It’s not a question.
“Always,” he says. “As long as she wants me to.”
There’s a dream-like quality to his voice. Being on an anti-corruption task force always comes with risk. I’m not hearing anything new about the danger I’m in. But I never had someone like Ronan looking out for me before.
“I want that,” I say. “I do.”
The brother is grinning, obviously filing this away for later so he can give Ronan shit about it.
I lean forward so only the three of them can hear me.
“I think I know where he is.”
19
Ronan
Ruby’s words hit me like a sack of bricks. It’s been hell, being here with my dad.
He’s said nothing to indicate he was disappointed in me, but how could he not be?
I’m disappointed in myself.
Hearing him say I’d done the right thing had been a relief, but I know I’ll carry the guilt of letting O’Dooley escape for the rest of my life.
“Are you sure?” Kieran asks.
She’s looking at me.
“Ruby,” I say. “I know what it means to you to come here and tell me this.”
She’s setting a man up to be killed. She’d understood my need to take him out, but she’d played no part in it herself. This is different.
Very different.
Irrevocably different.
“He’s evil,” she says, still looking at me. “He’s a sociopath who kills for convenience. The world will be better off without him.”
Still, I look at her hard.
She sighs. “It’s not neat, Doyle. It’s not clean. But there are reasons for it, and sometimes the line between justice and vengeance is a hard one. Which one is right? My father once told me that one person can’t carry the whole weight of the law. He’s had a lot of time to think about that, being where he is, and the last week has opened my eyes to the meaning of that.”
And even still.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “Not for us.” I don’t want her to feel compromised.
To feel dirty, like how she sees me.
I’d give anything to keep the way she sees herself clean.
Clear.
At peace.
“I love you,” she says, casually, like she’s asking me to pass the salt.
Those words hit me with more force that anything I’ve ever heard.
I trust you, they say.
I know this isn’t going to be easy. I don’t know how to be a cop and in the life of a mafia guy, but we’ll try, they say.
I see you, and you’re a good man, a worthy man, a man I choose, they say.
I run a hand over my chin, so my feelings aren’t written all over my face.
“But that’s not why I’m telling you. Alive he could continue to hurt people. People I care about.” She pauses and flashes me a wicked smile. “Like Jeanna.”
My dad laughs, and Kieran follows. They have the same laugh.
I hadn’t noticed.
Two of the most important men in my life. The same laugh.
The same goal.
It wasn’t all on my shoulders. I had help.
I look at Ruby.
I can choose to take what I want, and still find a way to keep my commitments.
Maybe even forge new commitments to her.
“I love you too, Detective Williams.”
Six words.
Hammering heart.
Pure, crystal clarity.
Her eyes widen. She probably thinks I wouldn’t say it in front of my family. But we’re not like that.
I’m not like that.
Not where she’s concerned.
Not never, and not any day in my life.
“Well,” my dad says. “Looks like we’ll have a little adventure before heading back to the city.”
I pick up the check, but feeling the heat of my father’s glare put it back down. He drops some bills on it, with his usual sizable tip, and we make our way outside.
It’s dusk. The federal agents have gone back to their hotels in Springfield and won’t be back until tomorrow. My dad is over talking to his driver, who hands him Ruby’s bag.
He thumps the hood and the driver takes off. My dad hands me the bag.
“Put this in your car, son.”
Ruby’s smiling at me as I do it. Everything’s changed so much in such a short time.
Still things to sort out.
But the chance of sorting them out together.
“So where are we going, miss?”
“We?” I ask, incredulous. I don’t want Ruby to see what’s going to happen.
“She deserves to know, Ronan. If you want to protect her, you have to be honest with her.”
Some part of my fights.
Keeping her safe means keeping her inside.
Away from all this.
Safe from the details.
But then I look at Ruby. That’s all wrong.
Someone else’s script.
The whole reason we got here is because she’s tough as fuck. Unafraid to look me in the eye. Willing to do the hard work to get to the place she wants.
Fuck. This isn’t going to be easy.
But my dad is right.
“There’s an old farmhouse by the orchard,” Ruby says. “He’d need a hideout that’s close by, but invisible. Something that people don’t even think about anymore. When he was…talking to me last night I saw a bunch of apple tree litter stuck in his shoes.”
That farmhouse I’d barely paid any attention to. The one she’d been staring at intently.
“We’d been up there earlier, Ronan and I,” she continues. “I had cellphone service and wireless even though I shouldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. Unless there’s someone boosting a signal out there. Clyde had mentioned the farmhouse to me earlier, and I figured he’d done it on purpose. It’s not in any of the other town maps. People probably just take for granted that it’s there.”
“Time to go make some applesauce, I guess,” Kieran says.
Should’ve gone with “home of the bad apples,” like the glasses Ruby and I had bought for each other.
Everyone turns to look at him.
“It’s not even close to funny,” I say. “Goddamnit, Kieran. That was bad.”
He smiles at Ruby sheepishly.
