“Sure thing.”
We start the drive. It seems to me the cabbie is going so fucking slow.
“Oi, mate—if you can speed up a little, there’s an extra fifty in it for you.”
Instantly, he hits the accelerator and we’re driving twenty miles faster than before. I glance at my phone. It’s been fifteen minutes since I left the police station.
It’ll take another fifteen or twenty minutes to get to the airport from Saoirse’s house in Finglas.
I don’t have time for this. The clock is ticking on my death warrant.
But I can’t leave Ireland without speaking to her first.
“Faster, mate,” I whisper. “I don’t have long left.”
* * *
The moment I see her house snuggled in the neck of the cul-de-sac, I tell the cabbie to stop.
“Keep the meter running,” I instruct him. “I won’t be long. You’ll get an extra fifty.”
He gives me a bright smile and a tip of the imaginary cap as he parks by the side of the road. I launch myself out of the cab and sprint to Saoirse’s front doorstep.
I bang on the door a dozen times before I see the buzzer for the bell.
Brrring!
Brrring!
Silence. No footsteps. No movement.
And then I realize: she’s not here. She must be with her father at the hospital.
“Fuck!” I roar. I don’t have time for this shit.
I punch the doorframe hard enough to split a few of my knuckles. I leave the blood smeared there on the peeling white paint.
A little memento, I guess. Morbid.
I race back to the cab. “Clontarf Hospital,” I bark. “Push this fucking shit-heap to the limit, mate.”
The ride there is a blur of Dublin sidewalks and storefronts and alarmed pedestrians. To his credit, the cabbie whips the vehicle like his life depends on it.
Which I appreciate, since mine actually does depend on it.
We come to a screeching halt in front of the hospital. I’m out of the vehicle before it’s even fully stopped. My feet pounding the pavement. My breath coming in short gasps.
A clock in my head is tolling out every second. I’m painfully aware of how little time is left here—and how much there is that I want to say to her.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I barrel past nurses and doctors, past frightened families and zonked-out patients.
Up the stairs, down a hall, up another flight of stairs.
Left-right-left-left-straight to the end.
And there it is. CONNELLY is scrawled in messy handwriting on a whiteboard outside the room.