Cillian appears in my mind, quick as a flash. Along with a thought: I could trust him. Deep in my bones, I know I could.
Then he’s gone. And it’s just me and the detective again, all alone in this freezing corridor.
“Okay?”
“I just spoke to your father,” the detective continues. “He has a slightly different account of what happened.”
I tense instantly despite myself. “What did he tell you?”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I wince. Why did I ask it like that? Like I have something to hide?
The detective’s expression doesn’t change, but I can sense he’s playing closer attention to me now. He’s perceptive, this one. Doesn’t miss much. I need to be careful.
“You told Tristan that members of the Kinahan mafia were involved in your father’s shooting,” he says. “You mentioned an individual named Brody Murtagh.”
“Yes…”
“Your father mentioned two other names,” the detective says. He makes a show of checking his notepad, but I know damn well he already has these names memorized. “Cillian and Sean O’Sullivan.”
“Everything happened so fast,” I tell him with as innocent of a shrug as I can muster. “‘Kinahan’ and ‘Murtagh’ are the names I heard. So that’s what I told Tristan.”
“So you didn’t hear either of the O’Sullivan boys’ names?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say, standing my ground.
He eyes me carefully. “Did the O’Sullivans attack or threaten you in any way?”
Why is he trying to steer the conversation away from the Kinahans? It’s confusing me. Making me less and less willing to talk to him. Deep in my gut, an uneasy feeling is brewing.
“I think they came to collect a debt that my father owed them,” I tell him. “But neither one of them threatened me. The others did. The Kinahans. And Brody Murtagh.”
“You just claimed not to have known the difference between the two groups.”
I’m fighting hard to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Like I said, everything happened fast. They were both there to collect money, or so they claimed. All I know is that Brody Murtagh seemed intent on hurting my father and me. The O’Sullivans didn’t.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?” I press in a sudden spark of defiance. “Well, I find it interesting that you’re so focused on the O’Sullivans instead of the ones that I’m telling you you should be going after.”
“Your father just told me that he was shot by an O’Sullivan.”
This time, I don’t react.
“No, that’s not true.”
The lie escapes my lips so quickly, so seamlessly, that I believe it for a moment.
“It’s not?”
“They were fighting, gunshots were going off, Pa was in the middle of it. He didn’t see who shot him.”
“And you did?”
“I did. It was one of the Kinahan men,” I say confidently.
I don’t know why I’m protecting the O’Sullivans. I owe them nothing.
But my instincts are kicking into survival mode and I know the only way I’m going to get my father out of the mess he’s in is to be smart.