“It’s a bit of a walk, but nothing too bad. Lots of rocks and roots.”
“Used to walk in the woods with Kathleen,” my dad says.
I haven’t heard him say her name in ages.
Kieran and I exchange a look, and then we head out.
We’re quiet most of the way. Ruby struggles, but I help her over the roots and keep the branches from sticking to her cast. It’s so bizarre, this family walk in the woods, knowing what’s waiting at the end. Kieran makes another dumb joke and our dad swats at him.
When the farmhouse is in view we stop.
“He won’t be expecting us,” my dad says. “Too arrogant. Doesn’t think anyone could figure him out. Didn’t count on our detective here.”
It’s dark enough now that he won’t see us coming, but he might hear us. We split up and circle the house. Ruby’s with me.
The outside is dilapidated, but the inside is not. I wonder if anyone in town knows he’s squatting here, other than Clyde who seems to know everything. Maybe the chief. Former Chief, I should say. I hear someone entering through the front door. If O’Dooley’s here, he knows he’s not alone. Ruby and I are at the back door when it springs open.
My relief when I grab O’Dooley’s shirt is ineffable. He’s a big man, but I’m bigger. I drag him back inside.
“Ruby,” he says. “Detective Williams. You can’t let this happen!”
“You stabbed me,” she says. “And you killed their mother. And Emily. And countless other people. I don’t give a shit what happens to you.”
“So much for justice,” he hisses.
I drag him, kicking and spitting,
into a back room, where my dad and Kieran meet us.
“So it’ll be three on one,” Michael says. “A fair fight.”
“Fair, like how you treated our mother, you son of a bitch,” Kieran says, surging forward.
Our father holds Kieran back with his hand and whispers something to him. He looks incredulous.
“But Dad,” he says.
“I mean it.”
Kieran leaves the room.
My father comes over to where Ruby and I are standing with Michael.
“You know I have to take care of this myself, Ronan. For your mother.”
I do. I toss Michael into the center of the room and then leave with Ruby, closing the door shut behind us. No way out except through that door now. Kieran looks frantic.
“He was just in the hospital, Ronan. And that conniving fucker probably has weapons.”
“It has to be this way,” I say, clapping my brother on the shoulder. “If it were Siobhan who was hurt…”
Kieran freezes, a mask of pure rage on his face.
Point taken.
“He’ll be okay, Kieran. This is his fight. His biggest. And he’s not going to lose.”
Ruby slides her unbroken arm through mine. I pull her close.
It’s eerily silent. I expect to hear something, anything. But we don’t. There’s not even conversation. The door opens a few minutes later, and my father is dusting his hands off.
“It’s done now,” he says, his voice steady and calm.
Kieran gapes.
I know the shit Kieran gets up to. My big-hearted little brother understands the calculus of hurting and death far better than any of us.
His shock at how neatly my father resolved everything?
It sums up the magic that is Murphy Doyle.
A magic too soon leaving this world.
I swallow hard, thinking that I’m losing so much and gaining so much.
Everything so infinitely precious, that there’s no way to ever answer the question “Do the scales balance?”
My father wraps his hands around the back of mine and Kieran’s neck. “I loved your mother, boys. She was an angel. My angel.”
“I know,” I say.
“Okay then. Let’s be off.”
We leave Michael O’Dooley in the house. Maybe someone will find him, maybe they won’t. No one will miss him, though.
When we get back to our cars, my dad gives Ruby a hug.
“Thanks, my girl,” he says. “I’ll have no regrets, now, when I go to join my wife.”
He hugs me next. “I’m proud of you, Ronan. I tried with you boys. Was hard without your ma there. But she’d be proud of you, too.”
There’s nothing else to say so we get into our cars and head home.
20
Ruby
The lights of the highway flash by as we make our way back to Boston. I was strangely sad to leave Prescott behind, but I don’t think either Ronan or I will go back.
We haven’t talked much, still working through everything that happened.
“Do you regret coming with me, Ruby?” Ronan asks out of the blue.
Not do you regret coming. Do you regret coming with me. It’s funny how I’d always thought of myself as the romantic throwaway. I was so busy being defensive, too caught up in my own fears to notice the vulnerability in others.
“No,” I say. The answer is easy. “I’m different now, Ronan. Things are different. But that’s not a bad thing.”
“Will you have trouble at work?”
“Probably,” I say. “But not from my boss, or my contact on the task force. I imagine O’Dooley’s folks on the inside won’t be too happy with me.”
His fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
“More likely than not they’ll lay low. Hope everything blows over. The list I had only covered local folks. Honestly, I’d love to root more of them out.”
“It’s dangerous, Ruby,” he says. “You could get hurt.”
“I could,” I say. “But I have to do what’s right, Ronan. I’m not going to go looking for danger, but I’m not going to change who I am because I’m scared. I can’t live my life like that.”
He doesn’t like it. I can tell by his posture.
