“Didja hear me, boyo?” Sinead said, and I got out of the chair where I’d been slumped. Where I’d been getting too comfortable.
The whole cottage was entirely too comfortable. Unchanged, really, since my time as a kid. Small and low-ceilinged, full of books and soft chairs with blankets over the back. It smelled perpetually of tea and something baking.
The Dead or Alive orders changed everything. I couldn’t just ship her off to Zilla with a target on her back. And I couldn’t leave her alone. There was a good chance this was a mistake, but all I had left was a choice of mistakes. I had apartments and hidey-holes all over the world, full of money and guns and fake passports, but Caroline knew about too many of them. And I didn’t trust Caroline. Not with Poppy.
Not anymore.
So, I’d made my way through an endless night. Back in time. To the one truly safe place I’d ever known.
Which happened to be right next to the most dangerous place I’d ever known.
That was a metaphor for something. Or a joke? I was just too tired to figure it out.
The only thing that mattered is that no one would find this place. No one would trace us across an ocean and through time zones back here. It had been a reckless and dangerous twenty-four hours. I’d called in every favor I had saved up over the years and burned through all my liquid cash, bribing everyone who needed it—and some who probably didn’t—and got us here.
Now what?
“Ronan?”
“I heard you, Sinead,” I said and walked across the wood floor to the stones of the kitchen off the back of the cottage. This part of the cottage was hundreds of years old. Part of a dairy for the church on the hill. “Do you have any coffee?”
“Tea,” she said, coming up beside me. “I’ll pick up some coffee tomorrow. But stop changin’ the subject. What are you doin’ with that lass?”
I had no fucking idea; that was the honest answer.
I needed more time. A few more days. A lot more information. But even if Poppy had answers, did she know them? More importantly, would she tell me?
Of course fucking not.
She had to believe I shot her, and I wasn’t sure if telling her the truth was wise. Or merciful. I could handle her hate. I did not like it when she was scared. It made me want to be something I wasn’t and could never be. Comforting.
Kind.
“She’s scared.” Sinead said it as an indictment of me, and that was more than fair. Sinead didn’t know what was happening, but assuming it was my fault was always a safe bet.
“How do you know?”
“She told me!”
“She woke up?”
“For a few minutes about an hour ago. Asked what was happenin’.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothin’ because I don’t fuckin’ know what’s happenin’, do I?”
“I’ll handle it.”
She made that noise in the back of her throat that was pure Sinead. “You always were a cute hoor.”
I smiled at the insult.
The night outside the window over the sink was black—no stars, no moon—except for the rectangles of light in the distance from the Catholic church that used to be a school. Someone was still there. In the vestry, if my memory was right. The rest of the building was dark, a looming shadow, blacker than the night around it.
“Where are the kids?” I asked. In my day, the building would be lit up like a carnival before the priests came in with the rods. More kids than beds. More beds than rooms. More chaos than sense. More pain than anything else.
Coming back here was a dangerous choice. But Theo Rivers didn’t leave me with any.
The Constantines and the Morellis didn’t leave me with any.
The unconscious girl in the bedroom, with stitches in her arm, didn’t leave me with any.
Oh, lad, came my father’s scathing voice in my head. You fucked this up proper.
“It’s not a parochial school anymore,” Sinead said. “We made sure of that, but you didn’t stick around long enough to see it done.”
“Who lives there?”
“Father Patrick. He was new when you were here. You might not remember—”
“I remember,” I said, my hand against the sink. The name stirred up the sleeping dogs in my head. Tommy and the cats.
Don’t give ’em nuthin’.
“Look at the head on you, you scut,” Sinead said. She was dressed in her coat with her keys in her hand, but she came back into the kitchen. “That girl’s gonna be fine. But I’d wager money you haven’t slept. Or eaten. There’s soup and turkey in the fridge. Bread in the—”
“I’m fine.”
“You look shite.” She stood in front of me—all five feet of her. Her red hair going gray, and her bright blue eyes were as able to see through a lie as they ever were. It had been eight years since my stay at the school. Twelve years since Sinead brought as much kindness as she could to a feral Protestant kid in a brutal Catholic parochial school. If I had known her earlier, maybe there would have been a chance for me.