My knee bounces, leg never still, and I tap a pattern on the table top—three quick, three slow, three quick.
The old distress code, but also the rhythm of my own heart, thumping in my chest like it wants out.
I should call someone, but I don't.
I wait, because the game is patience, and the first to crack is the first to lose.
At the sixty-minute mark, I pour myself a glass of water from the tap.
The water is brown for the first second, then runs clear.
I drink it anyway.
I look up and catch my own reflection in the window, distorted by the layer of tape andgrime.
I look like a ghost, or maybe a man who has been haunting this place.
At the exact moment when I feel like my head is about to implode, Lena shoulders through the doorway first, her coat a soaked animal, her face half hidden under a mop of black hair plastered to her forehead.
The adrenaline is still in her—she moves in quick jerks, hands never empty, mouth tight as if she's already chewing through the next problem.
She dumps the coat onto the nearest chair, where it oozes water onto the vinyl, and for a second she stands motionless, arms out, as if making sure the room will not collapse under her weight.
Behind her, Niamh appears.
No umbrella, no rain on her at all, as if she has convinced the weather to spare her out of mutual respect.
She is smaller than Lena, with eyes so pale they look like cracked marble, and she wears her composure like a badge of office.
She surveys the room, clocking me, then the table, then the position of the radio on the shelf.
She smiles, thin as a rumor.
Lena paces once around the table, then sits, legs wide, elbows on knees.
Her hands tremble just enough to betray her.
She grins at me, the flush in her cheeks still working its way down from her scalp.
"That was a fucker," she says, and the words are a dare.
"You see the front page yet?"
I shake my head, motion to the phone.
"You bring a print?"
She laughs, then digs in her bag.
She produces a folded sheet, wrapped in a plastic bag to keep the ink from running.
She tosses it across the table, where it lands with a slap.
The headline is block caps.
RUAIRÍ CROWLEY SPLITS WITH DONNELLY HEIRESS. CITY BRACES FOR BLOOD.
The photo underneath is a shot of me, walking away from the headquarters, collar up, eyes shaded.