“Ronan, if this is going to work, whatever this is, we need to take your dad’s advice and be honest with each other. You’re not going to change who you are. Do you think I won’t have sleepless nights worrying what you’re up to? That some asshole who has a grudge isn’t going to try to hurt you? But I’m not going to ask you to change who you are. You’re always going to protect your family. You’re going to do what you think is right, and that’s the man I’ve grown to love. The man I’d like to fully explore what that love means with. We may not always see eye to eye, but neither of us will compromise on integrity.”
I can’t see his face well in the darkness, but his shoulders relax.
“I wish you hadn’t fallen in love with me,” he says. “I can handle rejection. But I’m afraid of what might happen to you because of me.”
He’s thinking of his mother.
“Ronan. I never met your mother, but I’m sure she didn’t regret her choices. Didn’t regret marrying and having children with a man who still carries her with him after all these years. There are no guarantees in life. I could marry someone safe and boring with a job programming computers and get hit by a bus the next day. I want to live my life, however long I have, with people who make me feel alive. What are you doing?”
We’re pulling into a rest area. Does he have to use the bathroom? We park under the lone light in the lot.
“Ronan?”
“I don’t deserve you,” he says. “But I want that, too. I want someone who isn’t afraid to be with me. To be all in.”
I stroke his hair, and he leans into my hand.
I look out again at all the things before us. His family, the coming changes there. My job and the reality that our being together will vastly complicate things. Hard questions I need to ask myself about the meaning of justice, and where I fall in regards to the law.
But I look at him too, really look at him. Not just the big hulk of a man that my DNA says “yes, please,” but the man that loves to laugh.
Dreams of living in a place with enough breathing room that he can see the stars.
The man that can deal out pleasure with enough generosity to melt your soul.
“I’m all in,” he says, his eyes closed. “I’m all in until you say stop. Until you don’t want me anymore.”
“Ronan. Look at me.”
His does, those intense blue eyes holding past secrets I may never truly understand.
“I’m all in. I’m not going to stop being all in.”
I know it’s true. I know again it’s going to be hard, and that at some point, our lives may change because of it.
There may come a time when we get very serious.
When I have to reassess my career.
When I decide to go hard after police corruption, and when that has implications for his business.
But if being all in means doing this together, considering the impact it has on each other and making those choices as a team, than I have faith we’ll navigate it just fine.
Even the hardest parts.
He kisses me then. Our kisses are gentle but deep, connective. I feel closer to him now than I did when he was inside me.
Not that I wouldn’t be enjoying more of that later. After I heal. I have a feeling Ronan and I will spend more time in bed than out of it.
But this will do for now.
A few minutes of kissing and we’re back on the road. He stops at a fast-food joint about twenty minutes later and eats an astonishing amount of food.
“Your mother must’ve had her hands full feeding you all when you were kids,” I say, finishing off my fries.
“Not really,” he says, laughing. “I mean it’s not that we didn’t eat a ton, but we had lots of food at the Kildare, and our meals at home wer
e simple. We Irish aren’t known for our cooking.”
“My mother is an amazing cook,” I say. “We’ll have you over for Sunday dinner. I’ll tell her to be prepared to be dazzled.”
“Did she.” He pauses. I know what he’s trying to ask. He doesn’t, though. I appreciate it, but I need to be honest with him too.
“She was angry at first,” I say. “Real angry. She couldn’t believe I’d sent my father, her husband, to prison. Cops don’t do well in prison, generally. I felt like shit. I wondered for a long time if I did the right thing. Still do.”
He doesn’t say anything.
Doesn’t try to make me feel one way or the other, and it’s something I love about Ronan.
Love. Ronan.
Weird to keep thinking about that.
“It’s a hard call, Ronan. His greed did some real harm. He bullied some city inspectors into passing a construction permit for a project the senate president wanted the green light for. The site had a bad collapse. Three people died.”
“I didn’t realize that was your father. Hadn’t connected it that far.”
“Yeah,” I say. “My mother forgave me when she realized she wasn’t the only wife, the only mother, being impacted. We don’t talk about it. He’ll be home soon, and that will be hard. He’s been through a lot now, and I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I know that must be hard.”
“I’ll get through it. Just like he had to get through his punishment.”
“I’ll be there, Ruby. For you,” he says. It comes out a bit like a stammer. Like he’s not used to being so open with his feelings. I’m sure he’s spent his whole life being strong for other people.
I rest my head on his shoulder. “Thank you, Ronan.”
And I’ll be there for him, but it’d be trite to say so. I’d show him through actions. Ronan is a man of action. He’ll understand better that way.
We get into the city; it’s not long before we’re in front of my apartment. He’s turned off the car and is already pulling my bag out before I can unbuckle my seatbelt. He has my door open in seconds.
“I’m not making assumptions,” he says, grinning. “My dad would have my hide if I didn’t help you get inside and settled.”
Devil: The Doyles, A Boston Irish Mafia Romance Page 13
