“This is it, Smoke. Right here, right now. Either we’re together or we’re not. If we’re together, it’s forever.”
The glimmer of a smile I saw in his eyes gave me hope.
“Answer me, dammit.”
“I didn’t hear a question.”
“All right, then. You want it phrased as a question? Fine. I can do that. Broderick Smoke Torcher, will you marry me?”
His eyes opened wide. “Marry you?”
“That’s right. Marry me. In sickness and in health. ’Til death do us part. All that jazz.”
“When you put it like that…”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes or no, Smoke. Will you marry me?” He cupped my cheek with his palm, and I leaned into his hand. “Please say yes, Smoke.”
“Yes, Siobhan Siren Gallagher, soon to be Torcher. I will marry you.”
My eyes filled with tears as I pushed away the ramifications of what we’d both just said. I hadn’t thought about anything other than spending the rest of my life with the man I loved, and that was exactly how it should be. We’d figure everything else out. Our jobs. Where we lived. None of that mattered compared to having Smoke in my life forever.
He brushed my tears away with this thumb and my lips with his. “You sure about this?” he asked, his forehead resting against mine.
“The only thing I’ve ever been as sure of was when I woke up in the hospital in London, looked into your eyes, and knew in my heart that I loved you and you loved me.”
35
Smoke
Married. Siren and I were getting married. Instead of thinking it was ridiculous or even being terrified by it, it felt right. More right than anything in my life up to this point. And while it had been a spur of the moment, fueled by the harrowing experience we’d shared, I knew, like she did, that it was real.
I smiled to myself, thinking that no proposal in the history of the universe could have been more appropriate for Siren and me. Of course she was the one to ask me. It was the way it was supposed to be. I would’ve wanted to marry her. There would’ve come a time I admitted it to myself, but it would have taken months, maybe even years, until I stopped trying to talk myself out of believing she’d want the same thing.
I let her lead me by the hand out to where Decker, Casper, Hughes, and Uncle Gene waited.
“We’re getting married,” Siren announced like she might have if she’d told them we were going out for lunch.
I looked at Casper and watched as her smiling eyes filled with tears. I dropped Siren’s hand and walked over to her.
“Congratulations,” she whispered, hugging me. “I would’ve had to kick your ass if you screwed things up with her.”
“She’d never let me.”
Casper laughed. “I believe it.”
I turned around and saw Hughes hugging my future wife and knew he was as happy for us as Casper was.
“Hey, Gene,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder. He looked stunned. “You okay?”
He smiled. “You’re a lucky man.”
I nodded. “The luckiest.”
“She reminds me of my Janie. She was incandescent. Her passion, white-hot.”
Decker approached and shook my hand. “The timing is fuckin’ crazy, but the announcement is a truly happy one.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, smiling when Siren put her arm through Deck’s.
“When you tell this story, Ashford, and I know you will, be sure to get it right. I was the one who proposed.”
“I’ll remind you two wacky lovebirds that we have a mission to wrap up.”
“Smoke? Will you come with me?”
There was a knock at the door, and Hughes answered. When he closed it behind him, he had a box in his hand. “Is this what you’re off after?”
Siren nodded.
“I had one of my guys swing by and get it since it seemed for a while we’d never get the two of you out of the bedroom.” Hughes stepped closer and handed it to her.
“I don’t have the key,” she murmured.
“May I?”
She looked at me with scrunched eyes. “Sure.”
I took the box from her hands, gripped the tiny padlock, and ripped it off.
“If that wasn’t the sexiest thing ever,” she murmured only loud enough for me to hear. “I feel like proposing all over again.”
“Do you want some privacy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not from you.”
“If you’ll excuse us,” I said to the others in the room as I led her down the hallway and back into the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and rested both her hands on top of the box.
“I feel as though it holds the secret of life or something.” She laughed. “Am I being too dramatic?”
I put my hand on top of hers. “Whatever is inside, is something your mother wanted you to have.”
“But, Byrne. Why did he want it?”
“You heard him say that you’re just like your father. Maybe you’ll find what he meant.”
“He did say that, didn’t he?”
“Go ahead, Siren. Open it.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped, taking the contents out of the first envelope. “Guerin wasn’t investigating the drug gangs as much as she was IMI.” I waited as she continued reading. She gasped again and handed the paper to me, pointing at a name on the page. “Brendan O’Connor. That’s my father.”
I read what she had. “This says that your dad was part of the task force investigating corruption in Irish Military Intelligence.”
“They had proof,” she said, reading what was in the second envelope. “Guerin was working on an exposé at the time of her death. Several members of that task force were also killed that same week.” Siren kept reading and then looked up at me. “But not all. According to this, there were other agents who went unidentified. Three are named here.”
“That’s what Byrne was after. Tying up loose ends.”
Siren shook her head. “It’s been twenty-six years. Why haven’t they come forward?”
I skimmed that page when she handed it to
