“There’s more to it than that,” Deklan says quietly. “A lot more.”
“Tell me.”
“You sure you want the whole story? It might make you remember.”
“Yes,” I say. “All of it.”
Chapter 23
Deklan makes himself another drink before rejoining me on the couch. He turns sideways with his back against the arm and his foot up on the cushion and reaches out to me. My chest is tight, and my stomach feels as if a nest of bees is having a party inside of it, but I go to him, resting by back against his chest as he wraps his arms around me.
“I’d heard about the kidnapping,” Deklan says. “It wasn’t on the nightly news, but this business has its own networks for such information. I hadn’t really paid much attention to it before your father asked for a meeting, and Fergus sat him down in the office.”
“He went to ask the Foleys for the ransom money,” I say.
“Yes. He didn’t have enough, and he was already in debt to Fergus. He said he had no one else to turn to, and he was afraid you would be killed if he didn’t meet the deadline.”
Deklan hugs me close for a moment before he continues.
“I’ve never thought much of your father. I think you’ve probably figured that out. He was always on the fringes of the organization, never in the fold, so to speak, and he wanted to get closer. He knew that if he was laundering the Foley’s money, he’d be set for life even with his gambling habit. Fergus never wanted to do business with him, not on that scale. He was too unreliable and desperate.
“Even when he was there, begging for your life to be saved, I got the impression it wasn’t concern for you in his heart but concern for his reputation if he were to let something happen to you. It annoyed me. To me, Cormick O’Conner had everything—a wife, a kid, a bunch of successful businesses—and he squandered it all. He blew it on fucking poker, and I figured it was probably his bookie that had his kid.
“When your dad offered Fergus anything in the world to get the money for his kid, Fergus saw an opportunity. He’d been having problems with Sean. He wasn’t falling in step the way his father wanted him to, and he was close to his eighteenth birthday. Fergus was looking for a way to get him to wise up and take some responsibility.
“Your dad was thrilled with the idea. Marrying his kid to the Foley heir would bring him that much closer to the organization, which was exactly what he wanted. It absolved him of his debt to the Foleys, and he didn’t have to worry about coming up with ransom money at all. He was all smiles when he walked out, and I just kept thinking, ‘How can this dude be happy when he has no idea what his kid is going through right now?’ As soon as he was gone, Fergus called me over. He handed me the picture your father had given to him along with a piece of paper.
“‘That’s the address where she’s being held,’ he told me. ‘Take the rest of the day off. Wait sixteen hours and then go pick her up. If you go too soon, it will look suspicious.’”
“He already knew where I was?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I have no idea. I never asked. Fergus had a dozen informants all over the city. He usually knew everything that was going on, especially if someone was operating in his territory.”
Deklan reaches over to the coffee table and takes a quick drink from his whiskey glass.
“When I left, I got in my car and put your picture up on the dashboard where I could see it. It was a school picture, I think. You were wearing a green dress, and your hair was curled. You looked bored against the blue background that didn’t go well with your hair.”
“I remember that picture,” I say. “It was from the eighth grade.”
“You were just a kid,” Deklan says softly, “and I was still pissed about your father’s attitude. Every time I looked at the picture, I wondered what was happening to you right then. I wondered what you were thinking and how scared you must be. You were the same age my sister was when she was killed. When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I checked the address and saw it was a slip at the main dock at the lake. You were only about a half an hour away. Then I started thinking about how long a half hour must feel like to the girl in the picture.”
“It didn’t sit right with me, not at all. I couldn’t stand the thought of some kid being in that position for something her father did. For the first time since he took me in, I went against what Fergus Foley told me to do. I didn’t wait sixteen hours to go pick you up. I grabbed my gun and my car keys and headed to the lake.
“It was late, dark, and raining. There wasn’t anyone around when I got to the lake—only one car with out-of-state plates. I parked next to the dock and made my way to the slip that matched the one on the paper Fergus gave me. There was a small cargo boat there, but no one was on deck. When I went on board, I could hear two men talking.”
“What were they saying?” I ask when Deklan pauses.
“Nothing pleasant,” he replies. “I could tell by the conversation that I had the right place.”
“So you shot them?”
Deklan nods and takes another drink.
“I headed down the stairs to the cabin. I killed the first one before either of them saw me enter. The other one panicked and went for a gun, but it was close quarters. I grabbed it away from him, put my gun to his head, and asked him where you were. He told me you were in the cargo hold. I…incapacitated him before I went to find you.”