Patrick.
I keep my tone flat and look out the window so Conall can’t read too much off my face. Streetlights pass over wet glass and vanish behind us.
“You called from a blocked number to talk in riddles,” I say. “That’s a step down from your usual standards.”
He gives a short laugh that carries no warmth. “Still performing, even after tonight.”
My fingers close tighter around the phone. “You’re admitting involvement.”
“I’m admitting nothing. I’m offering you a courtesy.”
“From the man sending cutters and charges into my east break.”
A pause. I can hear traffic on his side, distant, then a car door shutting.
“You’re chasing the wrong fire,” he says. “That’s always been your weakness. You see movement, you mistake it for the hand that moved it.”
I let the silence sit a beat and tap the recorder screen once to make sure it is still running. “Get to the point.”
“The woman in your house isn’t who you think she is.”
Every muscle in my back goes hard, and I force myself to keep my voice level. “Careful.”
“Ask her where she was trained,” he continues, calm now, almost patient. “Ask her why she knows your manifests before your supervisors do. Ask her who benefits every time your grief turns you toward the east while something else opens in the west.”
Conall turns slightly in the front seat, hearing enough to know the call matters, and I raise a hand without speaking. He faces forward again.
“You sound desperate,” I say. “That usually means I’ve closed another lane.”
Patrick ignores it. “You’ve built a story in your head about me for years, and stories are useful until they keep a man from seeing what’s standing in his own room.”
My pulse kicks once, hard, and with it comes an older image I have not asked for, Eva in the driver’s seat, her hand on the wheel, the flash, the heat, the smell of burning upholstery and salt air.
I push it down and keep my voice cold. “If this is your attempt to turn me against her, you should’ve called before my men pulled your tools out of a satchel tonight.”
This time, his silence runs longer.
Then he says, very quietly, “You still think I planted every bomb with my own hands.”
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
“Say it again.”
“I said your city runs on lies, Cillian, and one of the funniest is the one you built your life on after Eva died.”
My grip tightens enough that the edge of the phone bites into my palm, and I stare at the dark road ahead while the SUV eats miles under us.
Patrick exhales into the line, and when he speaks again his voice drops into something almost conversational. “If you want the truth about the car, come alone and bring your questions, or keep doing what you’re doing and let the wrong people tuck you into bed while the right ones bury you.”
The line clicks dead.
17
SAOIRSE
Maeve drags a second blanket over my legs even after I tell her twice I’m warm enough, and Cillian’s mother ignores me completely while she breaks a soda bread roll into smaller pieces and sets them on a side plate like I’m seven and likely to refuse food on principle.
