The Undivided

by Jennifer Fallon; Jennifer Fallon

  Trása shrugged. ‘You worry too much.’

  ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’

  ‘It’s the address Jack gave us.’

  ‘I still don’t understand how Jack even knows about Symes selling drugs.’ Ren still wasn’t clear on that point. Since Trása had thrown a stone at his window in the early hours of the morning, motioning him to come down to meet her, things had moved very fast. As soon as he’d sneaked out of the house, she’d taken him by the hand, pulled him through the gate in the wall to Jack’s place, and then demanded her grandfather tell Ren what he’d apparently just told her.

  Murray Symes is peddling drugs, Jack had informed him.

  And Jack went on to say there was a fair chance the holier-than-thou Dr Symes had been high on something when he hit Hayley.

  Ren was appalled. The man who’d made his life a misery, the man who’d run Ren’s best friend down in his haste to escape a few photographers, was dealing amphetamines on the side, and one of Jack’s shady friends knew all about it.

  Not only that, Jack informed Ren. He knew where the deal was going down. That very day.

  ‘Jack already explained how he knows,’ Trása said, a little impatiently. ‘One of his old associates from prison is in on the deal. He saw Murray on the news and realised the accident happened next to Jack’s place, so he called him to tell him that he knew the chap, and how he knew him.’

  ‘Yeah … I know that’s what he told us, it just seems a little … convenient, don’t you think?’

  She glared at him in annoyance. ‘Why are you asking me, Ren? I’m just the messenger.’

  But Trása was more than just the messenger. She was driving this careening bus and the rational part of Ren had a feeling it would end badly.

  That hadn’t stopped him borrowing the Ferrari without permission — easier than taking the keys for the Bentley which Patrick never let out of his sight — and driving down to this abandoned warehouse to find out if Jack was right. Maybe, if he and Trása were lucky and they got away quickly enough — not a hard thing to do in a Ferrari — the only person this would end badly for was Murray Symes.

  It was high time something went badly for Symes. The cops weren’t going to do a damn thing about him. The policewoman had told them as much.

  Ren sat a little straighter. ‘There’s a car coming.’

  Trása leant forward to look, leaning on Ren’s thigh to balance herself. She craned forward until Ren’s face was almost smothered in her luscious, long, blonde hair, her hand on his thigh dangerously close to his groin. He breathed in the scent of her hair until he was giddy. She smelled like a warm summer day.

  Ren turned to look out of the window again; a far safer option than drowning in the heady scent of Trása. A silver Mercedes had pulled up in the alley. It sat there, its wipers on, but nobody had emerged from it. Although there was nothing happening, the presence of the car made Ren feel a little better. Clearly, something illegal was about to happen. People who drove cars like that did their legitimate business in offices, conference rooms and hotel bars, not out the back of abandoned warehouses.

  ‘One down, one to go,’ Trása said in a low voice, leaning back to make sure she wasn’t seen from the alley below. ‘Are you sure this is going to work, Ren?’

  ‘Now you’re having second thoughts?’

  She pulled a face at him.

  Ren shrugged, watching the car from the shadows. ‘If Jack’s right, the game is on. All we have to do is ring the cops once Murray arrives.’

  Trása nodded. ‘Ring the cops.’

  Ren shook his head. ‘No point. Right now, there’s a car sitting in an alley. We need someone else to turn up before we have anything happening. That’s when we’ll call the cops.’

  ‘Suppose the Gardaí don’t come?’

  ‘I’ll tell them there’s a man with a gun. Cops always respond faster when you mention guns.’ He’d learned that on the set of Angel of Justice in LA when he was eight, from the ex-cop acting as the movie’s technical advisor.

  Trása looked a little sceptical, but didn’t argue the point. Ren wondered what she was thinking. Was she worried about being caught in a place where neither of them belonged? Or was she — like Ren — thinking only of Hayley, lost in a coma because she got in the way of Murray Symes’s speedy getaway?

