The porridge train leaves the pot and tracks toward his bowl in slow, careful lines. He grins despite himself. I’m putting the jar down when she appears—barefoot, sweater pulled over a slip, hair in a loose braid that looks like it has always belonged in my rooms. She stops at the threshold as if testing whether the doorway will let her pass. The part of me that never stops watching notices everything—the pink at her cheekbones from sleep, the way she chooses the chipped mug for tea because it is the only ugly thing in a perfect kitchen, the flick of her eyes to Liam first and to me second.
“Morning,” she says, voice sanded low with sleep.
“Morning,” I answer, because if I say more I’ll say too much.
I pour her tea. She pours honey for Liam because he trusts her measurements more than mine. We stand shoulder to shoulder for maybe thirty seconds, all three of us facing the stove like parishioners at a secular altar, steam rising like incense. I can feel the edges of my life smoothing themselves into this shape, and that’s when the phone in my pocket vibrates twice—Kieran’s pattern. The deep pull under the ribs that has kept me alive longer than luck goes taut.
“Eat,” I tell Liam, kissing the top of his head. To Aoife, “Back soon.”
Her eyes slice to mine, quick and aware. She says nothing, but I read the question in them. Business or trouble? I touch her wrist with two fingers—small, unimportant, a promise to bringthe ordinary back with me—and head out before the moment can ask for more than I can give.
The day is gray and tight-skinned. The car heater blows a smell like old pennies and rain. “La Sirena,” Kieran says when I answer. “Back alley. Girl from the late shift. No witnesses. You’re going to want to see the ornament.”
We take Dorchester at a clip, swing left past a bar that never closes, and slip behind the cordon before the first detective has figured out where to put his coffee. The alley is the kind Boston specializes in—narrow, damp, lined with brick that’s seen more sins than Sunday mass. Someone has dragged the dumpsters wide to make space. A line cook’s cigarette still burns on the ground, lipstick on the filter. A uniform nods. A detective scowls and then looks away when he recognizes me. You can pretend not to see a storm. You can also learn to plant your feet.
She’s young. They always are. Twenty-five, twenty-six at a push. Black trousers, white shirt with a bleach-scar at the hem, shoes built to survive twelve-hour shifts. Her head is turned as if she was about to tell someone a secret. On the center of her chest, pinned through the cotton with an old-fashioned stubbornness, a silver ornament in the shape of a wren glints wetly in the gray light.
“St. Stephen’s bird,” Kieran says under his breath.
“The Wren Boys,” I answer. “Wrong time of year.” My mouth tastes of iron. “Or exactly right for someone who likes ritual.”
Kieran passes me a clear bag. Inside it is a thin length of red ribbon, knotted twice, the ends cut neatly. He lowers his voice. “Same knot as the one you found at the back of the Green Hearth last week.”
I pocket the information and none of the panic. “Any cameras?”
“City pole cam at the end of the block. Angle’s wrong. Restaurant’s back camera has been ‘broken’ for two weeks. Staff shrug. Landlord shrugs. Everyone shrugs.”
“Then we’ll un-shrug them.”
I crouch, careful of the evidence markers, and study the scene the way my father taught me—ignore the body for a breath and read the space. Dumpster wheels angled outward as if shoved in haste. Litter flattened in a line that suggests a second pair of feet dragged something, or someone. A faint smear of something dark where a hand steadied against the wall. The smell of bleach layered over kitchen cleaners and last night’s garlic—hurried, not thorough. Whoever did this wanted it quick, wanted it clean, wanted the ornament to be the only story.
I straighten. “This is not a bar fight. This is curated.”
Kieran nods, jaw set. “Hospitality again. That makes three. The florist’s girl near the market two weeks back. The barback by the river on Monday. Now her.”
“Three makes a pattern,” I say. “Four makes territory.” I scan the alley again. “We tighten the ring.”
“What about Aoife?” he asks, because he’s been with me long enough to know what the knot under my ribs means.
“She doesn’t hear it from anyone but me,” I say. “And she doesn’t hear all of it.”
We step aside for the medical examiner’s team. The detective in the ugly tie pretends to read his notebook. “Mr. O’Connell,” he tries, “I’ll need to?—”
“You’ll need to find me when you’re finished missing the point,” I say mildly, and he buys the smile because the alternative is work.
Back in the car I start issuing orders. They come out clean and cold and faster than the driver can signal. “Two on the Green Hearth, back lot and roofline. Rotate plates. No contact, no shadow at the windows. They should feel eyes and thendecide it’s just their nerves. Twelve-hour shifts, no heroics. I want a panic button in the pass at the Hearth and another under the prep table—hardwired to Benny and to me. Cameras inside recalibrated, no dead angles in the back corridor, and if anyone touches the DVR I want their hands broken for their trouble.”
Kieran’s pen scratches. I keep going. “Kitchen escorts at close. No one walks to the T alone, not staff, not dish, not delivery. Offer rides with cash for the excuse. Anyone refuses, make it a rule that costs nothing and insults no one. Callum can afford it. He’s been skimming with the grace of a raccoon anyway. Clear routes for Liam’s school runs—east road in the morning, south in the afternoon, no repeats four days running. And I want a car sitting on the block outside the school with windows up and music off. If they look like cops, I’ll dock a week. If they look like us, I’ll dock two.”
Kieran’s mouth folds. It’s a smile where his teeth don’t get invited. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” I look out at the wet city, the way Boston always looks like it’s remembering something it won’t say. “Start a list. Women working late. Restaurants, bars, cafés. I don’t want gossip. I want names, shifts, routes home, who waits at which bus stop and who pretends her boyfriend is around the corner. We protect them because the police won’t. And because if this is what I think it is, the killer is circling the same fire we stand around.”
Kieran nods, tucks the notebook away. “Understood.”
“Go,” I tell him, and he goes.
I don’t drive straight back to the house. I go to the restaurant first because I need to see her space before I see her. The lunchtime prep hums when I step through the side door, onions sweating down slow in a wide pot, the metallic spice of fresh-cut parsley, the clean smell of a floor that’s been mopped withlemon. Siobhan lifts her head from the board, smile bright and sharp. “Boss.”
