"You saw me react to a man being shot across the table from me. We all did." His voice is measured. Reasonable. Exactly the voice he uses in strategy meetings when he's steering a conversation away from something dangerous. "That's not evidence, Aoife. That's William Murphy watching a room full of frightened people and deciding to land on me."
"It's not nothing."
"Every person in that room was frightened. Every single one. What does he have that separates me from any of them?"
I look at him. I look at the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders and the way he's standing with his weight slightly forward, the way he always stands when he's committed to a position, and I think about all the years I have spent in the same rooms as this man. All the times I knew before he opened his mouth whether he was going to tell the truth.
"When did it start?" I ask.
Something moves behind his eyes. "When did what start?"
"Stop asking me questions to buy time. When did it start?"
"I don't know what you're asking me."
"Yes, you do."
"Aoife." He moves toward me, and I take a step back, and he stops. The look on his face is something I haven't seen there before, and I don't want to examine what it is. "I'm telling you the truth. Whatever William Murphy has convinced you of, he's wrong. I would not put you in danger. I would not—"
"Don't." My voice comes out harder than I mean it to. "Don't make this about me. Don't try to use that."
"It is about you. You're my sister. I was seventeen when Mam died, and you were fifteen, and I was the one who sat outside your door every night for two weeks because I didn't know what else to do. If I had done what you're accusing me of—" his voice drops—"what would that make me?"
It's good. It's very good. It's the right answer, the one with the most force behind it, the one that uses every true thing between us as cover for the lie in the middle of it. And the worst part is, I can feel it working. I can feel the part of me that loves him reaching for the thread he's offering.
"It would make you someone who was desperate and made the wrong call," I say. "And I would still be your sister."
He looks at me.
"But only if you stop lying to me."
The room is very quiet. The single lamp. The sound of the house settling around us. Somewhere down the hall, a door closes softly and then nothing.
Reilan looks at me with his face perfectly arranged, and he says, "I didn't tell them anything."
It comes up from somewhere I didn't know I was holding. The sound of my palm hitting the side of his face is too loud for the room. He turns his head with the force of it, but he doesn't step back, doesn't bring his hand up, and when he looks at me again, his expression hasn't changed. That's what does it. That careful, controlled face, even now, even here, maintaining the lie with the mark of my hand already forming on his jaw.
"You could have just told me." My voice shakes. I hate it. I make myself keep going. "I'm not William. I'm not going to put a bullet in you. I'm your sister, and I would have helped you find a way out of whatever you're in, and you know that. You have always known that."
"There's nothing to tell you."
"Reilan—"
"There is nothing to tell you." Quieter now. Final.
I want to scream. I want to grab him by the collar and put him against the wall and make him look at me and stop performing. But I've seen what this is now, and I know that more pressure won't get me further. He's decided. Whatever the reason, whatever they're holding over him, he's looked at the choice in front of him, and he's chosen the lie.
I breathe. In. Out. I think about William in the dining room, the way he'd set the whole thing up and waited with absolute patience, and then pulled the trigger. I think about what he said to me in the kitchen afterward. I think about a few days and what that clock sounds like.
"William knows," I say. "Not a guess. Not a feeling. He's been building the evidence, and he's close, Reilan. You saw what he did to Frank tonight." I hold his gaze. "His uncle. A man who sat at their table his entire life. He did it in front of all of us without blinking because the evidence said Frank had betrayed him." I pause. "What do you think he does when the evidence says it was you?"
Reilan's jaw is tight. He doesn't answer.
"I bought you time. I don't know how much. A few days if we're lucky, less if something lands before then." I stop. I make sure the next part is very clear. "I'm not asking you to go to William. I'm not asking you to explain yourself or hand yourself over or do anything except stop. Whatever they're expectingfrom you next, whatever channel you're using, it ends. Now. Tonight."
"I don't know what you're—"
"Because if you don't," I say over him, "I will not try to protect you. I'll step back and let whatever happens happen, and I will not put myself between you and William Murphy if you are still actively feeding the people who are trying to kill him." I pause. "That's not a threat. That's just what's true."
