“That’s both fortuitous and worrying,” Marchand said.
Nolan studied him. “I’m surprised you feel that way.”
“Why would that surprise you?”
Nolan took a drink of his beer. “I assumed your primary concern would be the mission to remove O’Brien.”
“Our men are our brothers,” Marchand said. “There’s no organization without them.”
“Will isn’t your man,” Nolan pointed out.
“No, but he’s yours. Your best friend. Yes?”
Nolan nodded. “Yes.”
“Then his safety is of concern to us as well.” Marchand hesitated. “I assume you’ve offered to help him disappear until this all blows over?”
“Yeah, and it was pointless,” Nolan said.
A smile touched Christophe’s face. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“So what now?” Nolan asked.
“Now we wait,” Christophe said. “I’m not going to tip our people at BPD about the date of the theft right away. We don’t want O’Brien to see more activity at the bank and think he’s been made. We’ll wait a couple days, observe the fallout when he discovers his men at BPD are compromised, leak word that they’re already singing about his operation, and see if he runs.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Nolan asked.
“We’ll pick up his men during the robbery, get them to talk enough to make O’Brien run.”
“What about Will?”
“His cooperation will be noted in the event of his arrest. They’ll make it look good in front of the other men,” Christophe said.
Nolan nodded. Nothing shortened your life span as fast as getting pinched on a job and having them cuff your buddies while they led you away like an old friend.
“This all feels…”
“Uncertain?” Christophe asked.
“That’s one word for it.”
“There’s no way around that.” Christophe hesitated. “We’ve retaken several territories since Donati’s assassination. Each one presented a different set of challenges. None of them have been reclaimed as originally planned.”
“So this is doomed to fail,” Nolan said.
“Not necessarily. There’s a first time for everything.”
“There is one option we haven’t discussed,” Nolan said. “Why not use the information on the hard drive to remove Seamus now?”
“The FBI won’t tip their hand until they know they have a case. It will take weeks, maybe months for their analysts to comb the data. Their investigators will have to call witnesses for interviews, and their prosecutors won’t proceed until they know they have a winnable case.” Christophe paused. “BPD’s Internal Affairs division, on the other hand, will move much more quickly. They’ll remove the compromised officers first and ask questions later.”
“I guess you’re right,” Nolan said. “No police force will risk the kind of bad press that comes with the accusation that they’re protecting their own, especially right now.”
“Precisely.”
“How long before the compromised agents are picked up?” Nolan asked.
“It’s imminent.” Christophe hesitated, like he was choosing his next words carefully. “You should be careful. And you should tell Will and Miss Monaghan to batten down the hatches.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bridget knew as soon as she walked into the Cat that the shit had hit the fan. It was Monday night and the front room was empty. Connor shot her a look from behind the bar that was probably meant to be a warning, but Bridget gave him a questioning look and kept walking.
She’d known this was coming, had been warned by Nolan at some Cuban restaurant in Roxbury the night before when she’d met with him with Will. What she did now—how she behaved—could save her or kill her. She had to act normal, like she didn’t know what was going on, like it was any other payday and she was just coming for her money.
She heard Seamus shouting when she got closer to the back room, a litany of curse words making their way to Bridget from the other side of the curtain.
“You don’t want to go in there right now,” Mick said when she reached the doorway. He looked rattled, his face flushed, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to reply and was interrupted by Seamus’s bark. “Is that Monaghan?”
Mick pulled the curtain back far enough to be heard in the room. “Yes, boss.”
“Send her in.”
Mick looked at her with something like an apology and stepped aside, holding the curtain so she could pass through. She’d barely made it to the other side when Seamus came around the table, looming over her, his face so red she thought he might be on the verge of a heart attack.
She registered Nolan and Will in the room, along with Dougie and a kid she didn’t recognize. All of them were standing in a line near the wall. Nolan’s face was like stone, Will’s impassive, like Seamus losing his shit happened all the time when Bridget had never once seen him like this in all the time she’d worked for him.
Dougie looked like he was about to piss his pants, and the new kid was desperately looking around for an exit he wouldn’t find. Seamus’s operation was like the Hotel California: you could check out any time you wanted, but you could never leave.
“Did you know anything about this, Monaghan?” Spittle flew from Seamus’s mouth as he shouted down at her.
It wasn’t hard to display an expression of shock. “About what?”
Seamus’s breath escaped his lungs in a raspy rattle that had Bridget fearing for his life in spite of everything that was going on.
He turned away and paced to the back of the room, and Bridget was alarmed to see a gun in full view on Seamus’s table. Everyone knew he had one, but he usually let the men do his intimidating, preferring to appear the genial uncle passing the hours at the Cat unless the business required his personal show of force.
He picked up the gun and turned around, his eyes combing the room, coming to rest on each of them in turn.
