“C’mon, love.” Fionn cleared his throat. “Let’s be getting you something to eat.”
She nodded, still a little dazed. That lasted until they were descending the stairs, until the scent of roasted meat hit her nose and her stomach actually growled.
Fionn chuckled. “Ya missed lunch.”
And she felt it. The juice she’d had with her meds earlier couldn’t replace a full meal. “I could be completely full and my stomach would growl when I walked into your mother’s kitchen,” she admitted. “Siobhan is a fantastic cook.”
“That she is.”
Thank goodness everyone was fixing their plates when she and Fionn arrived. She didn’t have to wonder who had noticed their absence, if anyone was looking too closely at her lips, which she had no doubt were the slightest bit red and swollen—she knew because Fionn’s were. She’d done that, put the evidence of desire on his face. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get past the thrill that just the thought sent rolling through her.
“Lyse is going through the police report now,” Fionn said as they began taking seats around the dining table. “What do you remember about the investigation, Mam?”
Siobhan paused with her glass halfway to her lips, frowning. “Not a good deal, I’m afraid. I was stunned, frightened…grieving…at the time.” She took a drink, set her glass down. “They said Ferrina flew into a rage when he discovered Robert had taken the money from wherever they’d intended to hide it in the first place.”
“Why did he move it?” Deacon asked. “He and Ferrina came up with the plan together, I presume? Why double-cross his partner?”
“We can only be speculating there,” Fionn explained. “The murder wasn’t premeditated. The questions we could’ve asked of my father, Ferrina refused to answer.”
“I always thought maybe Robert found some hint of Ferrina wanting to take the money for himself, and moved it instead,” Siobhan said. “Above all, that money was Robert’s security; he wouldn’t let it go easily, especially after all he’d done to get it.”
After what she’d seen in the file she’d dug up, Lyse agreed.
“What can you tell me about your husband personally?” she asked Siobhan. “What did he do besides work? What did he enjoy?”
Siobhan took a bite of her roast, seeming to consider the question for a moment. “Work was his life, mostly. He talked about work and Fionn. Those were his passions.”
A smile tugged at Fionn’s lips. “And giving you whatever you wanted. That was important to him as well.”
Sadness settled on Siobhan’s face. “It was.”
Maybe that was the key Lyse needed. The garda had found no hint of the money Robert had died for, and she had little doubt that bank records and secret accounts would lead her about as far as they had the initial investigators. Maybe something in Robert’s personal life would tell her where to look.
She fiddled with her fork, thinking. “What did you want back then?”
Siobhan smiled, glancing at her son. “A house in the country. For Robert to retire. Not that that would ever be happening. The man was obsessed with work. But he knew how much I hated the city life.” She forked up a bite of potato. “That’s partly why Fionn and I chose this place when I needed to hide. Somewhere small and quiet and off the beaten path.”
“At least it used to be,” Mack put in. “North Quigley has grown quite a lot since then.”
And growth usually meant the criminal element expanded as well. Maybe that was how Ferrina had finally tracked Siobhan down. Of course, the fact that they’d thought he was dead hadn’t hurt. When you weren’t hiding, finding you became much easier.
“What about you, Fionn?” Lyse asked. “What were you doing back then?”
“I went straight from university to the garda,” he said quietly. “I’d been in almost three years when everything…”
Siobhan patted his hand where it lay, fisted, on the table, then wrapped her fingers around his. “He was so proud the day you graduated from training. Second only to the day you were born, I think.”
“Of course he was,” Mack said, his voice gruff with emotion. Lyse glanced at him, caught the intensity in his eyes as he stared at mother and son. “He had a family to be proud of.”
And he threw it all away, for money. Lyse shook her head. Robert had left a legacy that tore his family apart for a decade. Now it was up to her to make them safe again. Staring at Siobhan and Fionn, finally together, she vowed she’d make it happen, no matter what it took.
Chapter Twenty
Fionn was deep in purgatory—and hell, weird as it might seem.
Purgatory because they’d made little progress on either Ferrina’s location or finding the money Robert had left behind. Not for lack of trying. He and Mack worked tirelessly on the issue, Mack during the day and Fionn at night, while Deacon and King ran backup and kept watch on the property. On the watchers they knew were out there, even if they couldn’t see them. Lyse spent every night scanning files, asking questions, chasing rabbits.
And that’s where the hell came in. Because he was next to her every night, all night. Chairs side by side. Her scent filled his lungs through the long hours; her warmth tempted him. During the day when they slept, it was together, curled around each other—with four knowing, pacing adults right outside their door. For Lyse’s first time, he wanted more than the kind of rushed coupling he could give her right now, no matter how much the wait felt like it was killing him.
It had finally settled in his mind, the fact that they were going to be together, were actually together. Knowing that had changed everything. For years he’d endured a kind of low-level arousal whenever he saw Lyse—and had slaked it on other women, he was ashamed to admit. Not that he’d truly realized that’s what he was doing. After that first taste of her
