I wanted to tell her that, by fourteen, I’d already killed a few men, but Seamus, Shay, wasn’t like me, and I was glad for that.
We’d started in the life way too early, Declan younger than any of us thanks to Da’s belief he was gay, and that was a rite of passage I hoped we wouldn’t pass onto our own kids. I sure as fuck wouldn’t be letting any son I had, if I ever had any, roam around learning the ropes at fourteen to make sure we were man enough for the job ahead of us.
I watched as she grabbed his head, tucked his face into her throat, and practically frog-marched him out of the room. He didn’t have a chance to see the body on the ground, not one chance, and admiration filled me.
Conor hummed at the sight too. “She’s a good mom.”
Of course that was a generalization, and since he wasn’t the kind to make such sweeping statements, I cut him a look.
“She might be a shit mother.”
He shook his head, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. I wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but the security system followed her, tracing her every move, meaning that as she walked out into the hall, the camera switched, and the screen followed her path. She walked toward us where, at the top of the stairs, the police were slowly approaching the upper landing.
She called out, “It’s me, Officer. I’m Aela O’Neill. I own the property.”
Cops surged upward at that, but what I saw surprised me.
There were eight officers, which was unusual enough. I highly doubted the local force sent out eight cops for a regular home invasion, so that was more than sufficient to have my brows rising. But throw in the plain-clothed detectives, two of them, and one a face I recognized?
Huh.
I cut Conor a look. “Caroline Dunbar.”
He dipped his chin. “Fuck.”
My mouth twisted at his statement. “Fuck about sums it up. What’s she doing there?”
That had him rolling his eyes. “She’s a Fed. Her jurisdiction is everywhere.”
“I know that, dumbass, but she’s normally stuck around us. Like flies around shit.”
“Ha, flies. More like bees around honey.”
I grinned a little at that, but I zoomed in on Caroline’s face.
What surprised me more was that Aela recognized her. Her shoulders stiffened at the sight of her, but Seamus only confirmed it with his, “Caro? What are you doing here?”
Cutting Conor a look when he growled, I muttered, “Entrapment.”
“The beginnings of. Why the hell would the Feds target Aela? They had to know we weren’t aware of Seamus. There are no records of child support payments. Nothing that would indicate there are any links. Anything she knows would be at least, what, fourteen years old?”
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t some crimes we can’t still be tried over, does it?” I arched a brow at him. “Murder doesn’t come with a statute of limitations.”
“True.” He scowled. “What the fuck could Aela know though? Declan wouldn’t have kept her in the loop.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m even asking. I had no idea they were boning anyway. I thought he was stuck on that Deirdre bitch.”
“No. I have no idea why he was with Deirdre, but I knew about Aela. He was always useless at hiding things from me.”
“Aren’t we all?” Conor muttered glumly.
But I didn’t even crack a smile at that. “Wonder if it’s Deirdre,” I mused out loud.
“What about her?”
“Her death? We covered it up, but fuck knows what that bitch has got her claws out for.”
Caroline Dunbar was a severe pain in the ass.
She had a habit of turning up out of the blue with random pieces of evidence that she tried to use to bring us down. It never worked. Even if she had a shot of us with a gun in our hand and the bullet flying out of the muzzle before it penetrated someone’s chest, it wouldn’t matter worth a damn.
We operated like ghosts in this city because everyone was in our pocket.
Didn’t matter what department it fell under, didn’t matter worth a damn. We were untouchable. But she kept on forgetting it.
It was my turn to growl as Aela asked, “You’re a detective?”
Dunbar dipped her chin. “Of a sort. I’m an agent with the FBI. I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”
Ha. More like surveilling her.
I could see from the tension in Aela’s face, the rigidity of her posture, that she didn’t believe that either. She knew a pig always stank, and it didn’t matter if it looked like they were on your side or not—they never were.
She did us proud as she demanded, “Why? What do you think I know?”
Seamus, his gaze whipping between the two women, questioned, “Mom? What’s going on? Why is Caro here?”
“She’s not here to babysit you, butt face,” Aela replied calmly, but her gaze was stony as she stared at Dunbar.
“She worked her way in as a babysitter?” Conor hissed. “Well, that’s a new low.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’m here to help,” Dunbar insisted, her arms spreading wide with entreaty. “There was chatter about you, and I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“You’d only hear the chatter if I was on someone’s radar, and if you were trying to keep me safe, then you’d have told me I was on a radar in the first place.” Aela’s mouth turned down at the corners, but I saw a flash of grief whisper across her features, one that told me she was upset. Not just about what had happened, the safety scare, but also the fact that she’d liked Caro.
Had maybe trusted her?
I got the feeling Aela didn’t trust many people with her son. Somehow, and I had no idea how it was possible, but she’d managed to keep Seamus under wraps. Not a single article I’d read about her had included the information that she had a son. Not a single one. And with a rep like hers? That was impossible.
She was an artist, sure, but she wasn’t a starving one. If anything, she was rich, and well renowned for her work, to the point where I’d admit I was even proud of everything she’d achieved. But somehow, she’d kept Seamus out of the limelight. I knew that was because of us. The second a picture of him flashed online, it was more likely we’d spot it and spot him. Declan and Seamus’s likeness was incredible. There was no doubting his heritage.
She’d evidently paid to keep Seamus safe, what with all the security on hand in the house… so to let Caroline Dunbar into her life, to allow her access to Seamus, I knew she had to be close to the woman.
But that was the trouble with our world. You couldn’t trust anyone unless they were family, and even then, that didn’t always stick.
Case in point—the police hadn’t cornered anyone in the house during their sweep, which meant there was a Five Pointer roaming the streets of Rhode Island right now with a set of crosshairs between the eyes because he’d be dead before tomorrow was out. We’d been betrayed, according to Seamus’s observations, and we dealt with traitors swiftly and harshly.
Of course, he wasn’t the first traitor in recent times, so maybe we’d need to deal with this one differently. Really ram home the message that the O’Donnellys didn’t take mutiny kindly.