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I look down at the photo one more time. At the car. Think about the window above it, where my wife stood, scared out of her mind, and sent this to her boss instead of me. Because she had no way to reach me. Because I’m in here. Fuck me.

Some piece of shit sat in the dark and watched my woman’s window, and I wasn’t fucking there.

Kill, the wolf says. Kill, kill, kill!

“I want the man in that car.”

“Alive?”

“Long enough to tell you who gave him the address. After that, I don’t ever want him on her street again.”

“How loud?”

“Loud enough that Eamon hears it.”

I can hear him smiling. “That I can do.”

I hang up.

Cillian picks up his phone.

“I’m going to tell her that her security’s been upgraded,” he says. “I’m not going to tell her by who. She’s smarter than both of us, so that’ll hold about a fucking day.”

“That’s all I need.”

At the door, he stops. He doesn’t turn around.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I’d have made the same call.”

* * *

It takes three days. I hear it the way I hear everything in here. Mop bucket in the east corridor. An old lifer who’s never once looked me in the eye, talking to the floor as I go by.

“It’s done. Guy was chatty.” The mop slaps the concrete. “Keane.”

Niall Keane. Eamon’s right hand. His fixer.

So it’s not some soldier freelancing. It comes from the top of the Callaghan house, or one step below. They know I have a mate. They know where she sleeps. And they wanted me to know they know.

Well. Now they know something about me, too.

Good, my wolf snarls.

I keep walking.

Eight

Zahra

MAN FOUND DEAD IN WATER STREET ALLEY. Male, mid-thirties, name withheld. Known to police. A source close to the investigation says the victim had ties to organized crime.

I read it three times at my kitchen island while my coffee goes cold.

I’m a lawyer. I don’t believe in coincidence; I believe in timelines. Tuesday, 2:14 a.m., I send Cillian a photo of a black SUV. Wednesday, he tells me my security’s been “upgraded,” with a look on his face. The SUV doesn’t come back. And Friday, there’s a dead man in a neighborhood with mob ties.

But when that parking spot stayed empty two nights in a row? I got in my nest and slept like a baby. I felt fucking safe.

I’ve been chewing on that for a full day, and it hasn’t gotten any easier to swallow. So I call the prison and move my visit up.