Crew.

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