Page 63 of The Lies We Tell

“Like I’d tell you.” Shit. Now it looks like she really does mean more to me than my neighbor’s daughter.

“You Outlaws seem to be collecting Irish daughters and nieces and grandchildren.”

I huff, as if indifferent. “She’s not one of yours. She’s not the daughter of anyone you know or care about.”

“Maybe she is. Maybe she isn’t. Maybe I’ll find out anyway. Rats are everywhere in every organization. You know this.”

He means as an Iron Outlaw, because there is no way he’s onto my cover. But my chest tightens at his comments anyway. “There is nothing to be read into me in the city with a woman who speaks Irish, you suspicious bastard.”

“It’s been ... interesting,” Cillian says. “Perhaps I should ask King to give me a courtesy call when you’re coming over the border.”

“Or perhaps you should chill the fuck out because we don’t want New York.”

Cillian straightens the cuff of his shirt. “But that’s only because you’re smart enough to know you won’t win. Drive safe, preacher man.”

“Asshole,” I mutter as I get into the truck. Now what do I do? Call King and tell him I saw Cillian? He’s going to ask why I was there. Or do I wait for Cillian to tell King, which I don’t think is going to happen? “Fuck.”

“Who was that man?” Briar asks.

I start the truck and glance at his back as he steps into a building behind us. “The head of an Irish crime family. The club has a very tentative peace with him.”

“None of that felt peaceful,” she mutters.

It wasn’t.

We drive for the next hour in silence as I weave in and out of traffic I really don’t want to be in. My frustration grows.

My head is reeling.

I can’t put Briar unknowingly at risk. I need to tell her more.

The idea terrifies me. It’s undercover 101 that you never tell a soul who you are. You don’t reveal any details that might lead to your identification later.

More than that, it feels like telling her is the first step to an unravelling. She’s the first thread, and if that comes unpicked, so does everything else. You see these movies about a sergeant assigned to a bomb squad and who is immediately hated for his maverick ways of dealing with his life and work. All of it is bullshit. Nearly every bomb disposal expert I know is measured. Sure, we ride the kind of high you get from extreme sports. The rush of exhilaration. The feel of doing something no one else wants to or can do. But the work? It’s focused and calculated to the letter.

An extreme snowboarder doesn’t want to die on the hill, we don’t want to die in the field.

On my first two undercover assignments, I operated the exact same way.

But this one I’m fucking up left, right, and center.

By the time we pull into the driveway, I don’t know what I want or need. I should go work out or go for a run, burn this off so I can think clearly.

I slam the door of the truck and jog up the driveway. Briar follows me and places her hand on my back. “Are you okay?”

Sliding the key in the lock, I realize I’m not. “No. I need to go out.”

She follows me inside, and I hear her slam the lock closed. “You want me to make some lunch and we can talk about it instead?”

Shit. I got us bagels. They’re sitting in the back of the truck.

I look at her eyes, trying to find some shred of sanity deep inside myself. “Thanks. But the mood I’m in, I’ll say shit I don’t mean.”

“Did I do something wrong speaking to Cillian?”

The mention of his name tips me over the edge. “I don’t want you talking to him ever again. I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t want any of this to spill over into our home.”

She looks around, and I see what she sees. A shithole. A tiny house that I try to keep clean. She thinks I’m an Outlaw. It’s all she knows. And yet she’d still rather be here with me anyway.