“I’ve called you a cab. They’ll take you wherever you want to go, and you can get yourself back to Ireland from there,” he told her.
She opened the door and walked out, pulling it shut behind her. As soon as she was out of sight, Ronan put his head down in his hands and forced himself to just breathe. In and out. In and out. Slow, steady, calm.
He was torn between tearing her apart and going outside to see what she had to say. He should give her a chance to explain, but the truth was that he was afraid she might talk him into letting her stay, and it would be a fatal mistake.
It was a relief when he heard tires on the gravel outside and the sound of a door opening and closing. The car retreated, and he went to the kitchen to pour himself a whiskey. He hardly knew what to do with himself.
Earlier, he had been contemplating how she might fit in with the other wives, and now, he felt like he’d been punched in the guts repeatedly.
“Get your shit together, Alpha,” he told himself, downing the rest of his whiskey and pouring himself another.
He called Fergus to give him an update on what he knew about the situation in Ireland. He left out the part about Maeve and Martin being engaged, at least for now. Instead, he just told him what Greyscale had found out.
“They saw him out on the cliffs briefly and went in for a closer look. He seems to have gone back in through another tunnel they hadn’t explored and found a way out.”
“Where is he now?”
“Not sure, but I guess I know who put the bomb in my car.”
“Aye. I guess you do. Is he alone?”
“No idea. Greyscale sent some of his guys back into the tunnel Cobain came out of and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in there. They have a bunker situated in the tunnel connecting to the dungeon. That’s how he was able to keep hidden until things died down, but the tunnel is sealed on one end by the dungeon being filled in and on the other by a cave in of some sort. I guess the cliffs and another exit were his only way out.”
“Aye. Makes sense. Those old caves are full of hidden tunnels in that area. These feckin Maguires, man. They’re like a bunch of cockroaches. I bet they’d survive a damned apocalypse.”
“Seems that way.”
“Well, one guy shouldn’t be much of a threat. We just need to find him and deal with him. We’ll talk about it some more when we get there.”
“Aye. Did you find out anything about the caretakers?” Ronan asked.
“Oh. Yeah. I was going to tell you about them too when I came. Apparently, the father of the crew lost his shit and killed the rest of them.”
“You’re feckin kidding me?”
“Nope. Dead serious. Went batshit crazy. They found him wandering around the other side of the lake from our property. He was soaking wet, like he’d swam across.”
“And no one told us anything?”
“I guess they didn’t know to tell us. We were paying them under the table to take care of the place, so who would have known but us.”
“Explains the state of this place. I’m going to need your help when you get here to finish cleaning up the yard, and there are some repairs on the exterior that need to be made.”
“He didn’t do any damage to the inside?”
“Well, he did leave a dead deer carcass in the living room that ruined the wood, so we’ll need to get that fixed. Otherwise, it seems to be in decent shape. Just needed a good dust and polish.”
The thought sent a pang through him as he thought about Maeve having taken such care to help clean it up for them, but he pushed it down. Sentiment would get him nowhere.
“Must have been a shock for your lass coming into all that.”
“She’s seen worse, I’m guessing, but she’s gone anyway.”
“Yeah? What’s up with that?”
“Ah, you know how I am with women.”
“Aye. That I do.”
Ronan had a reputation as not getting too attached to any of the women he dated, if you could call the string of one-night stands and short-term affairs he’d had since he was a teen dating. It served his purposes well in this situation, cutting way back on any necessary explaining.
“All right, well, we’ll see you tomorrow night then.”
“See you then.”
Ronan ended the call and went to the bedroom. He pulled the laptop that they kept at the house from a drawer in the desk there and plugged it into the surveillance system, pulling up footage from the last known visit by the caretakers, according to what Fergus had given him from their payment info.
He let it run as he went to retrieve the bottle of whiskey and a glass, pouring himself another as he watched the footage. It was all there. The elder caretaker had snapped the necks of his family right outside this very house and then piled them in the back of his work van.