  Suddenly there was a crash. They both turned to look for the source of the noise. On the other side of the warehouse, a man stood watching them. He wore a long, grubby coat, and was pushing an overloaded shopping trolley, stuffed with plastic bags. Ren guessed it was one of the homeless men who squatted here. The man stared at them suspiciously for a moment and then shoved his trolley behind a couple of sheets of corrugated iron that were leaning against the wall. He must have come in through another door at the back of the warehouse. Fortunately, he no longer seemed interested in what Ren and Trása were doing.

  ‘The other car is coming,’ Trása hissed.

  Ren turned his attention back to the window as a vehicle pulled into the alley behind the Mercedes.

  ‘Call the cops.’

  Ren hesitated, wondering if he should wait. All they had down there, really, were two cars minding their own business in a lane between a couple of abandoned warehouses, and neither of them was Murray’s BMW. There was no sign of anything illegal going on. If he called the Gardaí and they arrived too soon, they wouldn’t find anything amiss. Murray Symes would get away.

  Down in the alley, the car doors opened.

  ‘Call them,’ Trása insisted.

  Ren reached into his pocket for his mobile.

  He dialled 999. The phone rang a couple of times.

  ‘Emergency. Please state the service you require.’

  ‘Gardaí.’

  Four men stepped out of the cars, despite the rain. They were too far away to tell if any of them was Murray.

  The phone rang again, followed by a female voice.

  ‘Please state the nature of the emergency.’

  ‘There’s a man with a gun,’ Ren said, trying to inject a little panic — and something more of an Irish accent — into his voice. He gave them the address, and then added urgently, ‘Please be quick. I think there’s some sort of drug deal going down. They’re gonna shoot someone!’

  Ren cut the call as the operator was asking for his name. Trása grinned from ear to ear. The glee of vengeance about to be served. In bucket loads.

  ‘Time to go,’ Ren said, shoving the phone into his backpack. Already they could hear sirens. Only they weren’t in the distance, they were loud and near and close enough for them to see the pulsing blue lights, reflecting off the warehouse walls.

  Trása looked surprised. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Too quick,’ Ren said with a frown. He’d made the call only seconds ago. For the Gardaí to be already here … he tossed the backpack to the floor. ‘Shit! We’ve gotta get outta here, Trása. Now!’

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ she asked, as Ren jumped from the pallet stack to the floor. ‘Don’t you want to see what we started?’

  ‘I don’t think it was us that started it,’ Ren said, scooping up his backpack. There were voices outside. Shouting. The sirens were loud enough to drown out the tattoo of rain on the warehouse’s metal roof. ‘If the cops are already here, they didn’t need us to tell them about this.’ Trása didn’t seem to get how urgent this was. ‘Come on!’

  Finally, she jumped to the floor, grunting in pain as she landed, leaving Plunkett on top of the pallets.

  ‘You okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Twisted my ankle a bit, that’s all, you go ahead. I’ll catch up.’

  Ren didn’t want to leave her, but she pushed him away. ‘Go, Ren. I’ll be fine.’

  He did as she bid, glancing backward after a moment. Trása was limping, rapidly falling behind. Ren hurried back to her, took her arm, placed it over his shoulder, and pulled her toward the door they’d broken through to get into the warehouse.

  The Ferrar
i was parked just outside. They had to get to it before the police did, because even if Ren and Trása remained undetected, the police would know who’d rented the car the moment they checked the licence plate.

  About thirty seconds after they called the rental company, they would call Kiva’s manager and they’d know Ren Kavanaugh was somewhere in the vicinity.

  The paparazzi had radio scanners. It would take them another thirty seconds to be on the scene and then … well, who knew what might happen next.

  Then Ren remembered Trása’s damned toy. She’d left the creepy thing on top of the pallets. If there was any way it could be traced back to her, it would lead them right back to Ren …

  When he glanced back at the pallet, however, the doll was gone. ‘What happened to Plunkett?’

