He hadn’t enjoyed the game. He was nervous about the prospect of taking Devon ’s daughter in, even for a short time. Lissa was right, he had no experience with children at all, much less with fourteen-year-old girls. He’d been raised as an orphan, though, shuttled from foster family to Catholic orphanage to state-run facility back to foster family, so he knew what that kind of life was like. He’d grown up quickly and hit the streets by the time he was fifteen. Crazy as it seemed, he felt he had a responsibility to at least try to help Devon to keep his daughter out of that life.
He opened the door to his car, slid into the front seat, and pulled out the address Devon had given him. How bad could it be? After all, it was only for a couple of days.
Liam Kilbranish sat at the kitchen table in the weather-beaten capehouse two blocks from the water in Quincy. An RPB MAC 11.380 submachine gun with a detachable suppressor was disassembled and lay in pieces on the table in front of him, each component individually cleaned and oiled. A.223-caliber AR-15 semiautomatic rifle leaned against the kitchen wall, and the nine-millimeter SP-21 Barak semiautomatic pistol was breached and two full clips were lying next to it. An eight-inch knife lay next to its ankle sheath, gleaming under the flickering bare bulb of the overhead light.
Sean Broadark was on the sofa in the living area, which was separated from the tiny house’s kitchen only by a countertop. He was flipping channels disinterestedly on the tiny twelve-inch television. He was an unattractive specimen. His face was cragged with pits and moles, and he was balding in an unusual pattern that left an island of graying red at the crown. He had a paunch that evidenced the kind of personal neglect Liam deplored. In all other respects, though, he was a model soldier: more dedicated to the cause and to the command structure than he was to his own life. A patchy beard was beginning to take root on the man’s pockmarked face, like weeds growing through the cracks in a dilapidated sidewalk. He looked to Liam like one of God’s unfinished works-the sketch of a monster the Almighty had never come back to.
“He didn’t know anything,” Sean said from his perch. It was the first time he’d spoken in nearly a day.
“So it would seem,” Liam replied.
“He’d have talked if he knew anything. No one could take what he took without talking if he had anything to say.”
Liam said nothing.
“You said he would know. You said he would have the answer.”
“Aye. I did,” Liam conceded.
“You were wrong.”
Liam picked up the Barak and slid one of the magazines into the pistol grip, pulling back on the release to chamber a round. He held the gun loosely. “Aye, I was.”
Broadark seemed unfazed. He’d seen enough violence in his lifetime that attempts to intimidate him were useless, and Liam knew it. “So, what now?” was all he said.
“There are two more,” Liam replied. “We find them and make them talk.”
“How do you know they’ll have something to say?”
It was a question that had gnawed at Liam since they had set out from Belfast a week before. It was a question his superiors-those few who had approved of his mission-had asked him as well. How do you know? And to that, there was only one answer: Someone has to know. It was the only answer that would keep alive everything for which he had fought a lifetime; the only answer that would allow him to live up to a promise he had made silently to his father more than three decades earlier.
“They’ll have something to say,” Liam replied.
Broadark never turned. His eyes remained on the television as the stations flashed aimlessly by, one after another. “That’s what you said about Murphy,” he said simply.
Chapter Five
Devon ’s apartment was in a section of Southie that had as yet escaped the onslaught of gentrification eating away at the area year after year. It was the first floor of a clapboard double-decker in desperate need of a paint job. Finn felt like he was getting lead poisoning just looking at the chunks of paint chips collecting in the corners of the front landing. As he looked around the place, any thought that Devon would make good on his promise of payment slipped away.
The woman who opened the door was probably in her early thirties, but extra mileage was evident in the lines in her face. She regarded Finn with an expression equal parts suspicion and annoyance.
“What the fuck do you want?” she demanded.
“I’m Finn,” he replied stupidly.
“Congratulations,” she sneered. “That don’t answer the fuckin’ question.”
He blinked back at her, and for the first time it occurred to him that Devon might not have called ahead to let her know that he’d asked Finn to take care of his daughter.
“I’m Devon ’s lawyer,” he began again. “He asked me to stop by.”
The woman raised an angry hand to her brow and wiped a wisp of dyed-blonde hair from her eyes. “What’s he done now?” Her posture hadn’t softened and her tone carried no greater civility.
“He’s in jail.”
She put a hand on her jutting hip. “Motherfucker,” she said. “That figures. Come on up and we can have a few laughs, he said. Only he doesn’t mention that his daughter’s staying with him, or that he’s gonna take off and I was gonna spend a couple days taking care of the goddamned little brat.”
A small girl with ragged-cut straight black hair topping a furrowed brow appeared in the narrow space between the woman’s arm and the doorjamb. She wore a sweatshirt two sizes too big, with the words “What are you lookin’ at?” emblazoned across the chest.
“Who is it?” the girl asked.
The woman turned sharply. “I thought I told you to watch TV.”
The girl ignored the woman and evaluated Finn with clear, intelligent eyes sharp enough to drill through bedrock.
“You must be Devon ’s daughter,” Finn said. He recognized that his voice was patronizing, as if he were talking to a three-year-old. He winced.
The girl nodded. “The little brat,” she said.
“Get back inside,” the woman ordered.
The girl looked at the woman with contempt. Then she backed away and disappeared.
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, you little shit!” the woman called after her. She looked back at Finn. “Kids today… no fuckin’ manners.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I’m not even with Devon,” she said. “Not really. Not like that. And he knows I’ve got a sick ma down in Providence I gotta take care of. I don’t need this shit. You tell him he’d better find someone else to take care of Little Miss Sunshine, and damned fuckin’ quick. Otherwise, she’s gonna be out on the fuckin’ street.”
Finn nodded. “That’s why I’m here. He asked me to look after her for a couple of days.”
She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time, then let out a bitter laugh. “You?”
“Me.” He tried to put some conviction in his voice, but he was pretty sure he’d failed.
She shook her head angrily. “Fine. Don’t that just take the fuckin’ cake? I come all the way up here for a little time with him, and the cocksucker don’t even trust me with his kid.”
“I thought you said-”
“Fine.” She wasn’t listening. “That’s fine. You takin’ her with you now?”
“I don’t know,” Finn said. “I guess.”
“You guess? Great. Just fuckin’ great.” She stamped her foot and turned, slamming the door behind her. “I’ll send her out in a couple minutes!” she yelled through the glass.
Finn was tempted to leave. It was difficult to believe that anything good could come from this, but he’d given his word. Besides, he worried about what might become of Devon’s daughter if left with someone as unstable as the woman Devon had apparently conned up from Providence to watch her while he was off committing grand theft. He had no choice, he knew, so he waited on the front stoop, shifting his feet back and forth.
It would be all right, he told himself. Devon would be out in a few days, and then this was no longer his problem.