Unshackled

It was going to take a week to go through one room, and he had at least four.

“Where’s Louise?” I kicked the door shut behind me, then ushered him in front of me so I could get a clearer image of the whole place.

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed with a plea in his voice. “I don’t even know how to reach out to her! She calls me!” I was fairly certain I could believe him on that. “I have money—in my study. I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you anything.”

“Show me,” I ordered. The money held zero appeal, but studies were where men kept their most important documents.

The dog grew fussy in Albert’s arms, and he stuttered out a warning that he was going to set her down on the floor.

“What’s wrong with you people, getting these annoying little rodents,” I muttered irritably. “Get a real dog, for fuck’s sake.”

Albert didn’t respond to my comment, and his Lady had already made a dash for some other corner of the apartment.

The air was stuffy and smelled of cigars and lavender. It wouldn’t kill him to open a window every now and then.

My God, I couldn’t believe how much crap a person could own. I could barely see the walls as we walked down a narrow hallway. He had drawings and paintings and old propaganda posters from the war everywhere. Needlepoint of flowers too. And little bags of what had to be potpourri.

Albert’s study turned out to be as cluttered as the rest of the place, and I was fucking done. Maybe we could outsource the gathering of clues to Julien or something, but I couldn’t waste another minute here.

He said the safe was in the armoire next to the door, and right after he’d inserted the lock combination, I yanked him back. He struck me as the type who would keep an old revolver in his safe—or maybe a Luger his father had lifted off a German soldier. I’d encountered countless of them over the years, many of them in my grandfather’s possession because our families had used them in the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War that’d followed.

Down on his hands and knees, Albert peered up at me, ready to beg for his life. Sweat trickled down his forehead, and it was clear he was in pain from his hip.

“I won’t hurt your dog.” I aimed my gun at his head and pulled the trigger.

The sound exploded in my head, setting off a ringing noise as well as the incessant barking of the dog, but resignation flooded me with an even greater force. Now the clock was ticking, and my vacation was over. Bending down, I quickly looked inside the safe, and I counted down to myself. I had to be out of here in a few seconds.

I didn’t take any cash—or the goddamn revolver that was actually there. But gold bars? Fuck yeah. I pocketed almost a dozen fifty-gram bars before I grabbed the two-inch–thick stack of documents and folders. That had to do it. It would give Eric something to go through.

Then I was out of there.

Almost there.

“Fuck,” I panted.

I couldn’t risk it. In a small town like this…? Shit. A gunshot going off in Philly, very few people cared. There were actual studies on how many people it required for a single person to call the cops. Most just shook their heads and trusted someone else to phone it in. Not here, though. I bet it was some old lady who got spooked. The kind who also called the police when kids threw firecrackers in the streets on New Year’s.

I darted across one of the tourist-packed shopping streets and ran down a deserted alley.

It couldn’t be a fluke that I’d started hearing sirens approximately one minute after I’d shot the funder.

Shan had better be back at the apartment. We had to clear it and get outta town as soon as possible.

On a positive note, there wasn’t a priest’s chance in hell that a town this size was equipped to handle a murder case. The local officers dealt with shoplifters and drunks, probably the occasional jumper’s splattered remains against the cliffs too, but not a murder. They’d call in a force from maybe Le Havre, which bought us time.

As the apartment building we’d been staying in appeared some hundred feet up ahead, I picked up the pace again and adjusted the files I’d hidden underneath my hoodie.

“Kellan!”

I whipped around at the familiar sound of Shan’s voice, but I only saw a silver sedan coming out from an apartment building’s underground garage. Wait. It was him.

“Get in!” He reached over to push the door open.

Snap out of it!

Fuck. I wetted my lips and ran over to him. “I have questions.”

“Later. Get the fuck in the car, boy. Did you finish the job?”