Chapter Twenty-Seven
Not the honeyed words Finn was hoping for.
“You could. Rather loud though,” he pointed out. “There are probably a lot of people in the dining room, not to mention the staff.”
“I’m not afraid of a few cooks,” the man muttered, holding up his free hand — large and calloused — and demonstrating how well he could make a fist. Clearly, he worked a tough job for a living. Judging by the size of him, maybe a stevedore.
“Besides you’re talking fimble-famble. The restaurant’s empty,” the brute told him. “It’s the middle of the bloody night.”
Then Finn had best get himself out of this mess. “Who sent you?”
The man might have smiled. Finn couldn’t tell in the darkened room.
“Not important” he said. “Here’s the message — too many people know you’re alive. You’ve done a lousy job of hiding.”
“If you kill me, each and every one of those people will know I’ve been murdered, and some of them may even give a fig. You can’t kill everyone who knows about me.”
“True, and the boss knows that. You’ve taken a job instead of leaving. Boss knows that, too.”
So clearly, this man’s boss wasn’t Gilbert, who had given Finn the job.
“You can’t kill me, and you can’t starve me out since I’ve found work. And I have no family here for you to threaten.”
This time Finn was fairly certain the man smiled.
“No family, mate, but there is your pretty Rose.”
Finn kept his tone placid. “Not mine anymore. That’s old news.”
He started to sit up, and the man put his beefy paw onto Finn’s chest.
“Here now, what are you up to?” the brute asked.
“Let me prove that Rose is nothing to me anymore. I’ve got divorce papers.”
He shoved the man’s hand aside and sat up. Reaching for the envelope, he tore it open and found Reed’s note about taking the signed documents straight to his office. He put that aside and showed the intruder the first page.
“Right there, ‘Rose Malloy versus Phineas Bennet in a suit for divorce.’”
Over his handkerchief mask, the man’s eyes scanned the document while his bushy eyebrows drew together. So long did he peruse the page, Finn began to believe the goon couldn’t read and was only looking for some word he knew.
Helping him out, Finn pointed to the wordRoseand said, “That’s all legal, do you see?”
After another moment, the man agreed. “Looks to be, yes. So?”
“So your boss can stop threatening her because she’s nothing to me, nor I to her. At the risk of getting my brains blown, as you say, I’m telling you that I won’t investigate anything more about theGarrardor anything to do with her sinking. I’m simply working at the shipyard, and that’s it.”
“Boss don’t want me to kill you tonight or give you a bash on the smeller. Looks like you’ve already had that done to you anyway.” The intruder gestured with the end of the pistol to Finn’s still cur and bruised face.
“Nah, he wants me to fix it so you can’t work,” he finished.
Finn’s heartbeat, already racing from being awakened by a thug, sped up further, and his skin felt clammy. He wasn’t about to let some faceless coward who sent goons out to do his dirty work take anything more from him.
As the gunman shifted his weapon toward Finn’s knee, Finn erupted into movement.
Shoving the larger man with all his strength, Finn had the benefit of surprise even as they both hit the floor in a tangle. Straddling the intruder’s expansive chest, Finn thrashed out at his head with his fists, over and over, until the man’s arms went slack and his head lolled to the side.
Grabbing for the gun as he arose, Finn stepped away from the prone figure, his bum leg aching from the tussle on the floor.
