by Matt Lincoln
“I suppose you can’t,” the man shrugged. “Oh, but where are my manners? My name’s Brennan Gallagher.”
He lifted his hand and stepped forward as if to introduce himself.
“I will shoot you,” I snapped as my finger twitched against the trigger. Inside, I was completely panicking, and I was a little impressed by how cool and collected I was remaining externally.
“Alright, alright,” he smiled as he put his hands up in a sign of surrender. “You did warn me. That one was on me. I really am just here to help, though. Our family wants to stop that idiot just as much as you do, trust me.”
“And what exactly would your ‘help’ entail?” I asked coldly. My arm was beginning to hurt from holding the gun up straight with just one hand, but I focused all of my energy on keeping it from trembling.
“Well, I’m not sure how much I’m at liberty to say,” he hummed. “I’m just a messenger, after all. Just rest assured that we’ll do everything in our power to assist you once you’ve found the location of Liam O’Sullivan.”
I knit my brows together in thought as I glared at him. He knew that I was looking for O’Sullivan, which meant that he probably wasn’t bluffing.
“I don’t trust you,” I sneered. Regardless of how much he knew about our case, I couldn’t be sure of his intentions.
“Aye, that’s fair,” Brennan nodded. “As a show of good faith, then, how about we do this? We'll assist you without asking for anything. Then, if we do end up helping you catch O’Sullivan, you’ll owe us a favor.”
My heart started to thrum painfully fast at his words. Making a deal with a member of the mafia sounded like a horrible idea, but I had a feeling that this guy wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Even so, I was pretty sure I didn’t have the authority to make deals on MBLIS’s behalf.
“We’re not going to make a deal with a criminal,” Nelson replied calmly from behind me.
The easygoing smile on Brennan’s face slipped into a scowl as he looked past me to glare at Nelson.
“I don’t recall asking you,” he spat before turning his gaze back to me. “I asked the pretty lady here, so let her answer.”
“Deal,” I replied curtly. I’d have to deal with whatever consequences came of this later, but for now, I needed to keep this guy calm and get him out of the office so we could call for backup.
“Wonderful.” He grinned as he slipped his hands into his pockets and adopted a relaxed stance. “Oh, how’s little Brady doing? I don’t suppose I could pop back to wherever you’re hiding him and check on him?”
“No. Get out,” I deadpanned as I gestured toward the door with my gun.
“Aye, I figured that’d probably be pushing my luck,” he chuckled as he backed away toward the entrance. “Tell Brady I’ll be back for him soon and to collect my favor.”
He winked at me before quickly exiting the office, and I let my arm drop with a sigh as soon as he was out of sight.
“Are you alright?” Nelson asked as he hurried to my side.
“I’m fine,” I huffed between breaths. My entire body was shaking, and I was having trouble bringing air into my lungs, but I’d kept it together in front of Gallagher, which was all I really cared about.
“I’ll call Wallace and let him know what happened,” Nelson said as he slipped his phone out of his pocket.
I fell into the nearest chair and put my head in my hands. I couldn’t believe I’d just agreed to a deal with a member of the mafia. It wasn’t like I had a choice since I seriously doubted he would have just agreed and left if I’d said no, but still.
“We need more agents,” I groaned out loud as I pulled my head out of my hands to look up at Nelson. He was just finishing his phone call, and he placed his phone down gently on one of the desks. “This is the second time we’ve almost died in our own office this week because all our field agents were out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Nelson agreed as he sank into a chair beside me. “We are always looking for more members, but MBLIS isn’t a well-known department. We don’t really have a lot of people clamoring to sign up. Thought that might change now that we’ve been all over the news for the past few days.”
“And the internet,” I added. “Did you see the video someone uploaded of Charlie tackling Gallagher directly into the path of the Dublin Halloween parade?”
“I did,” Nelson chuckled. “Poor Wallace has been up to his neck trying to deal with everything since this case started. Things are so different now than when we were on the force. With everyone having smartphones and computers now, the entire world always knows what’s happened as soon as it happens.”
“Sometimes even before we do,” I grumbled as I got up from my chair. “So, what did Wallace say?”
“He’s having Castillo and Patel come back ASAP,” Nelson replied. “Though I’m sure Brennan Gallagher will be long gone by then.”
“Yeah,” I nodded bitterly. “Anyway, I’m going to get back to work so I can get Charlie and Junior the info they need.”
I headed back into my office and fell into my desk chair as I tried to figure out how to find O’Sullivan. The only clue I had was that he was somewhere in Northern Ireland, a completely independent country from the Republic of Ireland and about a fourth as big. The area was pretty small, which narrowed down the search parameters a little, but that still left thousands of addresses to sift through.
Nothing had come up registered to a Liam O’Sullivan, but that wasn’t surprising. It would be too obvious to put a house under your own name. Several dozen places were owned by other people named O’Sullivan, but without something else to narrow it down further, nothing could indicate any of those properties connected to Liam O’Sullivan.
“Hello?” Miranda’s high-pitched voice called as she burst through the door and into the bullpen. “Are you guys okay? The keypad isn't working!”
