In the meantime, Finn felt helpless. It seemed as though there was nothing he could do to move the matter along, and he was stuck playing inadequate surrogate father to Devon ’s daughter.
By the time he pulled up to the office he’d worked himself into a sweat, just wrestling with his options. That, in turn, made him angry with himself. Lissa was right after all. Devon was his client, not his family, and this wasn’t, in the end, Finn’s problem. There was no rational reason he should treat it as though it were.
He opened the car door and stood up. Arching his back to stretch out, he looked around him. The weather was warming, little by little, and the buds were beginning to appear on the trees along the street in Charlestown. It was a beautiful place in so many ways; it retained much of the charm of the Old World. He’d built a good life for himself, he thought. Or, if not a life, at least a good professional reputation. He was far better off than he would have been if he’d stayed on the path of his youth. Few others were so fortunate. If he could, he was determined to give Sally the best chance she could have at a normal life. Right now, that meant working to get her father out of jail.
Liam Kilbranish was no longer watching the lawyer. He would return to that soon enough; for the moment he had other things to do.
He took his time. He was careful. He made sure that he knew the layout of the neighborhood well. One of the things that made planning difficult in this city was the layout. It had grown in fits and starts, without any semblance of the urban planning that one might find in a more modern city. Streets followed the original cow paths of premodern times, and neighborhoods had sprouted up, grown, died, and sprouted up again in a whimsical manner. As a result, the streets had few patterns and twisted and turned in an illogical stitching of one-way lanes and dead ends. Knowing the streets was paramount. The likelihood that a chase would ensue was low, but he had to account for the possibility. If it happened and he was unprepared, it would be over in moments.
Once he was sure that he had memorized the area, he went back to the safe house in Quincy. He had to make preparations there, too, if his plan was going to work. The place had a basement, which made things easier. It was a shallow space, with a low ceiling and walls that blended cement with the natural bedrock that had been blasted away to hollow out the ground underneath the little house. There was a furnace that looked as if it had been replaced within the past decade, and a water heater that was smaller than he would have chosen. There were no windows, which was a blessing, and the only way in or out was a staircase leading up to a kitchen. With a little work it would be perfect for his purposes.
Broadark was sitting on the couch, and he watched as Liam went up and down through the doorway in the kitchen, getting the place ready. The television was off; the man had given up his channel-surfing habit. Instead, he was watching Liam intently, and Liam could tell that he wanted to say something, though he held his tongue for a while.
It took less than an hour, and then he was ready. He sat at the table at the kitchen, checking over his weapons.
“Are you sure?” Broadark asked at last.
“I am,” Liam replied.
“This was never part of the plan.”
“Plans change.”
“They do,” Broadark agreed. “It’s not always a good thing when they do. If this goes badly, there will be questions. No one wants us to put the organization in this kind of light.”
“It won’t go badly.”
Broadark had nothing to say to that. To question any further would have brought the two men into a confrontation from which there was no backing down, and both of them knew it. He stood and walked over to the window, looking out into the cement yard. “When?” he asked.
Liam was strapping the knife to his ankle. He checked his pistol and slipped a fully loaded clip into the handle. He wouldn’t need the automatic. Not for this task. “Soon,” he said.
Finn worked through the morning. He drafted the motion for a new bail hearing in Devon ’s case, taking extra care to make it a work of his finest advocacy. Once he finished with the motion, he moved on to get some work done on other cases. He could feel Lissa looking up at him on occasion, studying his demeanor. Normally they would talk to each other periodically, and he generally showed her his work so that she could look it over. Not that day, however. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts, and he didn’t feel like sharing them at the moment.
At one point Lissa got up and walked over to him. “You all right, boss?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
He looked up at her. “There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I can write the briefs, I can make the arguments, but that’s it.”
She nodded. “That’s true.”
“It pisses me off,” he said. “I should be able to do more.”
She flashed him an understanding smile. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “But at least it’s nice bullshit. It’s what makes you who you are.”
“My bullshit makes me who I am?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It does. True of everybody else, too, so don’t feel bad. Your bullshit is better than most.” She leaned in close to him. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t bullshit all the same,” she said softly.
He took in a deep breath and exhaled; returned her smile weakly. “Is that all you wanted to say to me? You had to walk across the room to tell me that? I’m full of shit?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not all.”
“What else, then?”
“It’s almost one-thirty.”
“So?”
“So, Sally gets out of school at one-thirty. You’re already going to be late.”
He looked at his watch and sighed again. “Damn, I almost forgot.”
“Almost?”
“Fine, I forgot.” He looked at the papers strewn across his desk. “I have no idea when I’m gonna get the rest of this work done.”
She looked at him for a long moment. He could sense a change in her recently. Something he was having trouble putting his finger on. She had always been one of the harder people he’d known. She didn’t let people in easily, and life seemed to roll around her without making a dent. But she seemed softer now, somehow. Perhaps it was just his imagination.
She walked back to her desk and picked up her car keys. “I’ll get her,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” Finn replied. He stood up and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, feeling in the pockets for his own keys.
“I don’t mind,” Lissa said.
“I appreciate it, but she’s my responsibility.” He was moving toward the door, but she stepped in front of him.
“Finn,” she said, “she’s not your responsibility. You do understand that, right?”
“We can’t just leave her at the school.”
“I don’t mean right now. She’s not your responsibility long-term.”
“I know,” he said.
She looked at him. “Do you?”
“I do. I just want to do what I can to try and keep her father out of jail.”
“A lot of it’s out of your control, though. Even if you get Devon out on bail, you know he’s gonna go back in after the trial. You’re a good lawyer, but you can’t change the fact that you have a guilty client. Not just guilty; dead to rights.”
“I know,” Finn said. “But I’ve got to try. Maybe with a little time on the outside, Devon can figure out someplace for her to be. Someplace better than where she would otherwise end up.”