“Fecking shit-for-brains maggots are going to take a dive in the harbor with a cinderblock around their ankles when I find out who they are.” His voice was suddenly low, the threat all the more real for how softly he spoke.
This wasn’t a man out of control and making empty threats—these were promises.
Bridget’s heart was thudding rapidly, her chest constricting in panic. She didn’t say anything. Even if she hadn’t known what was going on, she would have stayed quiet if she’d come upon Seamus like this, not ask questions that would only rile him up more.
He leaned over the table and lit a cigarette, took a puff, then erupted into a coughing fit. When he caught his breath, he took another puff and set the cigarette down in an overflowing ashtray and paced back to the line of men that included Will and Nolan.
“Someone ratted out our entire cover at BPD,” he said to the men. “Internal Affairs sent a fecking cavalry into every district and pulled out every single man we had inside the force.” He stood straighter, like he was finally gaining control. “I don’t suppose you know something about any of that.”
“No sir,” the kid said. Bridget felt sorry for him. He was practically quaking in his shoes.
“The kid here can’t know anything because he doesn’t know anything,” Seamus said. “Get out of here kid.”
The kid almost bowled Bridget over on his way out the door.
“Burke here is new to the outfit,” Seamus said. “You got some kind of intel on my operation, Burke? Trying to cause trouble for me?”
“Just keeping my head down, boss. Haven’t been around long enough to know any of your men in BPD,” Nolan said.
Bridget had to hand it to him. His face was expressionless, his eyes cold, voice steady.
“Get the feck out of here,” Seamus said to Nolan. “But don’t forget, I’ve got my eye on you.”
Bridget caught the split second of hesitation in Nolan’s m
ovements: he didn’t want to leave her and Will behind. He seemed to realize making a fuss would do none of them any favors, and he started for the door, his gaze skipping to Bridget as he passed her with his back to Seamus.
“That leaves you three,” Seamus said, looking from Dougie to Will to Bridget. “You three and Casey.”
Bridget swallowed hard. She couldn’t live with herself if the betrayal perpetrated by her, Nolan, and Will caused someone else to get hurt.
“But none of you here are on my Operations team are you?” Seamus asked.
Bridget sensed it was a rhetorical question and assumed Will and Dougie had come to the same conclusion. None of them answered.
“If any of you see Casey around the neighborhood, you come to me right away, got it?” They nodded and Seamus continued. “Yellow little pecker is missing, probably knows I have a price on his head. Now get the feck out of here before I dump you all in the river just to make a point.” Dougie bolted for the door while Will took his time. Bridget was turning to join them when Seamus stopped her. “Not you, lass.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned around. Seamus was standing in front of her, the cigarette now in his hand. He looked at her through the smoke, his eyes shrewd.
“Now you wouldn’t use that fancy law degree of yours to get into my business, would you lass?”
Bridget shook her head. “I can’t afford to lose this job. My brother probably wouldn’t be alive without it.”
Seamus nodded. “You remind me a bit of my wife, god rest her soul. I ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“She was a beautiful woman, my Agnes. Sweet as the sun on a summer day. Smarter than shite too.” There was admiration in Seamus’s voice, his tone warm, like he was confiding something meaningful. “People didn’t bother to notice that about her. But I did.” He tapped his temple. “I did. You best remember that lass.”
He turned away and walked to the table. When he came back he was holding an envelope with her name on it. He held it out to her.
When she reached for it, he held on a second too long, forcing her to tug to remove it from his fingers. “You tell your brother I hope he’s feeling well. And tell your parents I’m thinking of them during this trying time.”
She nodded and headed for the door, half expecting a bullet to hit her in the back on the way out.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nolan sat on the merry-go-round, rocking back and forth with his feet, watching the path for Bridget. He’d barely been able to breathe earlier at the Cat, had had to check his impulse to pull his gun and shoot Seamus in the head when he’d been screaming, Bridget’s eyes wide and frightened.
He had no idea what happened after he left. He hadn’t wanted to hang around, even outside in case any of Seamus’s other men saw him talking to Bridget, and he hadn’t wanted to text her out of an abundance of caution. A month ago the idea of Seamus hacking their phones would have been ludicrous, but after seeing the laptop in his home office, the neatly organized folders and files that according to Christophe had netted a goldmine of information, Nolan had begun to accept that he didn’t know Seamus as well as he thought.
Normally the park would have been a bad alternative—too exposed, too local. But Seamus’s men were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to figure out who the rat was and how to make sure they came out alive on the other side of whatever this was.
Plus the bank job was still scheduled for tomorrow, the men assigned to the crew preparing for a heist that Nolan still hoped would be called off because of Seamus’s compromised status with BPD.
No one from Seamus’s crew was hanging out at Ramsey Park tonight.
