Page 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

B lindly, I reach out for a steel chair and sink into it.

“You knew?” Dai Qing’s brow furrows.

“No.” I shake my head. “No. I was too young.”

Her frown deepens. “But you know something now.”

I swallow the bile rising in my throat. If Lorcan killed Ho-Jun, could he also be responsible for Chad? Finn said they killed for each other, and Lorcan told me about Ho-Jun’s murder. Finn fought with Chad in The Cage, and Chad was good, one of the best. Could Finn have done it? Did they do it?

“If you know something”— she taps the folder—“you need to tell us.”

“I don’t know anything.” I glance up at her and then away. “I was only ten. What would I know? I didn’t even realize Ho-Jun worked as a mechanic. He was a deadbeat. We had nothing to do with him. I’m—” I scramble for the right phrase. “Surprised he died like that.”

Dai Qing sinks into the chair across from me and drags the folder close to her. She riffles through it for a minute before extracting a paper. “The bureau also considered your father’s death suspicious.”

I frown and take the sheet from her. On it is the medical examiner’s report. I scan it, using my FBI training to make sense of the jargon. So many injuries. It hurts my heart to read it.

“He was beaten before he sustained his fatal injuries.” Stones drop and sink into my stomach, one by one.

“What did your mother tell you?”

“He went for a hike.” My voice is so quiet I don’t recognize it. Each word causes the image of my father to surface, alive, happy. “He loved being outside in nature.” I gather the loose strands of my hair off my face. “It was foggy. He got off the path. Wandered over a cliff. The impact killed him.”

“The last part is true.”

I rub the paper between my fingers and pass it to Dai Qing. “The real truth is he was probably followed into the woods, beaten to semiconsciousness then tossed over the edge of the cliff.”

“Yes.” Her dark eyes are full of sympathy.

“So Ho-Jun was killed, most likely by—” I swallow. Lorcan’s name bounces around my skull, on the tip of my tongue. I can’t do it. “Someone from the O’Malley family. My father was most likely killed through some kind of Mafia connection.”

Dai Qing closes the file and stares at me for a moment. “He learned Irish after your brother was murdered, right?”

I give a curt nod.

“The Donaghey family speaks primarily Irish for their business purposes.”

“I haven’t seen much evidence of that.”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“I suppose.”

“You understand where I’m going with this.”

“My dad asked me to go on that hike with him. Father-daughter bonding time.” I lean into the chair and cross my arms. “I didn’t feel like getting dirty. I was an asshole at fifteen.”

“If you’d been there, you’d most likely be dead. You know how these things work.”

“That’s twice, you know that? Twice I’ve beaten death.”

“I’d guess it’s more than that. You’ve beaten death on every assignment so far.”

“How many lives does a person get? How many close calls, almost-deaths?”

“None of us knows the answer to that.”

I stare at her. “You think my father might have been working for the Donaghey family?”

“What do you think?”

“Don’t turn this shit around on me. I don’t know what to think. My head is spinning.” Part of my head feels far too attached to my heart to make the leaps that need to be done right now.

“I don’t think your father was working for the Donaghey family. There’s nothing in your file to indicate anyone with the FBI suspected that either. But he learned Irish for a reason.”

“To avenge my brother.”

“Is that something you see your father doing? He wasn’t Chad’s biological parent. He would have already known the dangers from Ho-Jun’s unexpected death.”

In my head, images of my father laughing and embracing Chad, cheering him on at sporting events, passing him an ice pack from the freezer, sitting at the kitchen table and helping him with his homework, floats up to the surface. “It never mattered to my dad. He loved Chad like he loved me.” My stomach rolls and sweat pools under my armpits. My father. My father.

“I don’t know who killed Chad. Based on the information in this file, I’d say you’re looking at someone in the Donaghey family as the likely culprit.” Dai Qing shakes her head. “It’s unbelievable you’re in this position.”

“I didn’t work the Mafia circuit until the job with Carys came up. The intelligence from the bureau indicated she’d be likely to hire someone like me. Then I landed the Donaghey job because I can speak Irish.”

“I mean, anyone who looked at your file could figure out there was a connection there.” She flips the file closed with force. “Malik should have fought to keep you off this job.”

