The idea is to find out who is the main man running the offensive against us and finish it once and for all.
The sun is only just clearing the farthest edges of the Wicklow hills when we pull out.
There is fog along the shoulders of the road, low and curling like breath on glass, and the trees that rise beyond it are still soaked in the gray velvet of dawn.
The car moves slowly at first, careful through the forested edge of the district, where foxes havebeen known to dart out and the roads are too narrow for anything faster than cautious.
Past the first curve, the landscape begins to open.
Rolling pastureland unfolds in long green sighs, scattered with gorse still blooming late gold and bramble thick with fruit that will rot on the vine before the season ends.
Queen Anne's lace springs up in swathes between the hedgerows, delicate and bright white like lace caught on wind.
There are dog roses too, pale pink and unruly, threading their way across old stone fences that haven't been mended in years.
At the base of one slope, I see a thick spread of blue-flowered vetch curling around the remains of a rusted wheelbarrow, the color almost too vivid for this hour.
The men in the lead car remain alert, eyes shifting in rhythm with the dips and bends of the road.
I rest my hand lightly on the armrest, not tense, not ready to strike, but aware of the thousand ways this journey could go wrong.
We are not flashing our presence, but we are not hiding it either.
By the time we reach the curve above Blessington, the fog has started to burn off.
The lake lies below us, a flat plate of silver broken only by the ripple of early boats or the shadow of birds gliding low to catch what moves beneath the surface.
I watch it as we pass, the same way I did as a girl in my father's car.
Further along, the road narrows again as we enter the stretch known for limestone cutaways and ivy-choked ruins.
A ruined abbey passes on the left, its arch still intact, though the roof fell long before I was born.
Wildflowers creep between the stones.
Harebells, their violet heads bobbing in the wind.
Red poppies like smudges of blood against green.
The kind of beauty no one tends, no one claims, and no one can quite destroy.
Closer to the city, traffic begins to pick up.
The edges of the motorway show the first signs of commuter sprawl—fast-food signage, petrol stations with peeling paint, kids in oversized school uniforms dragging bags behind them.
My window stays closed.
I watch but do not participate.
When we hit the outskirts of the capital, the architecture shifts.
Terraced houses with laundry lines still out.
Shopfronts with signs in both Irish and English.
Roads that have been repaired and torn open again so many times they no longer know which decade they belong to.
The approach to the Donnelly estate is unchanged.
