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“That’s fine,” James said indignantly. Hannah was already well on her way down the sidewalk. She’d tucked tail the moment he told them to get their arses home.
“Make sure you let your wife know what I said about Niamh—not one fucking word out of either of you.”
“I said it’s fine,” James said through gritted teeth as he turned to leave.
Olcan shut the door. He was angry again. Where had she gone so quickly? She’d told him that she couldn’t move into the new place until Monday and he’d still been trying to convince her against the location, but she was stubborn about it. He’d told her to disappear, but he had a feeling that there was something more to this than that. He was probably being paranoid, but he just couldn’t shake it off.
“Fuck,” he muttered, getting dressed and heading out to the car.
James and Hannah were out in the front yard with Thor, rinsing something reddish-brown out of his fur. He flipped them the bird as he backed out and pulled away. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to defy him while he was gone, thinking he wouldn’t find out. He didn’t think it likely, but they weren’t the brightest bulbs in the box. He put them out of his mind as he drove toward Dorchester to see if Niamh was in her new place.
He wasn’t surprised to find the place empty. She might have had to get a room elsewhere until Monday or perhaps she had decided to get further out of town before Sorley Maguire discovered what she’d done. He walked down the sidewalk to the letting office for the small complex and spoke to the owner, who obviously knew who he was and looked as nervous as a sheep in Wales.
“She asked for her money back. I gave her half, and she left,” the man said, sounding defensive.
“Why only half?” Olcan asked.
“I kept the deposit, in case I couldn’t rent it out at the last minute.”
“She told me that you rushed her into putting it up because you had another guy wanting it. Did he not take the place now that she backed out?” Olcan asked him.
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t know that when she bailed on me,” he protested.
“You know it now, though, don’t you? Give me the deposit,” Olcan told him.
“What? Even if I were required to do that, you aren’t the one who gave me the money, so I can’t just give you someone else’s deposit,” the man whined.
“You’re either going to give me the money or I’m going to beat the shite out of you and take it myself. You can save yourself a few broken bones and missing teeth by just handing it over,” Olcan replied.
The man’s eyes widened. His hand slid beneath the desk in front of him, either for a phone or a gun, Olcan couldn’t be sure. Olcan shook his head and sighed, standing up so that the man had to look up at him, and also because he now had a better angle to see behind the desk.
“You touch that glock and I will use it to beat you, and when I’m done, I promise you that you will not enjoy the trip to emergency services to have it removed from where I will shove it when I’m done.”
The man jerked his hand away and instead picked up a set of keys lying on the desk. His hands shook as he unlocked the desk drawer and pulled out a box of cash, counting out four hundred dollars in four piles of one hundred.
“She gave you six hundred,” Olcan told him, remembering what Niamh had said about it being equal to the six hundred in rent she’d have to pay.
“Oh, yeah. Right,” the man muttered, fishing out two hundred more and laying it out by the other piles.
“You know what. I don’t like you, so why don’t we just go ahead and double it. We’ll call it asshole interest for trying to take advantage of a young lass fresh off the boat from the island.”
“That’s not right!” the man protested angrily.
Olcan just continued to look at him, saying nothing. When he didn’t move to retrieve more money from his box, Olcan grew tired of dealing with him, taking the money off the table, and putting it in his pocket. Then he reached over and picked up the money box with the rest of whatever was in it, closing it and tucking it under his arm.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he told him.
“You can’t do that! You’re stealing from me!” the man shrieked, attempting to reach under the desk again.
Olcan reached under the front lip of the desktop and flipped it backward, sending the man scurrying back and failing to avoid it landing on top of him. He was still squawking when Olcan reached the door.
