AT STAG, she didn’t wait for Daly and got out of the car to go over to her brother outside the main door.
“What’s going on?”
“Dad’s finishing a call,” he said, indicating their father pacing the sidewalk a few yards away, his lackeys beyond.
“Okay.”
When her palm landed on the door, Lachlan freed a hand from his pocket to catch her wrist.
“And we were told to wait outside.”
“By whom?”
“I haven’t learned their names. One sycophant looks just like another.” His attention flicked right. “No offense.”
“Might take some if I knew what it meant,” Daly said from the back of her shoulder.
Good delivery, but he wasn’t anywhere close to an idiot. Still, nothing wrong with people underestimating you.
“Why’d you think they asked us to wait out here?” her brother asked. “They covering something up in there?”
“Am I in there to know the answer to that?”
“I like to think you’d be with a guy where we don’t have to make that distinction. There’s something in there they don’t want us to see.”
“They don’t want you to see,” she said, extending her ease. “There is no us here. They asked you to wait. I can see whatever’s going on in any McDade space.”
“Yeah, she gets to see more McDade than the sycophants,” Daly said in jest.
Lachlan didn’t react to the tease. “He’d let you walk in on him doing something illegal?”
“He’s a business owner. I told you that already. Just business.”
Daly backed her up. “Aye. You won’t hear me contradicting her.”
“He could be in there with another woman.”
She faked a horrified gasp. “He could be! Although, except, yeah, he does know how to be in proximity to a woman without his cock leaving his pants.”
“Maybe he’d ask you to join them.”
She leaned in. “Been there, done that. Anything goes in my guy’s world.”
What was it about being near Connel that obliterated her inhibitions? He wasn’t in her eye line, but he’d be in that building and that was enough.
The door opened from the inside. Dingo. Yeah, she knew him.
“Bluebell,” he said, shocked. “Why are you outside? Why are you waiting?”
“Just talking to my brother.”
“The boss doesn’t want you waiting.”
“I wasn’t waiting,” she said, going inside to head down the entry tunnel. “My choice. You won’t get in any trouble.”
“Who won’t get in trouble?”
That stern voice brought them all around to check the ingress they’d just walked by.
Conn appeared from the office stairway with Niall, Doyle, and a couple of others.
“Everyone here?”
“‘Cept you and Strat.”
“We shouldn’t wait for him. Strat,” she said, stroking Conn’s chest when he stopped with her.
“Because…?”
“He might not be coming.”
“You want him here, we’ll get him here.”
“No, it’s fine.” She sighed. “He can come or not come, it’s his call.”
“You want to push this back? We can do it another time.”
“No, everyone’s here already. Strat and I will figure it out. We’re in a fight… kinda.”
“About?” Her head dropped back to show him a smile and his eyes quickly read hers. “Something you don’t want to talk about in front of our current audience.”
“Why does she have to hide things from your guys?” Lachlan asked. “They tend to go off message?”
“The McDade element isn’t the problem.”
“She can say anything in front of her family.”
“No, she can’t.”
Connel caught her hand, interlinking their fingers to guide her down the hall into the club.
She came to a stop at the sight within. Two mobile whiteboards, one with pictures of male faces. Hock was writing on the other. Bullet points. Things they knew.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Command Center,” Lachlan said, continuing past them with the others. “This I recognize.”
“You want to take it seriously, we take it seriously,” Conn said, releasing her hand to slide his onto her lower back. “We will do this every damn day until we find out who’s responsible. I’ll close the club, close every business we have, spend every cent—”
“Do rún,” she whispered, her hands finding his chest. Grief and gratitude dampened her eyes. He narrowed on the reaction. “How do you know when to stop? What’s too far?”
“For you? Nothing,” he said, almost angry in his assertion. “There is no limit.”
“No, I don’t mean…” She watched her fingers slide up and down beneath his lapel. “How do I know when to stop? When I’ve gone too far for the answers?”
“That why you and Strat fought?”
She nodded, skimming her hand higher until it was over where his tattoo would be beneath the fabric. “I don’t like being told no.”
“You dig your heels in. I’ve noticed.”
“Someone knows the truth. Someone knows who killed Henry.”
“You tell me everything. I’ll tell you when it’s too far.”
“Let’s get started!” her father declared, marching forth, his people behind him. “I have things to do.”
He sailed past them without even attempting to look their way. In the past, her father was happy to share his displeasure. Whatever Connel said to him at the wake worked long distance. Nice.
As she and Connel went to the group to sit down, things got going.
“Henry was sure talking to people around City Hall,” Ford said, standing by the whiteboard. “Folks admit it was shaking things up but are reluctant to put any face to the concern.”
No Imogen today or Whisper. Raze was off on the periphery. More than a dozen McDade soldiers protected their perimeter. Intimidation or necessity?
“If you’ve got names, we’ll follow up,” Daly said. “Old man owed nothing off the grid. No gambling, no drugs, no hookers.”
“He didn’t share his suspicions with his lady friend,” Lachlan said. “Though she admitted he’d been distracted and tense for a few weeks. Could’ve been just regular council stuff, but it wasn’t like him to be stressed.”
Look at that. Her brother. Ford. Daly. All factions working together, almost.
“Still don’t have anything concrete on who shopped our guy to the cops.”
“Uh, I kind of have a lead on that,” she said to Hock, also on his feet. “I know who it was, I just don’t know who it was.” She frowned at the contradiction. “We’re haggling over payment.”
“We’ve got money,” Niall said.