“Hey!” I called from my office. I heard feet shuffling outside, then Miranda and Naomi were both at the door. “We’re both fine. The guy didn’t actually do anything, aside from breaking the keypad.”
“That’s how he got in?” Miranda asked as she sat down next to me in one of the empty chairs in my office, her eyes narrowed in concern.
“I guess,” I nodded. “I was really shocked when it beeped and the door opened. I thought it was one of you coming back to grab something. He must have done something to override it.”
“That’s concerning,” Naomi frowned as she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall opposite to where Miranda and I were sitting. “It’s a pretty high-tech security system. Short of installing a retina scanner or something, it’s about as secure as you can get for this kind of office.”
“Yeah, well, he obviously wasn’t messing around,” I replied.
“Well, what did he want?” Miranda demanded.
I hesitated before answering, unsure how much detail I should go into. If I admitted that I’d agreed to a deal with him, they’d probably both scream at me and panic, and Miranda would go crazy and try to hunt him down or something.
“He said he wanted to help us,” I finally replied. “Apparently, the guy who’s behind all this new drug stuff has gone rogue, and the rest of the organization isn’t happy about it. He said they would cooperate with us to bring him down.”
“Really?” Naomi asked skeptically. “They’re going to work with the feds just out of the kindness of their hearts? I don’t buy it.”
“Me neither,” Miranda scowled. “He’s up to something. He didn’t say anything else? Make any threats?”
“Not really,” I replied. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. As terrified as I’d been, he’d never actually directly threatened me. On the contrary, he’d been pretty calm and polite the entire time.
“I’m going to go talk to Nelson,” Naomi frowned. “The office obviously isn’t secure, and you and he aren’t as experienced in combat as the rest of us. It’s a serious safety issue.”
My heart sank a little as she stalk
ed off. I knew that she wasn’t wrong about me being less experienced, but I’d held my own against Brennan just fine, and with only one arm at that. I didn’t need to be treated like a helpless little kid.
“I’m going to go too,” Miranda growled. “We can’t just sit around after one of our agents was harassed by a mobster in our own office.”
My office felt unnaturally silent after both of them left, and I sighed heavily before turning back to my computer screen.
“Brennan said that the family wanted to stop him as much as we did,” I mumbled to myself. I knew that “family” was probably referring to the mafia family, but that didn’t mean they weren’t actually related. Mafias tended to be family-run organizations, which was why they were called families to begin with.
With that in mind, I ran a search for people named Gallagher married to people named O'Sullivan located in Ireland. After all, there had to be some kind of connection if someone with a different surname was so high up within the ranks. Several results came up.
O’Sullivan probably wouldn’t hide somewhere so closely related to a Gallagher, though, since it would be easier for the family to find him, and then they obviously wouldn’t need to rely on me to do it for them. On the contrary, the smartest thing to do would be to stay somewhere completely unrelated to the mafia, like someone with a completely different last name who had married into the family.
With that in mind, I focused instead on the extended family members of the couples. It was slow going since I had to check for children, cousins, and siblings and then check to see if any of them had married someone with a name other than Gallagher or O'Sullivan.
Two hours had passed before I finally hit something that seemed promising. Alissa O’Sullivan was a distant relative of Liam O’Sullivan’s, the granddaughter of one of his cousins. She had married a man named Jeremy Martin, and their home, located in Northern Ireland, was registered to a Jeremy and Alissa Martin, which is why it hadn’t come up during my initial search.
So far, all the mafia members we’d encountered had shared the surname Gallagher or O’Sullivan. Finnian likely suspected that we would zero in our search on those names in particular and had deliberately chosen to hide in the home of a relative with a different last name to throw us off. I smiled triumphantly as I stared at the address on the screen before picking my phone up off my desk to call Junior.
35
Charlie
Northern Ireland was beautiful. We hadn’t heard back from Fiona yet, but Junior and I had decided to head up to Northern Ireland anyway while waiting for any updates. The drive would take a few hours, and this way, we’d be ready to move as soon as we got a specific location. Like the Irish countryside, the long, narrow roads of Northern Ireland were bordered by lush green grass fields. Unlike the southern countryside, though, the sky up here was clear and bright.
I’d gotten used to sitting on the right side of the car and driving on the left side of the road by that point, so I was able to drive without any anxiety and just enjoy the passing scenery. Even if I had still been struggling, though, it wouldn’t have been a problem, as there were barely any other cars on the road.
A few yards behind us in a police car were Seamus and Officer O’Haines, one of the Garda who had helped us during the bust at the docks the previous night. Unlike the Republic of Ireland, which had the Garda Siochana as their primary police force, Northern Ireland had the PSNI, or the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Since the arrest would be taking place up here, we would require the local police’s assistance and cooperation, which is why only Seamus and O’Haines had come.
I drove past a sign indicating a petrol station just a few kilometers away and checked the gas meter on the car. It was running low, which wasn’t surprising considering we’d been on the road for a few hours by then.
