by Jessie Cooke
He tried to keep his mind on the present situation, but as he crawled through the void, his thoughts kept tripping back to Dublin, and that dungeon O’Reilly had kept him in. For days, maybe even weeks, he wasn’t sure, O’Reilly would come in with one or more of his crew. Finn would be beaten with their fists, kicked, sometimes bitten...but the worst of it all were the burns. They used a branding iron to burn him on his arms, legs, and between his toes. O’Reilly laughed about it and said that “junkies” didn’t have any feelings in those areas anyway, since they’d stripped their veins with all that smack. Finn knew otherwise. He felt it, plenty, and the sounds of his own screams and the smell of his burning flesh still woke him up at night sometimes, shaking uncontrollably, and trying to convince himself that it was over. Since he’d gotten clean six years ago, those were the only times that his mind and body still craved the drug. And that drug, the power it had over him then, was the saddest thing of all. Because as they tortured him, he thought about the fact that when each session was over, O’Reilly would leave a needle for him, filled with the substance he had such a love/hate relationship with. It wasn’t enough to get him high, or even take away the pain. He knew, and O’Reilly knew, that it was just enough to keep him dependent on it...and he used it anyway.
“You okay?” Caitlin’s voice sounded raspy and dry. He was thirsty too, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to the pain in his soul caused by the thoughts that were relentlessly battering him.
“I’m okay,” he said, and hoped that he sounded convincing. She was dehydrating, scared, and probably having as much trouble breathing as he was by then...but she was worried about him. That only made him hate himself even more. His life was an insignificant speck in comparison to hers and he didn’t deserve her compassion. He was the one that started smoking weed when he was twelve years old. He was the one that stole money from his own grandfather when he went home for holidays, so when he went back to boarding school he could buy more weed...and by that time, pills too. When he was fifteen he smoked crack cocaine for the first time, by seventeen it was methamphetamine, and only a year passed before he was living on the streets and shooting up heroin.
Finn...or Ian as he was called then...loved the way the drug took away all of his pain. Back then it was psychological pain. He hated himself, his family, life in general, and that caused his heart and soul to ache endlessly. The smack was the only thing...the absolute only thing...that took that pain away, but it also only made him hate himself, and everything else, that much more. “Ouch! Fuck!” His hand slid across something sharp. He could feel something sticking out of his palm when he pulled it off the ground.
“Finn? What is it? Are you okay?”
Finn had brought his hand up to his face. The needle dangled from it and bounced against his nose. There was no longer any question about who had taken them. It was his old friend, O’Reilly...and he’d left him a gift.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jace was trying so hard to be patient. He’d just told the man his son was missing, so he had every right to be upset. But then he’d thrown out that it was his fault and sat there like a zombie for ten minutes after he said it. “G?”
Finally, he pulled his pale face and watery eyes up to look at Jace. “I got a call last week from Rowdy Lager.” Rowdy Lager was the VP of the Chosen Few in Ireland. Jace’s hackles were up instantly at the mention of the club’s name. It had been coming up a lot lately...and Jace had just had one of them in his office earlier that day. “He wanted a favor.”
“What kind of favor...and why was he reaching out to you and not me?” Jace had been talking with Aiden, the president of The Chosen Few, since the day that Finn had been “recognized” at the coffee shop. Wolf had put him in touch with him. Aiden was old school, president of his club for over thirty years. He’d been the one to help Coyote out when Snake was first in trouble, and then again when they needed an identity for Granite. No one, not even Wolf, knew exactly what Coyote had given them in trade for their help, but Aiden hadn’t asked for anything since. It didn’t make sense that his VP was reaching out to Granite.
“Rowdy is an old...I hesitate to say friend. We were never friends. We were acquaintances and you might even say related. Rowdy is Ian’s...Finn’s...uncle, on his mother’s side.”
