Page 60 of Inflict

“Light as a feckin’ feather, you are.”

“A feather?”

Connor hummed his agreement. “Barely anything to you at all, love.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Feathers are magnificent. There we are, love,” he murmured. “Now go to sleep.”

He expected her to untangle herself from him as she felt more comfortable in the bed, but instead, she only pushed in closer. She tightened the blankets up around her head and shoulders, until only her face peeked out when she turned around to face him in the darkness.

“Did you ever find her?” she asked softly.

“Who?”

“Kitty.”

He stiffened at the reminder of a memory he had buried. “No.”

He didn’t mention how her house had burned.

He didn’t mention how her room had been one of the only things to survive.

It was the first time she’d admitted who she was, and that she knew exactly who she was staring at, and he wasn’t about to add onto it with nonsense.

“I was holding her when he came in—I couldn’t see his face, he had it hidden. I tried to hide her under the blankets, but she ran, and scratched me, too. I wondered if she ever got out. He had to step over daidí when we left, and he didn’t close the door.”

“Declan, you mean?”

Evelyn didn’t reply.

Connor didn’t really need her to, as he could remember perfectly how the detective said Declan’s body had been found at the front door, dead from blunt force trauma, and not burned to death as someone might want them to assume.

He fully believed his father had been the one to kill his brother, and apparently take the man’s adopted daughter, but why, Connor still didn’t know. His father seemed so unaffected after the murder, never showing emotion, as he’d slowly taken control of his brother’s organization and men.

Then again, Sean was always unaffected.

Why would this have been any different?

“Do you think she got out?” Evelyn asked him again.

No, he didn’t.

He knew that to be a fact, because he had found the cat’s carcass tossed aside on top of a pile of rubbish as the workers pulled what remained of the house down for safety reasons. The cat had been burned, most of its hair singed off, but it had been Kitty.

Connor would never tell Evelyn that, though.

“Probably,” he said.

A long while passed before she spoke, surprising him again. “I knew who you were the moment you looked at me. I only ever knew a few people, and you were one of them. Daidí didn’t let others around, so I knew it was you.”

“Why not say then?”

“Because you’re just here to pass me on, like all the other times. No one can keep me; I don’t belong to them.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Connor said. “Or why you’re here.”

Evelyn didn’t look like she believed him. “I’ll be passed on again, Connor. I always am.”