I processed that a moment, realizing it had to be the only choice, and nodded at last. While I was used to handling things on my own, our in-house crime-solving family rather notorious for keeping outsiders from our business, involving the FBI was likely the only way out for Olivia and, maybe, could finally mean the end to the O’Sheas once and for all.
“There’s still a chance I’ll do federal time,” Olivia said then, barely above a whisper. “I contacted Eve and, at the same time, your father.” So, Dad was in on this. I knew it. “He put me in touch with Crew’s old partner, Agent Michaud.” Ah, the traitor circle was complete. Hardly a surprise, I’d suspected as much, but sheesh on a cracker.
They were getting their collective butts kicked for keeping me out of it.
“I’m sorry I asked them to exclude you.” She did what now? I gaped at Olivia who waved off my silent protest with both flapping mittens. “Not that I don’t trust you, Fee. I do. But I knew you’d poke your nose in and this was an FBI thing and I regretted even asking your father. I wanted as few people to know as possible. It was already out of hand. So I begged him to keep you in the dark. Begged Crew. And they finally agreed. Please believe me, they argued against it. So don’t be angry with them.” She inhaled a long, deep breath before letting it out. “It was likely just an irrational request anyway. I can’t keep this bottled up. Someone is going to find out and I’m going to either end up dead or in prison for the rest of my life.”
Defeatist or what?
I pushed past the resentment I felt that kept her silent. “And all that crap about needing my help when the time came? That you had a plan?” Clearly a distraction tactic.
This time when Olivia leaned forward and placed her hand on my shoulder, her sincerity held me still. “I meant every word,” she said. “I knew when the time came you would be my last hope, Fee. You and that busybody nature and curiosity that gets you almost killed regularly and always, always somehow comes through would come through for me.” She did cry then, weeping silently, stirring my compassion so I held her hand in response. “But I don’t think there’s going to be a Hail Mary for me, Fee. I think this is it and I’ve done it to myself. No one, not even you, can get me out of this.”
“So why are you here, now, telling me this?” I met Eve’s eyes, her sardonic lip-twist.
“I insisted,” she said. “There’s never been a reason to keep you in the dark.”
“Then why tell me to mind my own business?” I shot that back at the O’Shea who looked startled, then laughed out loud.
“I meant Jameson,” she said. “My former fiancé. Not this mess. This? I need your help with this.”
Oh. Okay then.
“I’m doing everything I can to take over my family,” she said. “I’m next in line, my father’s passing last year, well.” So, was that the reason she’d returned to the game? “My brothers are, shall we say, a bit heavy-handed and not so bright.” Great, bullies with no morals and people to do their bidding. And guns, Fee. Don’t forget the guns. “I’m working with the FBI undercover. My goal has always been to change our way of being. To turn our family to legitimate endeavors. The agents we’re working with have assured me immunity if I follow through in delivering my brothers to them and setting the O’Shea family on a lawful path.”
Right. So, no biggie.
Wow.
“My brothers have taken a liking to that idiot cousin of yours,” Eve said then. “Hardly a surprise.”
“Jimmy Dodge,” I said. “He’s one of theirs?”
She nodded. “And will soon be sheriff in Robert’s place. They would prefer one of their own in control, but I think he has his sights set on Olivia’s job so he’s not fighting them.”
Choke.
Robert as mayor?
Over my dead—
Fee.
“Reading is their own little microcosm of criminal activity,” Eve went on, clearly missing the implications of what she just said and how it altered my perception of all of this. “They are using purchased businesses to launder money, filter illegal drug and weapons shipments and gambling enterprise.” The Orange had to be part of that. “The thing is, no matter what I want, it’s going to take time to gain the kind of evidence I need to take to the FBI. To renew my allegiances with those who think the way I do.” Eve seemed very young all of a sudden, a girl playing in darkness adrift in a sea of dangerous lies, threats and those who wouldn’t hesitate to do her harm. “I need things in Reading to proceed as expected and that means you,” she poked me with one long nail, “have to stay out of it.”
“Which is why you’re really letting me in on it,” I said, trying not to grumble.
“The more you poke the two bears that are my brothers,” Eve said, “the harder you make things for me.”
Okay, fine.
I nodded, something Eve must have taken as gospel, because she rather abruptly opened the passenger door and started to exit. Before pausing to look back at me with a real smile on her lovely face, visible to me despite the heavy makeup she tried to hide behind.
“Thank you, Fee,” she said. “For trusting me. I’ll be in touch.”
Eve left, closing the door behind her, Olivia scrambling out after her, the two disappearing into the darkness together, the tall, creepy Goth and the huddled, broken mayor an unlikely duo but all we had, apparently.
I wasn’t sure I liked our odds.
Time to send an email to an old curmudgeon and see if I was worth hiring.
###