“What did you do, Granite?” Jace’s voice was low and controlled...but barely. He had eight men in his club. He couldn’t afford this kind of shit in terms of manpower or money, either one.
“I just arranged a meet-up...but Rowdy told me not to tell anyone. I wasn’t going to...I was going to meet the kid he sent myself and find out what he wanted, but I hadn’t been feeling well...”
“Son of a bitch! You sent Snake! That’s why he was at that coffee shop that day! That’s why he was so sure that girl wasn’t involved in this. She had nothing to do with it. Fuck!”
“I’m sorry, Jace. I’m so sorry. You know I love my son. I would have never sent him if I thought that I was putting him in danger. Jace, if O’Reilly has him...”
“Then he’s probably as good as dead,” Jace said, pissed off enough by then to lose all of his compassion. “And you’re right, it is your fault. How could you be so fucking stupid? Why would you agree to something like that? You and Snake’s mother haven’t been together since you made him. So what the fuck power could Rowdy still have over you that you’d agree to this shit...behind my back?”
“Rowdy is not a nice man. He knows a lot about me. He knows a lot of things about my past that could hurt me...or kill me...if they came to light.”
“Like what?” Granite shook his head from side to side, slowly. “No! You don’t get to keep anything else from me, Granite. What the fuck does he know?”
“I was never in a relationship with I--” Granite still wanted to call his son Ian, but he was getting better at catching himself. They’d all agreed that it was too dangerous for anyone to use his old name. “Finn’s mother. I was seeing someone else...on the down low...when I met her. Things got complicated. We...me and my lover...we just couldn’t let anyone find out about us. It was too dangerous...”
“Granite...I don’t care if you’re gay, okay? Just tell me what it is that Rowdy knows that he can still hold over you all these years later.”
Granite chuckled. “I’m not gay, Jace. I know that’s what you all think, and I was always okay with just letting everyone think that. What I am is stupid. I fell in love with a woman who was already in a relationship...with a powerful, dangerous man. We kept it hidden well, until she became pregnant. We couldn’t risk her telling her old man it was his because...well, the old man is half black and pretty dark-skinned. She’s as white as me. We just couldn’t risk him being suspicious and wanting a DNA test...”
“G! You’re dragging this shit over my last nerve! Get to the point.”
“Aiden’s old lady is Rowdy’s sister. I’m not sure you know that?” Jace shook his head and Granite said, “So, we went to him for help. He was pissed, but he finally agreed to help us, for his sister’s sake. Rowdy had this girl that he saw sometimes. She was a prostitute at one point and Rowdy had gotten her off the streets and into an apartment. She was an addict, though, and he never helped her get clean. As a matter of fact he just supplied her with her drugs and took advantage of her...I’m not one to talk, though, I guess. I wasn’t any better. Rowdy didn’t just do it as a favor to his sister, he wanted money too. I paid him, a lot...I don’t know if he gave any to the woman or not and at the time, I didn’t care. Ultimately she got her payday from my father so...”
“Granite!”
“Sorry, Jace.” He wiped the sweat off his brow and said, “She pretended to be pregnant. The woman I was in the relationship with came home to the States under the guise of her father being ill, and Rowdy backed her up, when she couldn’t hide her pregnancy any longer. She gave birth to Ian...Finn...and when they got back to Ireland, I took Ian to Rowdy’s girl, who basically sold him to my parents.”
“Whose old lady was she, Granite?”
“She is...not just somebody’s old lady...she is Eileen Murphy, Aiden Murphy’s wife.”
14
Jace stormed past Goth and nearly knocked Bubba down as he yelled, “Where the fuck is that little Irish bastard I left with you?”
“He’s in the...” The “little Irish bastard” walked out of the bathroom of the shop just then. His blue-green eyes widened when he saw Jace coming at him. He glanced to the right and left like he was looking for some place to run, but no fucking way was Jace letting him get away. He grabbed him by the front of his shirt and shoved him back into the wall so hard that the metal buckled.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Did Rowdy send you to find out where Finn was or are you working for O’Reilly?” When the kid didn’t speak right away, Jace pulled him forward a few inches and slammed him back into the wall again. A chunk of his white-blond hair was stuck in a screw on the wall behind him and his eyes looked dazed.
