Page 99 of Her Irish Savage

Oona tsks again. But then she says, “Talk to Paddy. Tell him the truth. Together, you’ll stop him.”

“How?” This time, I can’t keep my voice low.

“Talk to Paddy,” she says one more time. “You’ll figure it out together.”

“If I could fucking talk to?—”

“That’ll be three Our Fathers,” Oona says serenely. “And three Hail Marys. Go in peace,coinín beag.”

She leaves before I do. I sit back on the hard wooden bench and try to figure out how to track down Patrick.

What I can possibly say to make him forgive me.

How I can get him to help me before it’s too late.

42

PATRICK

Idon’t know what makes me finally wake up and smell the feckin’ coffee.

Maybe it’s pure exhaustion. Without Fiona’s body to sedate the goddamn brain squirrels, I haven’t slept more than two hours at a time in weeks.

Maybe it’s handing over my credit card for yet another week of staying at the hotel. I hate these four walls. My clothes are tangled on the floor of the closet. The cheap snacks I’ve pretended are meals tumble on top of the dresser. I’m sick of drinking Jameson out of a white plastic cup that looks like it’s made to hold piss samples at a doctor’s office.

Maybe it’s the report Cole Wolf has finally compiled, two weeks after I hired him. I drive down to DC to pick up the encrypted thumb drive he made because I won’t chance it to any courier. As he walks me through what he’s captured—thousands and thousands of phone records, computer files, andtranscribed notes of in-person meetings—I wonder if Wolf ever sleeps.

Because he’s delivered proof that Aran Dowd is pure sin.

Sure, the feds have the fecker on Crash distribution. With enhanced sentencing for endangering the lives of minors, they can send him to prison for the rest of his natural life.

But Dowd is singing like Maria Von Trapp in the Austrian hills. He’s already handed over the Crew’s entire banking system—everything Fiona and I learned from Q, all the offshore accounts, all the crypto. The feds have access to every new deposit, to each withdrawal Dowd’s made “for the good of the clan.”

He’s given them the Old Colony’s structure too—Clan Chief and Warlord and Quartermaster, the brigades of sworn soldiers, and runners who are still being tested. The feds keep pressing for specific names; they have long lists of candidates. Dowd’s resistance is shredding like the roof of a thatched hut in the middle of a category five hurricane.

And the feds are leaning hard to get the same structure on every other clan in the country. Whenever Dowd gets cagy about his own crew, Michelangelo Barbieri switches to asking questions about the others.

I’m ready to boke when I finish going through all the garbage Wolf’s raked up. I thank him and I authorize a bank transfer into his account with more zeroes than I’ve ever spent in one place. At least my personal banking hasn’t been handed over to the feds. Yet.

When I get back to Philly, I place one call: To Doc Kelleher. He tells me to come by direct, and he gives me a month’s worth of meds from the stash in his office. He says he’ll email the drugstore up in Boston, get the scrip on record for the coming year.

I dry-swallow the pills on my way back to the hotel. It takes me five minutes to throw my things into bags. Fifteen to argue with the clerk at the front desk, asking for a refund for the restof the week, the days I paid for yesterday. He can’t give me any satisfaction, but we agree to let the manager decide things overnight.

I spend the night in a Boston hotel room that’s a clone of the one I left in Philly. I can’t say I sleep well—my body still misses Fiona’s—but I wake feeling calmer than I have in weeks. More focused. Like I’m the one calling the shots instead of the feckin’ squirrels.

Must be the meds.

Showered and dressed, I’m ready to drive to one of the big box stores on the edge of town. I need a computer to handle all the data Wolf’s found because there’s no way to plug the encrypted drive into my phone. Once I have a decent machine, I can start the hard work of reading every page of evidence. Of building a case that will take down Aran Cocksucking Dowd forever.

But there’s one stop I need to make first. One part of my life that isn’t the mob, that has nothing to do with the Old Colony Crew.

The tables are already set up outside Yankee Roast. Three people are in line at the counter, taking their time choosing their breakfast treats. Hannah Mulroney is at the register, her young face breaking into easy smiles as she rings up each customer.

Kimi’s nowhere in sight.

When I get to the front of the line, I order a cup of drip coffee and a blueberry-corn muffin. I have my wallet ready, and I tip more than the total for my meal. Hannah’s already looking past me to the next customer when I ask, “Is Kimi in the back?”

Hannah stiffens for just a moment, like the sole of her shoe rolled over a sharp stone. Recovering quickly, she says, “Kimberly’s a little under the weather today.”

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