Page 58 of Her Irish Savage

I don’t realize how sore I am until I head to the kitchen. My shoulders ache like some giant tried to pull them from their sockets. My thighs protest every step I take down the hallway. The soles of my feet ache, like I spent all of yesterday wearing my highest heels.

He has a lot to answer for, Patrick Motherfucking Mor?—

There’s a note on the counter, pinned under a corner of the coffee maker.

Gone to get coffee.

Don’t forget to send your account info.

P

His burner sits next to the empty bag of dark roast beans.

Patrick isn’t gone.

My fingers shake as I dig in the bowl on the counter, shoving aside the menus, digging beneath the pens and notepads. At the very bottom is a fake leather wallet. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check, but the account numbers are printed there, like some ancient computer spit them out at the dawn of time.

Patrick isn’t gone.

The burner phone doesn’t have a password, so I go straight to the text screen. I find the message from Rónnad’s phone.Carefully, double-checking before I hit Send,I type in the numbers for my account.

Patrick isn’t gone.

My knees are doing something tricky. I’m not sure I can stay on my feet. I need to sit down before I fall down.

Patrick isn’t gone.

I hear footsteps on the stairs. A key in the lock. I look up, and he’s framed in the doorway, his silvering hair scrambled like it’s windy outside. He’s carrying a grocery bag in one hand and a box of donuts in the other.

“You’re awake,” he says.

I nod.

“I picked up a few things,” he says.

I nod again.

“Did you send the account number?”

I nod one more time and finally make myself speak: “No word back from her yet.” My voice sounds like I’ve just inhaled an entire box of saltines.

My phone is in the bedroom, charging on the nightstand, which gives me a convenient excuse to escape Patrick’s curious gaze. I take longer than I need to, retrieving my cell, and when I come back to the kitchen Patrick is almost through loading groceries into the fridge. There’s cheddar cheese, the white kind that’s so sharp my mouth waters when I look at the package. Perfectly round apples, their red peels speckled with gold. A bag of bright orange clementines, pushing against their red netting. He leaves a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate squares on the counter.

Blushing for no good reason, I sign into my bank account and tap the screen to check my balance. There’s no change—just the couple of hundred dollars I expect to see.

I refresh the screen. Again. Again.

The balance changes.

“Holy shit,” I say.

Patrick looks up from the ground coffee he’s loading into the machine. “What?”

“She did it.” I blink several times, as if that might make the numbers disappear. “She actually fucking did it.”

One hundred thousand dollars. A pending deposit from an anonymous string of letters and numbers.

Patrick holds out his hand. Once I give him my phone, he drags his fingers across the glass, zooming out to make the numbers bigger. He shakes his head, like he doesn’t really believe what he’s seeing.

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