O’Hara was standing next to it.
“You’rethe escort?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to chat a little. Problem?”
“Can’t talk business in front of the priest,” I said bluntly.
“Not a priest,” Aidan piped up.
“That’s okay,” O’Hara said. “We can talk while he’s in his meeting. Can’t we?”
I didn’t like it much, and I didn’t like the way O’Hara talked about Aidan as if he weren’t even there, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. If I wanted the car, I’d have to agree. So O’Hara came with us, sitting in the back seat right in the middle with his legs spread, grinning at me in the rearview mirror the whole way.
I escorted Aidan into the building personally, and O’Hara followed at a distance. “Shouldn’t you stay with the car?” I asked once Aidan was safely tucked away in an office with Father Mike. “In case someone plants something on it?”
O’Hara waved a hand. “Anyone touches the car, the alarms will go off. So, you and the priest, huh?”
“Fuck off back to the car,” I snapped.
“Oh, come on, no need to be like that. I really did want to talk.”
“We can talk later. I need to keep alert.”
“One little joke and you go all huffy?” He chuckled all the way down the hallway and back out into the parking lot. As for me, I wandered around the foyer looking at various pamphlets and posters until Aidan was done.
He came out from the office looking blank, and Father Mike wasn’t with him this time. I wasn’t sure whether I’d expected him to seem troubled or peaceful, butblanksure hadn’t been on my list of expected reactions.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as we walked back down toward the parking lot.
“Mm-hmm.”
Obviously he did not want to talk about it. Maybe he was trying to find a way to let me down gently, tell me we had to stop fooling around so he could be all saintly and shit before his ordination. If that was the case, I was in no hurry for the conversation either. So we continued on to the car in silence, and got back in.
Even O’Hara was quiet as I turned out of the parking lot, and when his phone rang, he answered it right away. “Yeah.” There was something about the intense silence that followed that made me glance at him in the rearview. He was looking straight at me. “Okay,” he said into the phone after what seemed like a long talk from the person on the other end. “Get Fitzgerald out there with his crew and do whatever you need to do. Pick up the assets and take them back to the burrow.”
He hung up, and I asked at once, “Problem?”
“You could say that.” His eyes flicked towards Aidan, and I put two and two together.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What is it?” Aidan said, roused at last from his thoughts. He seemed to sense something was going on that involved him.
O’Hara said, “We’re handling it.”
“What do you mean? What are you handling?” Aidan twisted around in his seat to try to look at him. “What’s going on? Is someone after us?”
“No,” I said, and hesitated. But I figured he deserved to know the truth. “They’re going after your parents.”
“What?” He grabbed my arm, making the car swerve, but he didn’t even notice. “We have to go there. Teo! We have to go to them!”
“Can’t do that. We have people on them, and O’Hara’s sending men—”
It wouldn’t do. Aidan was in a panic. “No!” he shouted. “Wehave to go—you have to. I know you can save them,please, Teo. Please!”
We were close to the turn off for the bridge to Charlestown. I glanced in the mirror at O’Hara. “You got someone near who can give me a ride?”
“Yeah.” But his eyes went to Aidan. “What about—”
