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“What do we do now?”
“We go home,” he replied.
“I don’t have a home, and they took my pack, so I don’t have any money to get one either.”
“You have a home. My home. Come stay with me there while we sort this out. As for money, you have some of that too. I have your bag in my car. I got it from the place they were keeping you, so maybe your money is still there. If not, I have about eight thousand back at my place that belongs to you.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll explain on the way. Let’s get you out of here and get you back home.”
“But Sorley,” she still protested.
“We’ll deal with Sorley when the time comes to do so,” he told her.
Something caught her eye, and she walked toward it, leaning over the large metal box they’d put her in to keep her from shifting. She reached in and picked it up, holding it up toward him. It was a phone.
“It must have slipped free when they put me in the box, but it was in there with me,” she told him.
“Explains that. It’s good luck.”
“Luck of the Irish,” she laughed.
It was good to hear a little bit of lightness in her voice. They walked out through the front of the restaurant, filled with diners. Niamh looked at them uncertainly and pulled the tablecloth closer around her.
“They have seen stranger things. All shifters and friendlies. This is Griffin’s diner we’re in. It was the closest place for them to get you out of that box and for me to get to in order to get you back home,” Olcan told her.
“Can we get a bottle of water?” she asked, her voice raspy from the dry throat
“Sure. What about food? Are you hungry?”
“That can wait. I’m not terribly hungry right now,” she told him.
Olcan nodded and stopped at the counter to ask for a bottle of water. A man there rang it up and retrieved the water for him.
“That’ll be twenty bucks,” he said.
“Twenty? Did you import it from the Himalayas?” Olcan asked.
“Nope. The water is free, but that tablecloth she’s wearing ain’t cheap,” the man replied.
Olcan laughed and gave him the money. “Thanks, Griffin,” he said, handing the water to Niamh and nodding toward the door for her to go on out. He followed, opening the door to his car for her to get inside.
“We’ll ride behind you,” Niall said, his brother’s way of giving them privacy, but staying close.
“See you back at the office,” Olcan replied.
“The office?” Niamh asked as he sat down behind the wheel and started the car.
“I need to make sure things are safe before I take you home. Someone broke into my house.”
“Who? Sorley’s people?”
“I don’t know. I left it with the cops when I got your message.”
“You didn’t respond to my message,” she replied.
“Didn’t I?” he asked, casting a glance in her direction.
She smiled at him, reaching for his hand across the seat. “I suppose you did.”CHAPTER TWENTY-THREENiamh
NIAMH WAS SURPRISED to find her money still in her backpack. Apparently, her captor was not a thief. In all honesty, he had behaved decently toward her if you could overlook being abducted and tossed in a cage or two. She was even more surprised to find that Olcan had retrieved her deposit from the rental manager, plus some extra, which she wasn’t sure how she felt about keeping.
“He was an asshole. Trust me, you should have no qualms about keeping all of the money I took from him. I wouldn’t go back asking for another apartment, though,” Olcan told her when she expressed uncertainty.
“Well, I guess it will help,” she replied. “I have some more in an Irish account, but it has Sorley’s name on it too, so he would know if I touched it. It’s not that much.”
“Where did the money come from?”
“Sean left it to me when he died, but his father was secondary on the account. I can’t have him removed.”
“No, but you can pull all the money out of it,” he replied.
“Maybe, if I do it before he does. I don’t know how to go about that from here, though, and I don’t know that it’s enough to worry about. It’s not really that much in the broad scheme of things,” she told him.
“Me either, but I’ve got a guy at the office who knows. He’ll help you get it out, if there’s enough there for you to bother with,” he replied.
“It’s only a few thousand, but I guess it’s a few months’ rent in the right place. With the other money I have, it might be enough to get me settled into someplace and hold me until I can get the funds to go to school. They’ll pay for housing.”
“You know, I will help you with any of that you want help with,” he told her, reaching to pull her close to him.