  Trása looked at him oddly. ‘What?’

  ‘That creepy toy of yours,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Don’t worry about him, Ren,’ Trása said as she hobbled along beside him. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  Ren couldn’t have cared less about the Leipreachán’s welfare, and it certainly wasn’t why he was asking, but before he could clarify the reason for his question, the door ahead of them burst open. Police spilled into the warehouse like a river of dark ink, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests emblazoned with ERU across their backs.

  Emergency Response Unit. Great.

  Their presence removed any doubt Ren might have had about whether or not his call had been responsible for this ambush. He was certain he’d had nothing to do with it.

  The Gardaí didn’t send out the ERU on the strength of one anonymous phone call.

  The ERU men carried semi-automatic weapons with laser sights that sprayed red dots around the warehouse walls like lethal confetti, which very quickly focussed on the two teenagers trying to flee the scene.

  ‘Halt or we’ll shoot!’

  Ren glanced down at the score of red lights dancing across his chest. He let go of Trása and raised his hands in the air, wincing as the action pulled on his wounded ribs.

  ‘Drop the bag!’

  Ren did as ordered. He dropped his backpack. It spilled open on the damp floor. The phone was screwed, he guessed, as it rolled into a puddle.

  ‘On the floor! Face down! Now!’

  Ren knew better than to argue with a bunch of trigger-happy ERU officers. He lowered himself to the ground, pressing his face against the cracked concrete floor. It was cold and damp and smelled of kerosene and feral cats.

  On the edge of his awareness, oddly enough, he thought he smelled smoke.

  He turned his face toward Trása as the police swarmed over them, roughly pulling their arms behind them, slapping cold metal cuffs on them with a great deal more enthusiasm than Ren thought the situation warranted. Then they grabbed his backpack and pulled them both to their feet. Trása didn’t look so much scared as fatalistic about the whole thing. But Trása’s mugshot wasn’t going to be appearing on the front page of all the major daily newspapers the next morning.

  Trása looked at Ren apologetically. She seemed genuinely remorseful. ‘I’m so sorry for doing this to you, Ren.’

  ‘Not your fault, Trása.’

  ‘Shut up!’ the officer holding Ren ordered.

  ‘There’s a bright side to this, you know,’ Trása said, as if she was determined not to let the police intimidate her.

  ‘I told you to shut up, kid!’

  ‘A bright side?’ Ren asked. Neither of them was paying any attention. It was a small act of defiance but an important one.

  ‘You’ll be safe now,’ Trása said.

  ‘Safe?’ That was one name for it, Ren thought as he was manhandled outside and into the back seat of a Gardaí car for his trip downtown. They put Trása in a different car, and he soon lost sight of her as the cars pulled away in a flurry of flashing lights, misty rain, the squeal of sirens, and for some reason Ren couldn’t fathom, fire engines heading at high speed back the way they had come from.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘I’ll kill you if I have to, to stop this.’

  Ren smiled down at the baby twin girls, dismissing the empty threat. ‘Even if you could get across this room before the deed was done, you can’t kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent.’

  He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerising the baby. Ren was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, afterall, not to make them suffer.

  There was a drawn-out silence as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in him trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.

  The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop —

  ‘Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh.’

  Ren was jerked rudely from the dream. He sat up, blinking furiously, his eyes watering, trying to focus in the sudden bright light. He’d been leaning his head on the cold metal table as he dozed. He was still cuffed and his shoulders ached from the unnatural position in which he’d been resting. ‘What?’ he mumbled.

  The detective took the seat opposite Ren, dropping a file on the table. Ren had no idea what time it was, only that he’d been there long enough to doze off. There was no clock. The room was bare, but for the table, two cold metal chairs and a two-way mirror on the cream-coloured wall behind the detective. And the fluorescent light overhead.

