She hasn’t used the credit card I gave her. Not once.
She’s not taking anything from me. Not even the means to survive. That realization lodges in my throat like shards of broken glass.
“Bus terminal,” Ronan says, off the phone. “Got an informant on the street says she asked for directions.”
We’re moving before he finishes his sentence.
The Greyhound terminal is fluorescent misery—scuffed plastic chairs bolted to the floor, out-of-order vending machines, a handful of people who look like they’ve been here waiting for buses for months. I show her picture to everyone I can find.
The ticket agent at window three squints at my phone. “Yeah. Quiet girl. Looked scared.” He hands the phone back. “Didn’t buy a ticket. Sat a while, then left.”
“Which way?”
He points east.
We spread out across six blocks. I run the calculations—no money, no contacts, nowhere to go. She’d find the cheapest possible shelter. Not a hotel. A motel.
Lorcan calls, his voice level but carrying some apprehension underneath it.
“I’ve got her. She’s at a motel off Route 9. Room fourteen.”
“Is she alright?”
“She’s inside. I haven’t gone in. But Cillian—this place is a shithole.”
“Don’t let her leave.”
“She’s not going anywhere. I’ll be outside.”
The drive takes nine minutes. The motel is exactly what I expect—cracked asphalt, flickering neon, full of crack whores andmeth heads.
Did my wife look at this place and think,this is where I belong?
My brothers are parked across the lot. Declan gets out and walks to me.
“You good?”
“No.”
“You want backup?”
“No. This is between my wife and me.” I look at all three of them—Declan with his arms crossed, Ronan leaning against the car, and Lorcan standing by the door to room fourteen with his hands in his pockets. “Thank you. All of you.”
Declan nods once. “Bring her home.”
They give me the lot. I walk to room fourteen and stand outside the door.
On the other side of this cheap slab of wood is my wife. The woman who is so misguided, who thinks so little of herself, that she assumed the most loving thing she could do for me was disappear.
She’s wrong.
I’ve never been angrier, more scared, or more relieved to have found her.
I knock—three sharp raps—and don’t wait for an answer before I reach for the pick in my jacket pocket. My father taught me this skill at twelve. Right now, I’m grateful for it, because if Nora thinks a thirty-dollar motel lock is going to keep me from her, she has severely underestimated how far I’ll go to bring her home.
The lock pops quickly, and the door opens.
Chapter 18