“Rowdy sent me...to meet with Granite.” He was talking fast and with his accent, Jace had to listen carefully. That was just pissing him off more. “I had a picture of Granite and when I got to the coffee shop, he wasn’t there...”
“Sean O’Hare. Tell me the fuck about him.”
“Sean was here working for Rowdy too. Rowdy wanted to know more about the new club and what Granite was up to out here. Sean was supposed to try to get a prospecting spot. But he’d been here for over a month and he wasn’t doing shit, so Rowdy sent me...”
“So you were here to spy on us?”
“Kind of. Rowdy is looking for someplace to launder money, without Aiden finding out about it.”
“Where’s this money coming from?”
The kid shrugged slightly and said, “I honestly don’t know for sure. I know Rowdy’s got some shit going on on the side. He’s had me be his go-between before with a guy who runs a casino on the outskirts of Dublin. I’ve picked up and delivered papers and packages and shit. I don’t know what all they’re into besides gambling, but I’ve heard that if you have enough money you can buy a night with any one of the girls or guys who work there.”
“So you were supposed to find out if this club might be a place that this asshole could launder his money through so that Aiden Murphy didn’t find out his VP was running a whole shitload of illegal businesses on the side--do I have that right?”
“That’s it in a nutshell, yeah.”
“Why did you come here? What happened to dealing through Granite?”
“I went there that day and didn’t see him. I was outside on the phone when Sean and that other guy got into it. Sean must have been following me...I don’t know what the fuck his deal is, or who he’s working for.”
“What do you know about O’Reilly?”
“I know he’s bad news. Aiden drew a lot of hard lines with him in Dublin. O’Reilly wanted to own the city...Aiden wasn’t having it. There was a lot of blood spilled on both sides for years until they finally came to some sort of arrangement about territory. As far as I know, we haven’t had any trouble with him in years.”
“So what kind of asshole agrees to fly four thousand miles at the behest of his vice president so that he can be disloyal to his club and his own president? What the fuck does Rowdy have on you?”
“My mam.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s got my mam. She was a club girl since Aiden started the club. I grew up in the club...I never knew who my old man was. I don’t think Mam did either, to be honest. It could have been any one of the guys. It sounds weird, unless you lived that life as a kid...but it wasn’t a problem for me. They all treated me like I was their kid and my mam loved me and I had a good life. A few years ago when I was old enough that Aiden would let me prospect, Mam found out that she was sick. She has Parkinson’s disease and it’s progressive. Aiden paid for a nursing care home for her, close to where I lived, so I could see her as often as I wanted. Before Rowdy found Sean and got him to agree to snooping around out here, he had approached me. I guess because Rowdy and I had always been kind of close when I was a kid, growing up. But I couldn’t go behind Aiden’s back. When I told him that, he acted like he understood and begged me not to tell Aiden anything he’d told me. I should have gone to Aiden right then, but I didn’t, and I guess Rowdy knew I wouldn’t. Anyway, I went to visit Mam couple of weeks after that, and she was gone. The nursing staff said she wandered off and they notified the Guards...”
“The Guards?”
“Five-O, boss,” Bubba said, behind him. “The po-po. That’s what they call them over there.” Jace rolled his eyes. Colin was nodding. His face was bright red and for the first time Jace realized he was choking the boy. He let go of his collar and Colin took a big breath in.
