Nolan looked down at it. “A flash drive?”
“Just in case,” Christophe said. “Build trust with O’Brien. Keep your eyes and ears open. The answer will present itself.”
Nolan slipped the flash drive into his wallet, but he couldn’t help thinking the words were bullshit. In his experience, answers didn’t just present themselves: they were either given or won.
And winning them usually came at a price.
11
Bridget filled the kettle, her reflection a ghost in the window above the sink, then set it on the stove. She removed two cups from the cupboard and put a spoonful of tea in each. Her mother had been in America since she was a kid, but she’d never relinquished her insistence that tea was meant to be loose, tea bags just another American shortcut that sacrificed quality for expediency.
She sat at the table and flipped through the mail while she waited for the water to boil. Her mom was upstairs bathing Owen and helping him get settled for bed. Bridget would happily have helped, but Owen had made it clear that in the absence of a nurse, their mother was the only one who would help him with his personal tasks.
Bridget had fought tears when he’d made the declaration, his face red with embarrassment, the reality of his worsening condition forcing him to confront a problem no young, vital person should ever have to confront.
She felt bad for her mother, who bore the brunt of taking care of Owen’s day-to-day needs, but she understood. Their mother had given birth to him, had cared for him when he’d been small and helpless. If anyone should see him return to helplessness, it should be her.
Bridget did what she could to lighten the load around the house and to keep her mom company when she was home. It wasn’t a fair exchange for the heartbreaking, backbreaking work of bathing Owen and helping him in the bathroom, for the pain of watching him waste away, but it was all Bridget could do — that and bring in as much extra money as possible to ease the strain on their finances.
She rested her chin in her hand, exhaustion threatening to catch up with her. She’d put in a full day at BRIC and had come straight home to help her mother with dinner, and she still needed to post bail for Casey, who’d been arrested after he’d beaten up some guy at a strip club downtown.
Seamus had been furious when Bridget went to the Cat to pick up the cash for Casey’s bail, although she had the feeling he was as mad that Casey had been at a strip club other than the Playpen as he was about Casey getting pinched.
In Seamus’s eyes, his organization was family, and family owed him the loyalty of patronizing family businesses, putting money back into the coffers that fed them all. He’d ordered Bridget to let Casey sit for a few hours to “give him something to think about."
She’d begun dreading and anticipating in equal measure her stops at the Cat. There were the trials of facing Mick and watching the other men stare her down, of walking on eggshells around Seamus, who’d been peppering her with questions about the research she’d given him on the legal statutes surrounding bank theft.
But there was also Nolan.
He wasn’t always there, but when he was, his presence made it hard for her to concentrate on anything but him. On her worry that he was hitching his star to her sinking ship, that she would pull him under even as she was screaming at him to leave and choking on the lie that she didn’t love him.
She’d heard that Seamus had sent him out with Will to strong-arm those who owed the organization money and to send a message to the men in his operation who’d made the mistake of stealing. She should have expected it, both because Nolan’s background with the Syndicate had been violent and because proving you were willing to beat the shit out of people for Seamus was the doorway into an organization where you’d be expected to do a lot worse. But it still left her walking around with a mixture of fear and desire that threatened to smother her.
Nolan had been with Seamus for nearly a month, weeks in which Bridget had held her breath walking into the Cat, desperate for a glimpse of him, half hoping he would follow her out onto the street again so she could feel his mouth on hers, have a second chance at crossing the barrier she’d erected between them when she told him she didn’t love him anymore.
Would she cross it if given the chance? She wanted to. There wasn’t enough denial in the world for her to reject that fact. But she didn’t know what it would mean for them, didn’t know what it would change. The thing that was between them would always be between them, even if she came clean about taking Moira’s money in exchange for killing her and Nolan’s relationship.
Some things were beyond repair.
The whistle of the kettle shook her from her thoughts. She stood and crossed to the stove, put an oven mitt on her hand, and poured the water. She was setting the steaming cups on the table when her mother entered the room.
Bridget sat down. “How is he?”
“Settled for the night, I think.” Her mother smiled, but strands of her hair were stuck to the sweat on her forehead, and her eyes had the look of the perpetually weary.
“Are you hungry?” Bridget asked. “Want a snack with the tea?”
“I’d be lying if I said I was hungry,” her mother said, “but I wouldn’t object to some biscuits.”
Bridget grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
She went to the cupboard and pulled out the box of cookies her mother kept in the back, behind the flour where her father — who could easily finish off a whole pack in one sitting — wouldn’t see them. She arranged them on a plate the way her mother liked them and set it on the table.
Her mother picked one up and took a bite. She sighed, like she was letting out a million years of tension, and her shoulders dropped a couple inches.
Bridget covered her mom’s hand with her own. “You okay?”
Her mom reached under the table into the pocket of her jeans, then set a piece of paper on the table between them.