“She was a beautiful woman, my Agnes. Sweet as the sun on a summer day. Smarter than shite too.” There was admiration in Seamus’s voice, his tone warm, like he was confiding something meaningful. “People didn’t bother to notice that about her. But I did.” He tapped his temple. “I did. You best remember that, lass.”
He turned away and walked to the table. When he came back he was holding an envelope with her name on it. He held it out to her.
She reached for it, and he held on a second too long, forcing her to tug to remove it from his fingers. “You tell your brother I hope he’s feeling well. And tell your parents I’m thinking of them during this trying time.”
She nodded and headed for the door, half expecting a bullet to hit her in the back, the veiled threat clutching at her neck like a noose.
22
Nolan sat on the merry-go-round, rocking back and forth with his feet, watching the path for Bridget. He’d barely been able to breathe earlier at the Cat, had had to check his impulse to pull his gun and shoot Seamus in the head when he’d been screaming, Bridget’s eyes wide and frightened.
He had no idea what happened after he left. He hadn’t wanted to hang around, even outside in case any of Seamus’s other men saw him talking to Bridget, and he hadn’t wanted to text her out of an abundance of caution. A month ago the idea of Seamus hacking their phones would have been ludicrous, but after seeing the laptop in his home office, the neatly organized folders and files that according to Christophe had netted a goldmine of information, Nolan had begun to accept that he didn’t know Seamus as well as he thought.
Normally the park would have been a bad alternative — too exposed, too local. But Seamus’s men were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to figure out who the rat was and how to make sure they came out alive on the other side of whatever this was.
Plus the bank job was still scheduled for tomorrow, the men assigned to the crew preparing for a heist that Nolan still hoped would be called off because of Seamus’s compromised status with BPD.
No one from Seamus’s crew was hanging out at Ramsey Park tonight.
Bridget came into view on the path and he watched her walk toward him, head bent against the cold, her hair shining under the street lamps. He couldn’t explain the feelings she rose in him, the feelings she’d always risen in him. His desire to shelter her from harm, to make her smile and give her everything she’d ever wanted, felt coded in his DNA.
He’d been fooling himself all those years he’d tried to convince himself he could be happy without her, that he could find someone else to love.
There was only her, would only ever be her.
“Hey,” she said when she was within earshot. “You sure this is okay?”
“Seamus’s men are losing it,” he said. “The ones scheduled for the job tomorrow are hunkered down, waiting for orders, and the others are looking out their windows wondering how long they have to wait before Seamus sends his muscle to question them about the shakedown at BPD.”
She smiled. “Aren’t you his muscle?”
“Some of it,” he said. “But I have a feeling anyone Seamus sends in tonight is going to bring a lot more to the table than fists, and that kind of action is still above my pay grade.”
She sat in one of the swings next to the merry-go-round and looked around. “I haven’t been here in ages.”
“Used to be hardly a night passed when we didn’t end up here,” Nolan said.
She smiled. “I remember. The good old days.”
“The good old days.”
“Give me a push?” she asked, her hands on the swing’s chain.
He got up and walked behind her, grabbed the chains, and walked backwards until she was suspended three feet off the ground. He let go and she swung away from him like a pendulum, then back again.
He kept up a rhythm, pushing her every other turn.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asked when she swung back his way.
“Did you ask me to push you so I’d be distracted and tell you what I know?”
“Did you call me out to the park so you can get in my pants?”
He laughed.
“So?”
“So we’ll see if Seamus runs now that he’s compromised,” Nolan said.