I flashed my rear lights to signal to Seamus that I would pull over and then pulled into the gas station just a few minutes later. The station itself consisted of nothing more than a small, yellow house that I assumed was some kind of convenience store and two simple white pumps set side by side a few feet from the entrance of the house. One was marked “unleaded,” and the other was labeled “diesel,” but I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to pay for it.
There was nothing around the small building aside from smooth concrete and gravel, so I parked the car in an empty space near the pumps since there wasn’t anything that looked like a dedicated parking space.
“Good idea,” Junior nodded as I pushed open the door. “We’ve been driving for a while. I should get out and stretch my legs, too.”
I walked over to the pumps just as Seamus pulled into the station behind us. They were the same size and shape as a mini-refrigerator and looked more like checkout counters that I’d find in a grocery store than gasoline pumps. An electronic screen mounted above the two pumps displayed the amount of gas pumped and the price, but I couldn’t figure out how to pay.
I was still examining them when Seamus came up behind me.
“You pay for it inside,” he explained, correctly guessing what was causing my confusion. “After you pump.”
“After?” I clarified skeptically. “How do they stop people from just filling up and then leaving without paying for it?”
“Well, that does happen sometimes,” Seamus shrugged. “There are always a few bad apples. But for the most part, people are honest and pay what they owe.”
I blinked at him in surprise. Maybe I was just jaded from dealing with criminals all the time, but I couldn’t imagine the honor system working out that well in the United States. It felt odd, but I went ahead and did as he recommended and began to fill up the car. To my surprise, it started to pump immediately, even though I hadn’t paid anything yet.
“You look like you can’t believe your eyes,” Seamus chuckled as he watched me fill the car up.
“I can’t,” I scoffed. “People would definitely take advantage of this in Las Vegas. I know I would have, back when I was still a dumb teenager. I was, unfortunately, all too familiar with stealing back then.”
“Ah, well, we all make mistakes,” Seamus clapped me on the back. “And you grew into a decent man, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Anyway, don’t let it overflow. It should be about done by now.”
I removed the pump from the car and replaced it before glancing up at the electronic screen. It said I owed fifty-one euros for forty liters of petrol, and honestly, I didn’t know how to gauge either of those amounts.
“Aye, that’s a bit steep,” Seamus grumbled as he lifted the other nozzle to fill his own car. “It’s not surprising, though, considering we’re up here out in the middle of nowhere. There’s always a surcharge in the countryside. Anyway, let’s head inside and pay.”
I followed him into the small yellow house. As I suspected, the inside was filled with narrow rows of shelves. It looked similar to other convenience stores I’d been in, except for the fact that I didn’t recognize half the brands. I spotted Junior at the end of one of the aisles, examining two different packages of what looked like chips.
“Hello,” the elderly man behind the counter greeted us, barely bothering to glance up from the magazine he was reading. “That’ll be fifty-one, twenty-six.”
I stepped forward and handed over the bills. The man reached one arm over to the cash register and moved his fingers over the keys surprisingly fast in what was obviously a practiced and familiar movement. He quickly counted out the change before holding it out to me.
“Have a nice day,” he yawned as I took the coins.
“I’ll pay for mine, as well,” Seamus declared as he stepped toward the counter with his own wallet. I walked away as he spoke with the attendant and moved toward the back of the store where I’d last seen Junior.
“Hey,” he turned to look at me as I found him in a back corner of the store. “Do you think cheese and onion sound like a good combination?”
I paused as I considered the question.
; “Maybe?” I shrugged. “I don’t really like onions at all, so I’m probably not the right person to ask.”
“They have so many things in cheese and onion flavor,” Junior explained. “Every different brand of chips I found had it. I want to try it, but I’m not sure which one I should get.”
I looked down at the packages cradled in his arms and realized that they were all cheese and onion-flavored potato chips. He was also carrying a small basket with his elbow filled with chocolate.
“Get this one,” I suggested as I pointed to the unfamiliar brand. “You probably won’t be able to find it outside of Ireland, so you might as well try it while you can.”
“Good point,” he nodded as he began to return the other bags of chips.
“Are you going to buy all that candy, too?” I asked, wondering if he was having a similar issue picking a single one to try.
“Oh, no,” he shook his head. “They’re for Fiona. There are a lot of candies that you can’t get in the United States because there are toys inside, and the FDA thinks they’re a choking hazard.”
“Aren’t they?” I raised an eyebrow at him as I took one of the chocolates from the basket to examine it.
“Maybe,” Junior shrugged. “Fiona’s an adult, though, and I’m pretty sure I can trust her not to asphyxiate herself accidentally. I’ve heard stories of people getting stopped at airport security and having them confiscated. We don’t have to deal with that as federal agents, though.”
“Lucky for you,” I snorted. I wasn’t all that hungry myself, so I just grabbed a bottle of water and followed Junior to the front counter. The old man was still flipping lazily through the magazine and barely glanced up at us as he rang up our purchases.
Once we were finished inside, we headed back out to the car. I took a long swig of water before setting the bottle into the cupholder between the two seats. Junior carefully placed the bag of chocolates in the backseat before pulling open the bag of chips. The smell of onions filled the small space of the car immediately, and I rolled the windows down as Junior popped one into his mouth.