Chasing River (Burying Water 3)

“I tried once, but she didn’t answer,” Rowen murmurs, peeking past the curtain to watch Ivy. “You going to call Aengus?”

I thumb my phone in my hand, considering it. “Not yet. Hopefully the gardai do something useful.” They should have been there by now. I’m halfway tempted to jump in the car and drive down the street, only for all I know these guys are waiting for a green MINI to show up. Aengus has borrowed it enough times. “I mean, if they see gardai round the corner and they take off, they’ll just be back later, in a different car. Knowing Aengus, he’ll camp out at our house, waiting to ambush them. And then he’s got blood on his hands.” I shouldn’t have to spell it out. “We’re protecting him by not telling him right away. If he doesn’t know where the threat’s coming from, he’ll lay low. If we tell him, there are going to be two bodies outside our house.” I shake my head. “Ma would collapse with that news.”

He opens his mouth, but Ivy pushes through the door with a silver briefcase in her hand.

“You weren’t kidding.”

She sets it down on the coffee table, dialing the lock combination and popping it open. “Do I look like a kidder?”

“No, you don’t,” I mutter through a sigh. The girl’s face might splinter with too wide a smile.

“Are we actually doing this, here?” Rowen reaches for the tattoo gun but she swats his hand away before he actually makes contact, earning his grin.

“If you stop drinking, I’ll do you after I do him.” I don’t know if she meant it to sound like it does but there’s usually only one way that Rowen will take something like that. Especially after Sunday night.

I roll my eyes. At least my little brother’s easily distracted from more serious problems with her around. “Thanks for the offer, but don’t you need to make a transfer of the sketch?” That’s what they did for my other one.

“All I need is this.” She jabs Rowen’s chest with her finger, right over the stag on his pub shirt.

“Freehand?”

“Yup. And I’ll do it better than any transfer.” Deadpan. She’s not even being arrogant. She believes it. “What’s wrong. Scared?”

“No. Worried. Is this all clean and hygienic and stuff?”

“More than you probably are,” I think I hear under her breath, but I can’t be sure. I keep my mouth shut and down the rest of my drink as she sets her portable station up at the dining room table, complete with a blinding table lamp, aftercare tape and gauze, cleaners, gloves, and packaged needles.

“Seriously, why do you have all this stuff when you work in a shop?”

“Because I like to be prepared. So?” She kicks out the chair with her socked foot. “What else do you have to do while you’re pretending not to be hiding from someone and in deep shit?”

Rowen and I share a quick glance.

“Fuck it.” I crawl out of my seat and, grabbing the back of my T-shirt, I slide it over my head and toss it to the side.

Her eyes skate over the phoenix and then raise to meet my gaze in a knowing way, but otherwise she says nothing about it. “You sit here. You?” She snaps her finger at Rowen and then points at the chair beside her. “Here.”

“I wouldn’t be too demanding of him if I were you,” I warn. “He likes it when birds boss him around.”

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand about Ireland,” she murmurs and I shudder, the stuff she sprays on the right side of my chest cool and sterile-smelling, “it’s being called a ‘bird.’ ”

“What’s wrong with being called a bird?”

“Do you think I have feathers?”

“I know you don’t have feathers.” Rowen peers up at her face as she leans into his chest to study the stag on his T-shirt. “Though it’s hard to tell either way, with that big tent covering you.”

She ignores his comment on her choice of clothes—he’s right, she’s swimming in her shirt—and punches a few buttons into her phone. Music pumps out of the tiny portable speaker she brought.

“Okay. Ready?” Throwing her hair back into a ponytail and pushing her sleeves up, she slips on a pair of gloves and flicks the switch on.

I grit my teeth against the first burn of the needle. It hurts just about the same as the last one, which was a lot. And yet I forgot about it enough to do this again. My ma said it’s the same way with childbirth—that had she ever remembered the pain that Aengus caused her, Rowen and I would never have been born. Apparently it was the angelic lock of bright red hair on top of Aengus’s head that made her forget instantly.

Easing out an exhale, I let my head rest against the back of the chair, listening to Ivy’s soft hum to the music.

“So this stag represents your family or something?”

“The Delaney family crest, going back a thousand years,” Rowen explains.

“You Irish are awfully proud of your heritage.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I couldn’t tell you the first thing about my heritage. Things just aren’t like that over in America, by and large.”

“That’s sad.” Rowen’s eyes land on her legs, covered in black leggings.

“Maybe.” A pause. “And this other tattoo. Does that have to do with your heritage too?”

“It does,” I answer for him. “A lot of Delaneys were nationalists.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying IRA?”

Rowen shoots me a questioning glare.

“Relax, guys. I was hanging around my uncle’s shop and watching him ink Hells Angels members when I was eleven. I’m not easily scared off.”

“Hells Angels?” Rowen asks with a frown.

“Yeah, you know. One of the most notorious motorcycle gangs . . . Oh, forget it. Criminals, okay? How are you doing, River. You need a break?”

“Nope.” I clench my jaw as the needles moves farther down, like a knife carving into my skin the closer it gets to my nipple.

“It’s looking good,” Rowen mutters, leaning over.

“You’re blocking my light.” She stops working on me to shove him back into his chair, earning his grin.

I watch the frown across her forehead as she concentrates, the only sound in the house the music and the buzz of the needle. She really is so different from Amber. “How long have you and Amber been friends?”

“Three days.”

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously. Three days.”

“But I thought you guys know each other from back home?”

“We do. But we weren’t friends. In fact, I pretty much hated her guts after she ratted me out to her dad for something stupid.”

Panic instantly ignites in my gut. “She ratted you out to her dad?” The sheriff?

“Long story, but in case you haven’t noticed, Amber’s always been a stickler for the rules.”

I glance up over my shoulder, to the stairs. Fuck. Is that what she’s doing right now?

“I need to take five. Grab some water.”

Ivy backs away. I stand and stretch my arms above me before wandering over to the kitchen to fill a glass. I take my time drinking it, staring out the back window at the terrace. It’s simple but nice, with a dining table and latticed wall covered in vines. I wonder if I’ll ever manage to have something like this. Delaney’s is basically it for me, whether I love it or not. My options for other employment are severely limited by my criminal record. At least Delaney’s does well enough. Rowen and I’ll earn a healthy living, as long as we take care of it.