Bridget came into view on the path and he watched her walk toward him, head bent against the cold, her hair shining under the street lamps. He couldn’t explain the feelings she rose in him, the feelings she’d always risen in him. His desire to shelter her from harm, to make her smile and give her everything she’d ever wanted, felt coded in his DNA.
He’d been fooling himself all those years he’d tried to convince himself he could be happy without her, that he could find someone else to love.
There was only her, would only ever be her.
“Hey,” she said when she was within earshot. “You sure this is okay?”
“Seamus’s men are losing it,” he said. “The ones scheduled for the job tomorrow are hunkered down, waiting for orders, and the others are looking out their windows wondering how long they have to wait before Seamus sends his muscle to question them about the shakedown at BPD.”
She smiled. “Aren’t you his muscle?”
“Some of it,” he said. “But I have a feeling anyone Seamus sends in to get answers about his informants on the force is going to bring a lot more to the table than fists, and that kind of action is still above my pay grade.”
She sat in one of the swings next to the merry-go-round and looked around. “I haven’t been here in ages.”
“Used to be hardly a night passed when we didn’t end up here,” Nolan said.
She smiled. “I remember. The good old days.”
“The good old days.”
“Give me a push?” she asked, her hands on the swing’s chain.
He got up and walked behind her, grabbed the chains, and walked backwards until she was suspended three feet off the ground. He let go and she swung away from him like a pendulum, then back again.
He kept up a rhythm, pushing her every other turn.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asked when she swung back his way.
“Did you ask me to push you so I’d be distracted and tell you what I know?”
“Did you call me out to the park so you can get in my pants?”
He laughed.
“So?”
“So we’ll see if Seamus runs now that he’s compromised,” Nolan said.
“What makes you think he’ll run?” she asked.
Nolan hesitated. On the one hand, he didn’t want to tell her more than she needed to know for her own safety. On the other, keeping secrets from Bridget had always been next to impossible.
“Seamus used to be IRA,” he said.
She dropped her feet to slow her speed. “Get out.”
He took the swing next to her. “It’s true. He was involved in a bombing in Dublin in ’89, ran when he was about to be arrested.”
“Wow.” She blinked, like that would help her process the information. “That’s crazy. Who knows?”
“I have no idea,” Nolan said. “I’m guessing most of the younger men have no idea, especially if they’ve been in the States a long time.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“That I can’t tell you.”
She nodded, pacified for now by the information he’d given her. “That’s why you wanted the names—to put him on the ropes for tomorrow’s job.”
“Yes.”
She grew quiet. “Just because he ran before doesn’t mean he’ll run again.”
“I know,” he said. “We’re working every option we’ve got. This is the first one.”
“We?”
Fuck. Why was he thinking of himself as a “we” with the Syndicate? And why was he saying it to Bridget?
“I’m working with some people who have an interest in removing Seamus.”
“Interesting.” She shuffled her feet in the dirt. “So what are the other options?”
“We’re leaking word that the dirty cops are already talking about Seamus’s operation, hoping that gives Seamus the extra push he needs to leave town. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to wait for the FBI.”
She grew still. “The FBI?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You and Will are covered. But the information we got from Seamus’s house might be enough to bring him down for good if he doesn’t run. The only problem is that it’ll take awhile that way. You know how the government is.”
“That’s why you’re doi
ng this,” she said. “To make sure Will and I are covered.”
“I’ve never lied about that.”
“I didn’t know the FBI was involved,” she said.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. If Seamus runs, it’ll be over quickly and your debt with him will be cleared.”
“What about Will?” she asked.
“He’ll have a place in the new organization if he wants it. The leadership will be better, less volatile.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Will you go back to Glassman and Weld?”
He grinned. “How do you know that’s where I was working?”
She blushed. “People talk.”
He looked around the park. Soon it would be covered in snow, next to impossible to reach the playground unless they wanted to hike through three foot drifts.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was hoping you’d help me figure that out.”
“Me?”
He twisted his swing to look at her. “You.”
She looked down at her feet. “Nolan…”
He walked over to her and stood in front of her swing, putting his hands on the chains. “I still love you, Bridge. I don’t care whether you—”
“I love you too.”
He looked down at her, wondering if he’d imagined her saying the words. “You do?”
She nodded. “I’ve always loved you, you idiot.”
“Then why did you leave me?”
“I had some things to figure out,” she said. “And Nolan, I still have things to figure out.”
“What things?”
“Not yet. Not tonight. Just… can’t this be enough for right now?” She stood and put her arms around him, leaning her head on his chest. “Can’t we just love each other and let the future take care of itself?”
He put his arms around her. “We can, Bridge. Of course we can.”
But as he held her close, breathing in the scent of her hair, he couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t how life worked. The future didn’t always take care of itself.
Mafia Romance Page 104