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22

FINN

C ourt is in session again, and though Siobhan hasn't moved a muscle other than to scribble some notes on her notepad now and then, my attention is focused on her. After a long discussion in the middle of the night, we both decided it's safer for now if I have men completely not associated with any crime syndicate to watch over her. I don't want to risk seeming impropriety in this case any more than she does, especially knowing Callahan is crooked.

If he gets another prosecutor in here, it will be a death sentence for Mick's freedom. So I've hired a few men I know are the best in the business, two army ranger wings with top marks. It wasn't hard to convince them to watch over a DPP, and my offer of three thousand pounds a day each helped out, I'm sure.

"Mr. O'Hare, what I'm asking is…" Mr. Quinn is on a rabbit trail and Siobhan isn't stopping him. The witness owns the restaurant down the street where Mick was supposedly seen that night before shooting Aiden. We all know Mick was banging his whore in an upstairs apartment a block to the east, and Quinn is trying to prove that he never went to the restaurant. It's a shame in this old part of town, there aren't many cameras or we'd have put these charges to bed a long time ago.

A juror coughs and Siobhan looks up. I notice the way she's sitting is different from normal. Ever since I told her Callahan is dirty, she's withdrawn, like she's not even fighting the case anymore. I know she's scared of what will happen to her, but I need her to fight harder, to prove Mick's innocence. We spoke about this the other night when I was at her apartment, but when she sits in this room, she becomes a timid mouse afraid to charge the elephant.

"And do you think it's possible that you've just mistaken him for someone else?" Quinn stands in front of the witness box, staring the man down. The witness seems collected, practiced. I wonder who paid him to say these things. It's probably the same men who paid Sarah Duncan to say what she said.

We've been putting out fires since the start of it all. She won't cough up the names or descriptions of the men who paid her off, and Ronan demanded that we hide her away now—probably at his wife's behest. I told him to let Duncan sit and wait and when the Doyles come looking, we'd have them. But that didn't exactly work when we went for Sean McCarty. They came out fighting and we nearly lost him.

"Your Honor, objection." Siobhan, frustrated now, stands and objects to the line of questioning. "We're tired of this. He's badgering the witness. Can we move on?" She plants a hand on her hip and sighs. I watch the curve of her ass and smirk as I remember the things I've done to her in secret. The court case isn't ever going to go the way I want it to—I've given up on that idea and moved on to a new way.

"Sustained. Mr. Quinn, please move along." Callahan raises his eyebrows at the solicitor and the man throws his hands up.

"No further questions for this witness, Your Honor." Quinn glares at Siobhan briefly, then his eyes meet mine before he sits down. The objection wasn't without merit. He was beating a dead horse with a stick.

"Your Honor, I move for a ten-minute recess." Siobhan, still standing, presses her fingertips into the wood grain of the table in front of her and Callahan taps his gavel.

"Ten minutes recess. Court will adjourn at the top of the hour." We wait for him to rise and walk out, and then a flurry of sounds and movement erupts around me as folks take to the restroom and hallway.

I wait a second, hoping to have a quick conversation with Siobhan, but she dashes into the hall right away, leaving her things on her table. With the court officials out of the room, the judge in his chambers, and Siobhan out in the hall, I approach Mick instead.

He sits next to Quinn with his head hanging. Things have been harder on him since the news of his true alibi came out. Not only have Rebecca and Brennan not returned to view one single day, but it's given the prosecution a stronger case. He had a much greater opportunity to commit the crime given the fact that he was actually in the vicinity. I wonder if that's why the Doyles chose him. They knew where he was that night…

"Mick," I say, standing behind the half wall dividing me from him. My hands rest on the wall gripping it, and Mick turns around to take one. He grabs it with both of his and presses it to his forehead as if I'm his savior.

"Finn, I'm desperate." His eyes are sunken in, deep wrinkles in his forehead and crow’s feet that weren't there a few weeks ago. "Where's my family? How is Isla?"

"Isla is good. The baby is good too, Mick. I haven't seen Brennan. My job is to get you out, not coddle your wife." I'm firmly on his side, but I also understand how she feels. Finding out your husband is whoring around the way she did couldn't have been easy on her.

"You have to go to her. Please, tell her I love her. Please tell her?—"

"You can tell her yourself," I interrupt. Lowering myself into the chair behind me, I let him keep holding my hand. Quinn turns to face me too as I begin speaking again. "I have new evidence. The man who watched the actual murder is alive. He's at Ro's house. He's willing to testify that a Doyle was the one with the weapon that killed Aiden."

Tears come to Mick's eyes but he shakes his head. "It's too late. The judge will never allow us to add another witness to the list."

I've thought of this too, how late in the trial it is. There doesn't seem to be a good way to incorporate Sean's testimony now, but if they got the man who did this and arrested him, Sean would be able to testify against that man. I just have to stop this nonsense case against Mick and it doesn’t seem possible.

"Mick's right, Mr. O’Rourke." Quinn grunts out his response, and I scowl at him. "Callahan isn't so easy to work with on a normal day, but something crawled up his ass. He's not working with us at all."

So the dirty judge wants to play hardball? I'll just have to get to Siobhan and have her call the new witness, and maybe they'll have to do something then. If the judge thinks it's a way to make this case a knockout, then he'll let her do it.

"I'll find a way, guys. Mick, don't lose hope." I pat his hand as I stand and walk toward the hallway where I saw Siobhan disappear. We have about five minutes left in the recess, so I have only a few minutes to find her and communicate what I need.

When I walk into the hall, I see her leaving the toilets. That Garda friend of hers is here too, standing down the hallway watching things. I walk up to her but as I do, she backs away, giving me a discouraging look. Her back is to the detective Garda and I can tell she's not trying to anger me. She's afraid. Her eyes are twitching, narrowed.

"Sib," I whisper.

"Not now, Finn," she hisses. Her eyes flick back at the Garda at the end of the hallway watching us. His ominous stare tells me he knows something is going on. He's the one who put the wire on her that night before our dinner at that restaurant. I would bet my fortune on it.

His smug expression holds firm as he locks eyes with me and Siobhan walks past me back into the courtroom. This man really has a problem with me, and I'm about to take that stick shoved up his ass and twist it a little. I won’t let him come between me and her, though I do respect her not wanting to make waves right now. He's just doing his job, but he's totally off base and I intend to make him see the light.

Glancing over my shoulder at Siobhan, who disappears into the courtroom, followed by the two men I know are her security team, I turn back toward our Garda friend. But he's gone, vanished in the time it took me to watch Sib return to the relative safety of the courtroom.

I jog to the end of the hallway and turn the corner. He's not there. So I duck into the men's room and he's not in there either. It's empty. Like a ghost in the darkness, he's gone, dissolved into thin air. He knows I won't fuck around with him. He's probably encountered other men like me, probably even seen me coming and going from her place. Maybe he's the reason she's scared to be seen with me, or maybe it's the threat to her career.

Straightening my tie, I know I'm not going to get anywhere today, at least not in this courthouse. Siobhan is safe with her guards, and I have more work to do. She'll never convince the judge to drop the charges, and if I'm right and he's really as dirty as I think, he'll sooner kill her or let the Doyles do it to cause a mistrial. Then he'd pay off someone or blackmail them into pinning it on Mick.

The only way to stop this train now is to get ahead of it and change the course. I have to show the world Mick is innocent, even if I have to take Sean McCarty to the Leinster House and bring news media out for him to tell his side of the story on national news. It would surely get the court's attention and McVeigh would pause the proceedings and make sure to hear McCarty's full testimony before the jury was allowed to decide.

It could be the only way—assuming McVeigh isn't dirty too.