“So the Guards were looking for her and Aiden had all of us in the club taking shifts to look for her too. Then all of a sudden, she turns back up on the steps of the nursing home. She’s super sick at that point and had to be put in the hospital. She was half-starved and dehydrated and hadn’t had her medicines. She was also confused and disoriented and she couldn’t tell them, or me, where she’d been. She was just on the mend but still missing her memories of those days, when I get a call from Rowdy. I went over to his place in the middle of the night and he tells me that Mam didn’t wander away, he took her. He says that he wanted to prove to me that he could get to her any time and if I refused to help him again, the next time she wouldn’t be so lucky.”
“Motherfucker!” Jace said, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. It was bad enough when he thought O’Reilly had Finn and the girl and he didn’t know where...but now there were even more variables, not to mention that Punk and the other Irish asshole were missing now too. Jace had hoped to handle all of this by himself, but he was way too new to know which direction to go in this situation. He looked at Bubba and said, “Watch him! He doesn’t leave here, and he doesn’t get near a phone or laptop, got it?”
“Sure, Boss.”
“Jace, I’m sorry. If he’d done anything to me, I could have handled it...but this was my mam we were talking about.” Jace got it. It pissed him off still, but he got it. He didn’t answer the kid. He left him there with Bubba and went into the office and slammed the door. He paced the small room for a while, getting his thoughts together first, and then he picked up the phone and called Dax.
“Finn? You haven’t said anything for a long time.” Caitlin sounded terrified, and Finn didn’t blame her. Every second that passed, he hated himself even more for what she was going through. Now as he sat there in the dark, holding that needle in his hand, he despised himself for wanting to use it.
“I’m sorry, love. I’m okay. Just thinking.” Thinking about how good it would feel...to just not feel anything. This was only the beginning for them. O’Reilly would send someone to do something horrible to them...and probably soon. The idea of missing it all with one push of a syringe was so appealing...but what kind of coward would do that to the woman sitting a few feet away from him? She was completely innocent, and she trusted him, sort of. She was depending on him at the very least to be there for her, with her. Even thinking about shooting up was a betrayal of the worst kind. It was a betrayal of himself as well. He started to toss the needle aside...but he still needed to finish searching the room, and if he found it again...he wasn’t even sure he would be strong enough to pass on it a second time. Holding it tightly in one fist and using the other hand to search along the wall, he crawled back over to where Caitlin was.
“Finn?” He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a few minutes, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat in his temples. Finally he said:
“There’s something about me that I need to tell you.”
“Okay...?” She was confused. It was an odd time for self-disclosure, at least in a normal situation. But she needed to know what she was up against...because he was going to need her help.
“I’m a recovering heroin addi
ct. I’ve been clean for six years.”
“Oh...”
“Yeah, I know. People don’t know what to say to that, and it’s okay. The thing is, if you bear with me, you’ll understand why I picked this strange place and moment to tell you.” He felt her nod into his chest. He brushed his lips across her hair and then started talking. He began with being the “poor little rich boy” that thought no one loved him, told her about his addictions, his stupidity when he crossed O’Reilly, and the ultimate torture. He didn’t tell her he was sure that was who had them now, but he was sure she was smart enough to deduce that on her own. He hated that too. It was only going to make her even more frightened. Finally, he ended his sad story with being in the United States and living with no name until some poor sap back in Ireland overdosed and he stole his. Caitlin didn’t speak while he was talking and when he finished she was quiet for a long time. When he thought she wasn’t going to say anything at all she said:
“I hate thinking about them hurting you.” She sniffed and he realized she was crying. She wasn’t crying for herself, or the fact that she’d gotten mixed up with a loser like him...she was crying for him, and all that he’d been through. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He was amazed at her heart, but he didn’t feel deserving of her sympathy. He felt like most of his problems had been brought on by himself, and now he was passing them on to her.
He kissed her head again and said, “Thank you, love. I’m okay. But while I was crawling around, I stuck my hand on a needle. I can’t see it, but I would bet my right arm that it’s filled with all the stuff I used to love. I think the man who took us is the one I crossed in Ireland. Somehow he found out I was alive, and where I was living. I’m so sorry I got you into this. I hate that I did this to you.”