  ‘Got quite a history, haven’t you, Chelan Aquarius?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The officer they’d sent to interview him was fairly young, late twenties maybe. They probably figured Ren would bond better with a younger officer than with an older one.

  ‘Want those cuffs off?’

  Ren gritted his teeth. He hated the police who pretended to be his friend.

  ‘No, thanks. I quite enjoy having my shoulders forced back at an unnatural angle.’ He looked around for the video cameras and the recording equipment. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be filming this interview? Reading me my rights? Asking me if I want a lawyer?’

  ‘We haven’t charged you with anything yet.’

  ‘Then I can go home?’

  The detective shrugged. ‘That depends on what you were doing in that warehouse.’

  ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’

  ‘Which would be why the ERU brought you in. They were just cruising the streets looking for innocent bystanders to take into custody, I suppose.’

  ‘Someone should do something about that, officer. That’s a waste of taxpayers’ money, isn’t it?’

  The officer wasn’t amused. He opened the file and glanced down at the charge sheet. The inside cover of the file had Ren’s unflattering mug shot stapled to it. It was the same one the tabloids delighted in blowing up and pasting on the front page of national newspapers whenever they got wind of him being in trouble. ‘Says here you’re a real smart-arse.’

  Ren leaned forward with interest. ‘Does it really? I didn’t think you’d be allowed to use words like “arse” in official documents.’

  ‘You think you’re real funny, don’t you, Kavanaugh?’

  Ren shrugged, which proved a rather stupid and painful thing to do, given his hands were still cuffed behind his back. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, officer. I’m trying to co-operate.’

  ‘This is your idea of co-operating?’ The officer looked back down at the file. ‘You celebrity kids are all the same. You think you’re above the law because you’re famous.’

  Here we go again …

  ‘I’m not famous,’ Ren said patiently. ‘My mother is. That’s not actually my fault, you know.’

  The cop studied his file as if Ren hadn’t spoken. ‘How long have you been involved with Dominic O’Hara?’

>   The question was completely unexpected. ‘Who the hell is Dominic O’Hara?’

  ‘The scumbag drug dealer you were acting as a lookout for today.’

  Ren stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘What?’

  ‘Is he your boss?’ the officer asked. ‘Your platinum Amex not enough for you, rich boy, so you thought you’d earn a little extra cash on the side dealing coke?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Ren asked, alarmed at the line of questioning. Damn you, Jack O’Righin. So much for your inside information.

  How could Jack have got it so wrong? What happened to Murray Symes and his sideline in amphetamines?

  ‘If you weren’t involved in O’Hara’s little enterprise, what was a kid from a posh suburb like yours doing in that part of town?’

  Ren frowned as it occurred to him that, for the first time, he was in trouble so serious that not even his mother’s smooth-talking lawyer could negotiate his way out of it. ‘I want my lawyer.’

  The detective was growing impatient. ‘You wanna hope your lawyer can help you, Kavanaugh, ’cause you sure aren’t helping yourself, right now.’

  Ren hoped he was projecting an air of quiet innocence, which was no mean feat, because on the inside he was bordering on blind panic. If he couldn’t talk his way out of this mess, he’d probably die an old man in Utah.

  His mother might forgive the time he was caught spraying graffiti on the windows of Harrods in London a couple of years ago. It helped that he’d been protesting seal clubbing with several of Kiva’s co-stars at the time, who were much more high profile than Ren and who got most of the resulting publicity. Criminal acts for noble causes were easier to forgive than the time he’d filled all the umbrellas on the set of Rain Over Tuscany with talcum powder, which shut down shooting for a whole day while they cleaned up the mess, and got Ren sent back to school in disgrace. She’d even forgiven the time he’d stolen a realistic and bloody dummy corpse with its throat punctured by bite marks from the prop van and left it in the elevator of the hotel where they were staying. But Kiva was going to take a very dim view of a front-page headline announcing her son was caught acting as a lookout for a notorious drug lord.