The Whole Truth (A. Shaw 1)

“Duly noted.” Shaw grunted. “Now stick it in.”

She carefully wedged the device into the wound, her nimble, gloved fingers finding a small cavity where it would fit.

The pain made Shaw’s entire body shake.

“Take my hand, Shaw, squeeze it,” Katie offered.

“No,” he grunted.

“Why?”

“Because I’ll break every damn bone in it.”

A second later, the armrest came away in his hand, the screws sheared off.

Leona withdrew her fingers from the wound and looked with satisfaction at her work.

“I can put new staples back in, or even cauterize it.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t be able to get to the damn thing when I need it, Leona. Which is the whole point,” Shaw snapped. “Old-fashioned thread will be just fine.”

She shrugged, cleaned the wound as best she could, stitched him up, wrapped gauze around it, and sat back.

“All done.”

Katie let go of Shaw and also let out a relieved breath. Shaw slowly sat up, carefully moving his arm.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly.

“For you, Shaw, anything,” she said sarcastically. “As you said, I so clearly owe you.”

“Yeah, well now we’re even.”

“At least even,” she corrected. “The needle in fact might have swung to my side.”

“I don’t think so. Calling it even was a gift on my part.” He put his shirt on. While he w

as buttoning it up she glanced at the scar on his right side. “How is it working, by the way?”

“Ask Frank, I’m sure he’d love to tell you all about it.” He reached over and pocketed the tiny instrument she’d used to put the metal device in his arm. “For old time’s sake,” he said, when she looked ready to protest.

As they were leaving Leona stopped him at the door. “Is that thing in your arm what I think it is?”

“You never know, Leona, you just never know.”

CHAPTER 75

“SHAW, ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME what’s going on? What is that thing in your arm? How do you know that Leona person? Where’d you get that scar on your side?” Katie fired off these questions as they ate dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel across the street from St. Stephen’s Green in central Dublin. It was late enough at night that they had a quiet table in the back and could discuss things. Though Shaw didn’t appear to be in a discussing mood because she’d been asking these same questions for hours and hadn’t gotten a single answer in return.

He stoically finished chewing his food. He hated Dublin now. He’d asked Anna to marry him here, at a little place north of the Liffey. On his knee with the damn ring. She’d said yes in nine languages. And now she was dead. There would be no marriage, no four or five kids, no growing old together. Nothing. Everywhere he looked he saw some place, some nook, cranny, smell, sound, even a funny thing the sky did, the drop of the rain, the honk of an Irish car horn that reminded him of her. He could barely breathe here. He could barely function. Hated it. And that wasn’t all.

Anna was on her way back to Germany for burial with parents who blamed him. Blamed him for the death of a woman he would have gladly sacrificed his own life to protect. Anna on a cold metal bed in London with a hole in her head. Anna being shipped to cold, lonely ground in Wisbach, for all of eternity, instead of being held in his warm arms. Safe, together.

Katie interrupted these thoughts. “We need to find out who was really behind the Red Menace.”