“No, this isn’t about money,” she said. “They want something else.”
“Something what?” Connel asked, gripping her thigh. “Something I’ll tan the guy for?”
She pressed her hand on his. “It’s a woman, actually.” Not that gender made anything prohibitive. “And I won’t sell your virtue. I’ll figure something out.”
“They want me?”
“Let’s talk about this later,” she said to her guy, bouncing her hand on his.
“You can just tell us who,” her brother said. “We know the source. We can tell you if the info matches up.”
“I’m a journalist, Lach. We don’t give up sources.”
“Did this someone approach you?”
“This is a McDade problem,” she said. The shock that impacted her brother rebounded to her. Had she really…? “One we need to solve, I mean. The price will have to be paid by the McDades, if we decide it’s worth it. I don’t want to compromise your professional integrity any more than I want to compromise mine.”
“What do you think this person will give you?” her brother asked, a little harsher than before. “Even if you find the witness, what do you expect to learn?”
“It’s a lead,” Daly said. “A good cop should know to follow those up.”
“If someone recounted what they saw, that account won’t change from what they told us.”
“If they really saw it.” Which they hadn’t because Connel couldn’t be in two places at once. “If they didn’t, their motivation could be key.”
“Some people won’t talk to cops,” Niall said, reiterating what had been highlighted at their last meeting. “We can be more persuasive.”
“And if I hear something happened to this witness—”
“Things happen to people every day. You want to blame us for every assault this city sees?”
“Odd that you went straight to assault.”
“No one ever got arrested for asking nicely.”
Oh, damn, typical. Just as she thought things were going well, everything went to shit.
Her brother’s position wasn’t enviable. “I can’t claim not to know there was a threat to this person.”
“Who threatened him?” Hock asked.
“You think I don’t know what persuasive means?”
“If someone’s coming for us, we have a right to defend ourselves.”
One voice rose over another. This was fast becoming a—
“Hold,” Connel’s voice boomed above them all and everyone silenced. “Watch your tongues around Macushla.” Oh, she’d heard worse, but didn’t mind being Connel’s diffuser. “One at a time.”
“We don’t ignore leads.”
“I’m not saying you should,” Lachlan said, a tad calmer.
Her father was just sitting there. Barely looking at anyone, his attention fixed straight ahead, while the surrounding grunts took notes. This was his father they were fighting for. Did he resent not being in charge?
“Are you gonna join us?”
Ford’s question brought everyone’s focus around to see what he was seeing.
Strat leaning against the hallway wall, arms folded. His eyes stuck on hers and he turned his head, rolling his shoulder on the wall to disappear back into the darkness of the tunnel.
Jumping up, she hurried across the room to meet him in the shadows.
“Tomorrow,” he said in a low murmur.
“Thank you. Where?”
He shook his head. “Not for you. For me.”
Wariness grew acute. “You? I don’t get—”
“If you’re so sure dangling her in front of—”
“You don’t even know where she is.”
“I don’t have to know. Your plan isn’t to give her up, is it?”
“You can’t walk into the firing line like that. You can’t… No.”
“No?”
“No, I won’t let you. I won’t let you risk—”
“You were happy to risk it. Makes more sense coming from me. People know we’re connected now. This isn’t a leap.”
“But you weren’t there. You didn’t find her—”
“You did, yeah. How many people know you snuck her out of the hospital?” Oh, she didn’t like this. Didn’t like it one bit. “That’s a question, Scamp. I need to know who knows.”
“Me and you, that’s it.”
“Me and you?” he asked. She didn’t like how he peered into her like he questioned her honesty. “I’m the only one who knows where she is.”
“Ire?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Rising to her tiptoes, she clasped his folded arms. “I won’t let you do it. I can’t, Strat. You have a family. You—”
“You have your whole life laid out.”
“Not much more than you.” They joked about Strat being old, but he was only in his forties, not over it yet. “This was my play, my decision.”
“I won’t let you do it, I can’t. The meet’s already set, it’s done.”
“No,” she said, her mouth watering as her sinuses tingled. “It is not. And I will—”
“It’s done,” he said, raising his arms, freeing them from her hold. “You want to know who killed your granddaddy—”
“And if they don’t know? If Silvio and Swerve are not the ones responsible? You’re putting yourself in the path of a bullet.” If he was lucky. “Don’t do this.”
“How the fuck is it different?” he hissed. “This is what you wanted.”
“I didn’t,” she said, her lips drying. “Please, Strat, I can’t let—how will I look your little girl in the eye?”
“Same way you’d have me look at her if I put you on this course.”
“But you didn’t! I did it myself. I did all of this myself!” Tears fell, but she swiped them away fast. “I do not want you putting yourself between me and this bullet. I’ll take the hit! I want to take the hit!”
“Turnabout is fair play, kid. You protected Imogen. Now I protect you both.”
Turning his back, he walked away.
“Strat,” she said again, but he didn’t react. “Strat! This isn’t what I wanted! Strat!”
He walked out the front door, disappearing into the light. What did she do? How did she undo it?
On a surge of adrenaline, she rushed back to the club to lock on Ford. “Do not let him out of your sight.”
“What?” he asked, smacked with her urgency.
“Go after him! Do not let your father out of your sight!” Ford was already halfway across the room when Jagg leaped up too. “Yes! Go! Both of you. Do not let him out of your sight. Not for a second!”
“What the fuck is—”
“Just go!” she screamed, gesturing them out.
As they retreated, she exhaled, and fell back against the club wall, eyes closing. What the fuck had she done?