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Still, when I showed up on her doorstep five hours ago, in the absolute dead of night knocking until she came to the door in her nightclothes, she recognized me right away.
“Ronan Byrne,” she’d said, like it hadn’t been years. She’d even smiled at me with a fondness I hadn’t felt from anyone since her. “What’s the craic?”
I’d told her I was in trouble and she opened that door up wide. Didn’t even flinch when I carried Poppy, out cold, from the back seat of the banjaxed Taurus I’d bought off a father of two at the airport.
Years ago, when I first met Caroline, I’d thought she and Sinead were cut from the same cloth. Tough birds with soft spots for boys with criminal bents. I’d let that delusion color everything.
But Caroline and Sinead were nothing alike. Caroline worked the angles, figuring out how to make this situation turn up best for her.
Sinead just wanted to feed me.
“You should at least change your clothes,” she said, pointing at the stack of clothes she’d gotten for me. “There’s clean kex in there as well. Not sure they fit, but it’s worth a try.” Some other man’s jeans. A cream sweater. Thick socks. Underwear, apparently.
The white undershirt I wore was covered in blood. Poppy’s blood.
It was still on my hands.
The wind felt like fingernails across my soul. God, I had forgotten the wind. Every minute here felt too long.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said.
I shook my head. The Morellis had put out the Dead or Alive orders on Poppy. It was a fair guess they’d like me dead too. Caroline wanted both of us alive, but she wouldn’t give a shit who got hurt in the process.
“Best stay away from us for a few days,” I told her.
Sinead put her hand against my shoulder. I twitched, calming the urge to smack her hand away before I did it. “What are you doin’, Ronan?”
“The less you know, Sinead,” I said with as much reassurance as possible. Which, judging from her face, was not all that reassuring.
“Are you goin’ to hurt that lass?” Sinead asked.
Yes. As bad as I can. As much as it takes.
“No. I’m gettin’ her free of a net she was caught in.”
“And you?”
Was I the net? Holding the net? Maybe I was caught in it too. Feck. I was bashed.
“I’m fine, Sinead. I always am. You know that.”
“It’s all right if you’re not. Some adult in your life should have said that to you before it was too late.”
“It was too late when I was born,” I told her. “But thank you.”
She pressed her lips tight, and I imagined there were a thousand things she might say about the boy I’d been and the night she’d saved me.
“Go,” I told her. “We’ll be fine. I’m going to change, eat something, and then talk to Poppy. Thank you, again, for the use of your cottage.”
“You paid me.”
“You didn’t have to accept.” Though it had been the kind of money a pensioner would be foolish not to accept.
“God, boyo.” She sighed. “Look at what’s come of you?”
I saw myself as she might. Too thin. I was always too thin for her. Exhausted. Bloody. A dangerous man with a dangerous amount of money and a bag full of guns.
I was what this place made of me, despite her efforts to soften the edges.
Sinead left. And it was just the cottage, the moaning wind, and the dark outside.
The closed door to the bedroom.
Poppy.
Dead or Alive.
CHAPTER TWO
Poppy
I hurt. Oh. I hurt. A lot. My head. My shoulder . . . what did I do . . . ?
Suddenly panicked, I opened my eyes. The ceiling was unfamiliar. A lamp beside my bed threw strange shadows across dark wooden beams, white plaster. A spider web of cracks in the corner. I was under a mountain of blankets that all smelled of cedar and mothballs. There’d been a woman?
A woman with graying red hair and worry on her face she couldn’t hide.
There’d been a fire.
Which came first?
“Poppy?”
Ronan. Like a memory, the taste of him on my tongue came back to me. Salty and sweet. He’d kissed me, but wouldn’t have sex with me. Had I begged? Of course, I’d begged.
But there was something else. A fight?
More than anything, I remembered being scared. My heart pounding in my throat. I’m still scared.
I’m scared of Ronan.
“I know you’re awake.” Ronan’s voice was all sharp edges.
Fear crackled through me like ice, clearing my head, pushing the pain in my shoulder to some distant place. There, yes, but also not there at all. Using my good arm, I pushed myself up to sit. My other arm was in a sling, bound to my chest. A mountain of white gauze wrapped around my shoulder. My fingers were all pins and needles.
Ronan stood in the doorway. He looked tired. Haggard. His hair flopped down over his eyes. The white tee shirt he wore under his coat had blooms of rust-colored blood across his chest.
