Smoked (The Invincibles 5)

“Do you want my advice?”

“You’re going to give it to me no matter what I say, so why ask?”

“Get in touch with her. Jesus, Smoke, go to Kinsale. See her. Talk to her. Do something. Don’t just let her walk out of your life for good.” With every word, Casper’s voice got louder.

“You finished?”

“Nope. You’re a fucking asshole if you let Siren go. A fucking, goddamn asshole.”

“Nice language for someone who doesn’t like swearing.”

“I don’t like it when other people swear.”

I laughed, but then stopped when I saw the look on her face.

“Do you know how hard it is to find love in our line of work? Do you?”

Casper’s eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head from me. “Not just in our line of work, Smoke. In life.”

“She doesn’t love me.”

The last thing I expected was for Casper to hit me, but that’s what she did. She pulled back and slugged my arm. “Ouch!”

“Like that hurt.” She shook her head. “You’re such a jerk.”

Neither of us spoke again until we were back in Lyon and I pulled up in front of the place where she was renting an apartment.

“Look, Casper, I appreciate everything you said, but I’m here to do a job. I’m not in Europe to track Siren down. If she has anything to say to me, she knows how to reach me. The same can’t be said for me knowing how to reach her. Before she left the States, she dismantled her cell phone. In part, so I couldn’t track her, but also so I couldn’t get in touch with her.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Smoke. Give yourself every out you can find, and years from now, when you’re sitting in that fancy-as-fuck house of yours on top of a mountain and you’re all alone, I want you to think back on this moment and know that it was your choice to be miserable. Some of us have the choice made for us, and some of us are too fucking stubborn and stupid to change things before it’s too late.” She got out and slammed the car door behind her.

As I told her, I appreciated everything she said, but it wasn’t anywhere near as simple as she was making it out to be.

Siren and I were different people than Casper and Beau. We hadn’t fallen in love. We hadn’t made a decision to spend our lives together. It was the opposite. If the mission she and I were on had ended before she got shot, I would’ve walked away without a second thought. Siren would’ve been just another operative I worked a mission with. She wouldn’t be someone I dreamed about every fucking night. She wouldn’t be someone I missed every fucking minute of the day. Would she?

24

Siren

I stood in front of the antique shop that looked as though no one had set foot in it in fifty years or more, and double-checked the address. Part of me wished I had it wrong, but I was in the right place. According to

Uncle Gene, Jimmy Mallory was in Kinsale, dealing with property he’d inherited when his father, James Mallory Jr., died suddenly a few weeks ago.

According to the records I was able to have pulled when I arrived in town, Junior had inherited it from James Mallory, Sr., the man who, on his deathbed, confessed to hiding the jewels in the Waterford Clock Tower.

I reached out, surprised to find the door unlocked.

“We’re closed,” someone hollered from the back when a bell affixed to the door rang.

“Jimmy?”

“Who are you?” asked the man, peeking his head around another doorway.

“Siobhan Gallagher.”

“Gallagher?” He walked closer to where I was standing, and I could see he was close to my age.

“Gene O’Brien said I could find you here. I understand your father and mine were good friends.”