Considering what Malik’s done for me and his current state, there’s no way I’m blaming him. If I hadn’t seen the photo of Chad in the O’Malley’s hallway, I might never have known any of this. Half of my brain turns over the possibility Lorcan shot my brother in cold blood right in front of me. Closing my eyes, I push my memory to that moment, but other than the blood, so much blood, I don’t recall anything else.

“I wish I could remember.”

“There’s a reason you don’t. Seeing that at your age would have been incredibly traumatic.” She purses her lips. “Did your parents ever get you help? Like professional help?”

“Yes. I’m sure that’s in my file.”

Dai Qing raises her eyebrows. “I sort of wondered if you fudged that.”

“Nope. Passed through those sessions with flying colors.” I pace the room.

“Even then you understood how to become someone else.”

I lean against a wall. “I’m good at slipping into someone else’s skin. It’s easy. Lately… ever since my mom had to go into a home.” I thrust my hands into the pockets of my coat and can’t quite meet her gaze. “Layers are peeling away, one after another.”

“We should get you out, get you into counseling again.”

“No.” I straighten. “The one thing I’m sure I can do is my job. I know who Kim is.”

“But you’re not too sure about Kimi.” She slides the folder off the table into her hand. “As handlers, we’re taught the importance of a real-world connection for people who are undercover. If you don’t have a life to go to when the job is done, the job becomes your life, and boundaries get crossed, things get fuzzy.”

“Nothing is fuzzy.” My mind drifts to Lorcan, the way his hand skates across the small of my back, the quirk of his lips when he finds something amusing, the soft lilt of his voice in my ear just before…

Dai Qing scans my face, probably seeing far more than I’d like. “I’m going to take you to see Malik, but first we have another stop to make.”

I check my watch. “I need to get home soon. Finn cannot be suspicious, or he’ll kill me. That’s not hyperbole. I’ll be dead.”

“I understand. It won’t take long, but there’s one more thing you need to know before you go.”

We exit the room and head down the hall in tense silence. She doesn’t believe I’m okay. Maybe I’m not, but I don’t care.

“I’m not sure where Lorcan’s gone,” I admit as we enter a two-way mirror room which looks onto an interrogation area. It’s been a while since I’ve been in these. I forgot how dim the lighting is kept.

“Oh,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about him beating you home.” She indicates the window in front of us.

Ice freezes my veins. Lorcan is deep in conversation with Zahir, a senior agent at the bureau. My hand touches the glass, and I can’t stop staring at Lorcan, taking him in.

“What is he doing here?” I whisper.

“He knows it was us who landed on his property.”

“Oh, my God.” I look at her, stunned. “I can’t go home.”

“He doesn’t know about you.”

“Then how is he here?”

She sighs. “After we planted you in his organization, we arranged a bump to see if he had any interest in informing on his brother or other Mafia organizations he’s connected to.”

Lorcan’s comments about his secret project, that Finn didn’t realize the big deal he was working on, and his comment about setting something in motion he wasn’t sure he could stop, flare in my consciousness. “No one fucking told me?”

She snaps the folder onto the table behind her. “And risk you blowing your cover? You already seem too invested in him. If you knew, you’d have blown your own story.”

I shake my head even as a tiny voice wonders if she’s right. “I should have been told.”

“We couldn’t risk it. He turned us down. He said the only way he’d give up Finn was if his brother murdered his father. Any other scenario and it wasn’t a deal.” She gestures to Lorcan in the other room, who is now leaning across the table at Zahir, who sits with an impassive expression on his face, hands loosely clasped. There are other agents in the room observing, hands not far from their guns. “You can imagine he’s just a little bit pissed we were at his house.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That when he turned us down, we put an agent in Zhang’s organization. When they went to war with Zhang, they rounded up an agent.”

I rock back on my heels and dig my hands into the pockets of my coat. “It’s true. Also, plausible. So why is Lorcan still here?”

“We’re chatting with him.”

“He should have a lawyer.”

She purses her lips and glances at me. “From what I understand, he’s only incriminating himself against future crimes so far.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

Dai Qing hits the button that lets us hear as well as see them. “There have only been two issues since he got here. I’m sure he’ll circle around to one or the other again.”

Lorcan tilts back in his steel chair and eyes Zahir. “You won’t tell me which of the people we rounded up was FBI?”

“That’s correct.” Zahir’s voice is silky. “That’s not going to change no matter how many times you ask.”

