“Eat your pancakes, O’Donnell.”
My eyebrows lift along with the corner of my mouth, but my eyes stay on his while I cut into my Christmas trees. “Yes, Detective.”
CHAPTER 7
GRAYSON
Color trickles into the sky as the early morning hour beckons the sun over the horizon. Fiery orange blankets the harbor as the thin light breaks across the bay. Frosted dew glistens on the hood of my car, curling in winter veins where the defroster hasn’t reached. I’ve been sitting here since 3:00 a.m., engine idling, heat on low. Just enough to keep the cold from seeping in. Just enough to keep her sleeping.
Aoife slumps over in the passenger seat, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Her face turns at the right angle for me to fixate on her parted lips, twitching lashes, and every once in a while a random jerk that makes me smile. Her hair is messy, clinging to her green leather jacket, and as the sun stretches awake, her bright blonde hair bursts with it.
After the diner, we drove around, and she pointed out all the spots her father used to take her looking at lights. Some places still had a big display, and others seemed to have lost the Christmas spirit, but she reminisced nonetheless. She fell asleep an hour ago, and I don’t have it in me to wake her up. Nor can I look away.
It’s coming, though. I know it is. Three guards boxed in my sedan, their black SUV hulking beside my beat-up car. That’swhen it clicked—they’d been on us since the diner. Tracked her phone. She tried to send them away—why I’m not sure—but they refused. So here they sit, Ronan watching me watch her.
The phone in Aoife’s lap buzzes, shifting as it does.My Dad: The Bossshows up over a photo of Kieran and her on a boat. She’s older, late teens, but she’s got a pair of boxing gloves on while her father has her in a gentle headlock. Her grin is wide, his eyes adoring. She talked about her father a lot earlier. How he never wanted her to feel trapped, but he also wanted her to know that this legacy was hers for the taking if she wanted it. It was never said aloud, but her tone—I wonder if she’s afraid of letting him down.
Aoife stirs, wiping at her mouth, then reaching for the buzzing phone. “Shit,” she mumbles, ignoring the phone call. “I must’ve fallen asleep. God, you must want to go home.”
I keep one hand on the wheel even though we aren’t moving. The other I keep fisted over my thigh. A piece of hair is stuck to her cheek, and I have the strangest urge to brush it away from her face. “You’re fine. Sun’s just coming up.”
She holds my gaze, and when I think she can’t look any more beautiful, a ray of sunlight bounces off her bright eyes, and they sparkle. Shit. Sparkling eyes? That’s not something I notice. Thoughts of her tangled in my sheets, rolling over and smiling into a pillow instead of the car seat, plow into me. Damn it.
There’s a knock on the window, and Aoife jumps, spinning around where Ronan holds up his answered phone. She rolls down the window. “What?”
“Mr. O’Donnell is on the phone.”
“I haven’t had my coffee yet,” she says.
Ronan rolls his eyes, and she sighs, taking the phone. Two things enter my mind: First, she doesn’t get out of the car. She sits there, legs crossed in my seat like it’s the most natural thingin the world. Second, I want to rectify the no-coffee situation immediately. Would taking her to breakfast be too much?
Ronan narrows his eyes at me, and I avoid him by snatching my phone and scrolling through some emails.
“Hi, Dad. What can I do for you, oh Master of the Ring?”
The corner of my mouth twitches and my eyebrows dart up at her cheeky tone as I scroll past an email ad for holiday fruit baskets.
“Yes. I have … I know, Dad. Let me talk to Summer.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re doing the thing you always do.”
A text from Reed interrupts my reading.
REED
Warrant came through. Meet you at the Morris house in an hour.
I sit up, typing out a quick reply. This is the lead we need. The first victim didn’t seem to have ties to organized crime. At first, it seemed like a practice round for the killer before he, or she, started rounding up made men. However, the closer we look, the odder it gets. Especially when his spouse won’t let the police into her home to search. Any evidence that could help us establish motive is buried there, leaving us only with the dump site and his workplace. Then, the wife started dragging garbage bags out of her house and feeding us different timelines every time we interviewed her. That was enough. We applied for a warrant on the grounds of potential evidence tampering, and her stories from the night of his murder don’t match up.
I stare at the phone, then shift my gaze over to where Aoife is pretending to snore on the phone with her father. Instinctively, I squeeze her thigh. Her head whips around to mine, eyes widening at my hand resting on her leg. I snatch it away and opt to hold up the message from Reed instead.
She squints at it, and her expression lights up. “Oh, hey, Dad, something just came up. I gotta go. Because I do. I love you guys. Okay—I have—Oh you’re breaking—sorry—” She clicks off the phone.
I stare at her. Did she just pretend to cut out on Kieran O’Donnell?
“What?” she asks with a shrug.
I reach for my cigarette pack. Why is she so … hell. “Nothing,” I say, removing one and bringing it to my mouth. I fumble in my front pocket for my new lighter and light it, inhaling a long drag before blowing the smoke out the cracked window. Shit, I swear this girl is making me smoke more. I need to quit again, but the thought of making it through the holiday season without my emotional support smokes makes me murderous.
“Hey, can we grab a coffee and pee before we go to the Morris home?”
