“Hold on,” he says, sounding tense. “Back up. Who knows what?”
“Aiden and Dad. I asked Aiden about Queenie, and he got all weird, then he went to my dad and they talked about it. I heard them through the door.”
“You eavesdropped on Fergal Halloran?” He sounds impressed.
“Rian, listen to me. My dad knows who Queenie is. Aiden does, too. They said nobody’s supposed to know her name. I think they’re involved in whatever happened to Megan. I think they’ve been covering it up.”
A long silence on his end. Finally, “That explains why they let me join.”
“They’re keeping you close.” I groan, shaking my head. “What the hell do we do?”
“Come here for tonight. We’ll talk about it. We shouldn’t do this over the phone.”
“Rian—”
“I’m driving there right now. Pack a bag for a night and we’ll figure out what to do in the morning, all right?”
I take a breath and start nodding as my panic begins to subside. “Okay, okay, right, come get me. But hurry, please.”
“I’ll leave right now. Go outside and meet me down at the gate.” He hangs up the phone.
I stare at the dead screen.
They know. They fucking know.
And I’m terrified that whatever secret they’re trying to keep hidden might end with me in a ditch somewhere and Rian in a shallow grave.
I pack a bag and sneak out to meet him.
Chapter 23
Daley
He pours me a big glass of wine and sits me down on his couch. “Tell it to me from the start,” he says and listens as I go over the whole night, beginning to end. He doesn’t interrupt and waits patiently until I’m done to ask questions. I answer him to the best of my ability, but I feel all muddy and muddled, like my brain’s not working right, and my attention keeps drifting.
His apartment isn’t what I expected. Rian out in the world is aloof and closed off, like he took his old self and locked that guy up in a submarine, then sank the damn sub in the middle of the ocean.
But this place is an artifact of his old self. Sports memorabilia hangs on the walls, along with pictures of family on the shelves and a bunch of books lined up near the TV. He’s got a guitar and a keyboard, and I vaguely remember he can play. I just assumed he stopped the whole music thing after leaving high school, but apparently, he’s still got the passion. His place is masculine, and there aren’t a lot of little touches, like candles or flowers or frilly dish towels in the kitchen, but he’s got plants growing on a windowsill, nice plates in the cabinet, and a refrigerator that’s reasonably well stocked, and not just with beer.
It’s like a glimpse of the man he could’ve been if he hadn’t turned into a killer instead.
“What the hell are they hiding?” Rian asks, pacing back and forth across his living room while I sip the wine. It’s having the desired calming effect, and I’m starting to think straight for the first time since I mentioned Queenie’s name to Aiden out back. “Your father and brother have their fingers in everything in this city, but I never imagined—” He stops himself and his jaw tightens.
“What?”
“It’s just a thought.”
“Say it.”
He looks at me, his expression hard. “Your father came to my defense and made the cops look the other way after Megan’s death. I figured he did that just to get me on his good side so he’d have one more young kid stuck in the clan for life. What if he did it because he knew I wasn’t driving?”
I feel sick. My stomach’s a churning mess, and I have to take another deep sip of wine to even begin to make sense of that. The implication is too horrible to imagine, but it makes some sense.
If Dad knew that Rian wasn’t driving, then he likely had a hand in what happened to her, or at the very least, he knows the truth and has kept it hidden for years. That might explain his deep guilt over what happened after Megan died when I slid into that dark depression.
He knew the truth and didn’t tell me, or he was involved somehow and needed to repent.
“That’s why he let me go to college,” I whisper. “Because he knew how badly it hurt when Megan died and he felt guilty.”
Rian sits down on the couch, our knees touching. “We don’t know for sure.”
“How else does my dad know the name Queenie?”
“I don’t know. Whoever this girl is, she’s obviously important. But do you really think your father would hurt Megan? For any reason at all?”
“Yes,” I say, almost choking on the word. I know what my father values, and it isn’t human life. It isn’t my best friend.