There will be no boasting and no storytelling today. As soon as I step foot through the doors of the pub, Clare at my side, Cian gives a sharp whistle and four angry Irishmen come pouring out of the stock room. Niall Maguire is in the lead, his mouth still bruised from our last encounter. He looks as haughty and furious as a bantam rooster. Right next to him is Chopper, Roxy’s pit bull, who can’t seem to decide whether to snarl along with everyone else or dash over and lick my face. Connor Maguire brings up the rear, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow and his face almost as red as his thinning hair.
“You’ve got the fuckin’ nerve, don’t ya, boyo,” he snarls as soon as he sees me.
“That’s right,” I growl right back at him. “And I’m gonna keep coming around until you dig the wax out of your ears and fucking listen to me.”
“Oh, I’ll listen to every word you say,” Connor sneers. “When you’re tied to a chair being beaten with a fuckin’ pipe like you did to my boy. Then we’ll have plenty of conversation.”
Two of his goons step forward, moving to flank me, hands reaching for their guns.
I shove Clare behind me, roughly and unceremoniously, touching my own Glock, easily accessible in the double holsters inside my jacket. I’m waiting to see if they draw, or if they intend to take me down by hand.
“Your boy got home just fine,” I say to Connor, keeping my eyes on his men. “I sent him back to you with barely a mark, even after he took a chunk out of my arm.”
I turn my forearm into my body, showing Connor the ugly gash down the side of my bicep.
“You think I’d come in here if I killed Roxy? Do you?”
Doubt flares in Connor’s eyes.
The man on the left—a tall, gangly ogre type with a blocky head and overlong sideburns—lunges for me. I shove his arms aside with a stiff-arm to the elbow joint, holding myself back from cracking him across the jaw for good measure.
“Easy!” I bark, and then to Connor, “I’ve got a recording for you. If you want to find out who’s responsible for her death, you’ll work with me.”
Connor considers, making a hissing sound through the gap in his front teeth to tell his men to back off just a moment.
Niall hasn’t made the same mistake of rushing me again. He’s watching this whole exchange silently, hand resting lightly on Chopper’s head, his expression dark and resentful.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, playing the recording I made of my interview with the florist’s delivery boy.
His frantic sputtering and begging, while chaotic on the tape, has the ring of authenticity as he admits to the bribe and the delivery of the wine.
“So what?” Connor spits, unconvinced. “That could be anyone.”
“I was there!” Clare cries. “The kid was terrified. He was telling the truth.”
Connor turns to face her, his blue eyes so faded that they look like nothing more than black pin-prick pupils in a sea of grayish white.
“Don’t think I don’t know exactly who you are, little missy,” he says, in his bitter-soft lilt. “Valencia’s little bitch that nobody is supposed to know is stolen, but everybody fuckin’ knows. What kind of favor do you think your father would owe me if I dropped you off on his doorstep, handcuffed to the body of your kidnapper? What a gift that would be.”
“Constantine didn’t kidnap me,” Clare lies with an ease that startles me. “I’m with him willingly—because I believe him. He didn’t kill Roxy. All he’s done since breaking out of DesMax is try to find out who did.”
She blushes slightly on this last sentence, as if recalling that we have taken a few breaks for other activities…
Connor Maguire narrows his eyes, considering her closely.
“And how does any of this concern you,” he says, his lilt all the way down to a hiss now.
“Not everybody in Desolation is rotted black inside,” I tell Connor, cutting across whatever Clare would have replied. “She’s a good girl. She wants justice.”
I can’t have Connor suspecting Valencia in this—not yet, not with Clare right beside me. If Valencia was involved in Roxy’s death, the surest way for Connor to get revenge for his daughter would be to kill Valencia’s daughter right here and now. Something I cannot allow.
Catching the hint, Clare closes her mouth, carefully concealing the trembling of her hands by tucking them into her pockets. She’s developing a better poker face, my little bird. She doesn’t wear her emotions so much on her face, having learned better in the short time I’ve known her.
I can still read her thoughts, though, clear as a thirty-point newsprint headline.
She’s terrified. She thinks this gamble isn’t worth it, marching right into Maguire’s pub. Trying to prove our innocence by exposing our throats to their knives.