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Yeah, I knew exactly what kind ofeyeAlfie would keep on her. The man’s libido—and his shame—knew no bounds. Despite whatever Cassidy was deciding to call herself these days, one thing was clear: that woman was nothing but trouble. “No. Stay away from her. I’ll tell Tommy she’s back in town, but let’s keep this between us.”
Alfie shook his head. “I don’t envy you. Tommy’s going to go through the fucking roof when he hears.”
I didn’t envy me, either. Tommy had a temper, and a pissed-off warlord was another thing I didn’t need on my plate just now.
When we got to the car, Tegan was leaning up against the side. “We’ve got a problem, boss. Moretti’s guys just hit the warehouse on Elm.”
I cursed under my breath. “What about the drop?”
“I don’t know. The reports are still coming in. Place is crawling with cops, and our guys are in the wind.”
“How the hell did the Italians find out about Elm?” Alfie angrily snuffed out his cigarette. “That’s way out of their territory.”
Teagan just shrugged. “Don’t know.”
The bastard almost looked like he was enjoying himself. Teagan was our Reaper, a low-level hitman that Alfie had pulled in to help cover some of the weak spots after today’s fiasco. The man was built like a steel cable, salt-and-pepper hair and a vicious devotion to duty that made him indispensable at what he did. Teagan was old-school IRA, though, something that I could never get behind, a fact that seemed to rub him the wrong way from time to time.
“Gordie was the point man on that drop,” I said to Alfie. “Find him. I want to have a little chat.”
For a second, I thought I saw something shift in Teagan’s eyes, but it was gone the next moment. He slapped the roof of the town car. “Take the wheels, I’ll hitch a ride with Finn when they spring Johnny.”
Alfie got behind the wheel. As we pulled away, I took one last look at the entrance to the Emergency Department, unable to shake the uncomfortable feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of Cassidy Quinn.
3
Cassidy
Ileanedmyforeheadagainst the cold shower tile and watched the soap swirl down the drain. It felt like a fitting metaphor for how my life seemed to be headed.
It always took a little bit to come down after the blistering tension of the OR, but the usual high I felt after a successful surgery was swirling down the drain as well. One chance encounter, and everything I’d built here, all the progress I’d made, gone.
Or maybe I had been lying to myself, and it had never been there at all.
Two years ago, I made the decision to move back to Boston. I was in the second year of my residency, my life was stable and on track, and therapy was going well. I felt like I was finally regaining control of my life, but the way I had left Boston never sat well with me. It felt like a defeat, like I was still running from my past, Boston and all the memories sitting larger than life on the other side of the country, just waiting.
It was time to stop running. I needed to prove to myself that the demons from my past didn’t have a hold over me anymore.
It had taken a lot of groveling and string-pulling to transfer in the middle of my residency, but my mentor back in Chicago had called in some favors and gotten me placed at BMC with his old college roommate, Jerome. And for two years, it had worked. I found myself remembering everything I loved about New England—the people, the seasons, the ocean. I felt like I had come full circle, and I was proud. I felt like I had comehome.
And then I met Connor McTiernan, and he tore everything right back down.
Fuil agus Onóir.
One look at that Town Car, one look at those tattoos, one look at the frigid promise of violence in those eyes, and I felt like I was sixteen again, a lost and angry little girl watching her world crumble around her. I had made so much progress, not even afraid to wear my hair up anymore, but one look at Connor McTiernan had brought everything back. So instead, I brushed my hair forward to cover my scars like the coward I was.
The shower hammered on my back as I ran my fingers over the puckered skin on the left side of my face, starting at my cheekbone and disappearing up into my hairline. Then, down the longer surgical scar near the corner of my eye—I’d been lucky enough to keep the eye, but despite the plastic surgeon’s best efforts, it still drooped. There were more scars on my shoulder and back, my stomach from my skin grafts and donor sites. If asked, I always told people I had been in a car accident. It wasn’t too far from the truth, I supposed.
I didn’t want Connor McTiernan to see my wounds. My weakness.
His world had taken enough from me.
I wasn’t about to let him take the rest.
I remembered them both, now. It had been years, but I remembered Connor McTiernan and his buddy Alfie Doyle, by reputation if not by recognition. Alfie and my older brother Tommy had been thicker than thieves since grade school. As they got a little older, they started hanging around the pub with Aiden and Sloane McTiernan, running errands for Callum McTiernan and my father, Michael Quinn. That was the way back then, and how it probably still was for a kid growing up in South Boston—you could either get with the program, or rot in the Southie projects making minimum wage. Michael and Callum were kings to those boys.
Alfie had grown up a lot since then. I remembered a lot more freckles beneath that unruly mop of auburn hair, but that cocky, teasing grin was still the same. Apparently, Alfie thought himself something of a ladies’ man, the way he had tried to smooth things over with me in the waiting room, but I could see right through him.
Connor looked a lot like his cousin Aiden. I didn’t remember much about Connor, just that he’d come over from Ireland to live with his Uncle Callum when I was in middle school. Looked like he followed in his cousin’s footsteps. A hard man. Cold. Willing to do whatever it took to get that bottom line for the Clan, whether it was bullying a shop owner, breaking a few kneecaps, or putting a bullet in somebody’s skull.