Lorcan looks up at the ceiling and then stares at the mirror. “Who’s watching?”

I freeze, afraid to look at Dai Qing. Lorcan’s eyes are piercing in their intensity. He’s so angry, and I yearn to go to him.

“A stenographer. We have someone taking notes to protect us both.”

Lorcan snorts. “Oh, I’m sure.” With another appraising glance at the mirror, his eyes give him away. He’s put something together. “Your agent was the black guy. The one following Kim.” He shakes his head, the rest of his body tight with unreleased tension. Even here, behind the glass, the room seems to vibrate with his rage.

Zahir says nothing, just continues to watch.

“If you’ve planted an agent in my organization and I find out about it, or Finn finds out about it, they’re dead.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing we haven’t done that then.” He picks at a piece of fluff on his suit and then glances at Lorcan. “We asked you to turn on your brother. That offer is still open.”

“After you come onto my property, kill one of my men…” Lorcan’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat.

My heart aches at the thought of Antonio.

“I’d never do a deal with you people.”

Zahir regards him for a moment before rising. “I understand you’re angry with us. We could have handled the extraction of our agent a little more cleanly. I won’t deny that. We’re checking into procedures.” He sighs. “Don’t be na?ve. Whether we come for you today or tomorrow or next week or in a month, we’ll be knocking down your door, dismantling your organization. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His jaw is like granite. “We’re clean as a whistle. Come looking. You won’t find shit.”

Zahir chuckles and rebuttons his suit jacket. “You realize we don’t only come for you and Finn, right? We come for everybody.”

“I already told you—” He clambers out of his seat, fists clenched. The other agents in the room stir in anticipation.

“And I’m telling you, it doesn’t work like that. We don’t exclude anyone. You only get to negotiate if you’re at the table with something to bargain with, and you’ve brought nothing.”

Dai Qing hits the button on the wall with a click as Zahir exits the room. It only takes a second for the door to our viewing area to pop open. My focus is glued to Lorcan whose elbows are digging into the table as he runs his hands along his face. I don’t want to be in this room; I want to be in his.

“You caught that?” Zahir comes up beside me.

“Enough,” Dai Qing says before I can speak.

“Yes.” I focus like a laser on Lorcan.

“You understand you cannot tell him who you are.”

“I think I could turn him.”

“I think he would kill you.”

Through the window, he starts pacing around the room, running his hands through his hair. My gaze strays to him again. “What if Finn did kill their father?”

“Our intelligence says it was the Russians.”

My smile is tinged with bitterness when I give him my attention. “I got news for you about your intel. It’s not always right.”

“We aren’t created equal. Some of us get the job done better than others.”

“I can get this done. I can turn him. I know I can.”

He searches my face. “Perhaps. The reason you want to turn him isn’t the reason we want him turned. Don’t let your emotions cloud your judgment. He and his brother have done awful things, truly terrible things for each other, to protect their organization. We’ve never had enough proof to haul down the house of cards, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence about things they’ve done. They aren’t good men.”

I glance at Lorcan. “Sometimes circumstances turn good men bad.”

“We are defined by the choices we make. It’s that simple.”

“People can’t ever change? Make different choices?”

“Did it sound like he wanted to do that? Was that the impression he gave you?”

Another agent with Zahir whispers in his ear before I can reply.

“I have to go.” He turns to Dai Qing. “I understand you’re going to see Malik and then fly out?”

“Yes.”

Refocusing on me, he says, “I can’t keep you from telling him. If you tell him and it goes wrong, we probably won’t be able to get you out alive.”

“I don’t think he’d kill me.”

His gaze sweeps over me. “It’s not something you want to go into half-assed. You have to know he won’t.”

As Zahir leaves the room, Lorcan paces on the other side of the glass. I want to go to him, talk to him, and figure this out together.

Dai Qing stirs behind me. “The truth is, Kimi, he could be the person who killed Chad. He could have played a part in your father’s death.”

Her voice is soft, but it hits my heart like a sledgehammer. I already know he killed Ho-Jun. What she’s saying isn’t a leap. Glancing at her over my shoulder, I say, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to reveal myself until I understand what happened to my father, to Chad, and to Lorcan’s father.”

“Those are pretty big question marks.”

“Hopefully, the answers fall the way I want.” My hand strays to the glass again before I follow Dai Qing out the door, my thoughts drifting to Malik.