Page 20 of Blood in the Water
Bridget stopped at Sheridan’s cubicle. “Yep. Need me to do anything?”
Sheridan dug in her purse, a lock of turquoise hair, a recent change from her usual hot pink, falling over her face. “Stop at Morrey’s and get me a pastrami on rye? I’m stuck here all day working on that injunction.”
Bridget thought about Nolan and Will, parked somewhere outside with Sean Maguire. “Sure.”
Act natural.
Any other day, she would stop for lunch.
“Get yourself one too,” Sheridan said, handing her a twenty. “I’m buying.”
“Thanks.” Bridget had no intention of letting Sheridan — a single mother living on a a tiny BRIC salary when she could have used her fancy degree from Boston Law to get a better paying job at any firm in the city — pay for her sandwich, but Sheridan would only argue the point if she said something about it. She would pay for her own food and give Sheridan back all the change whether she liked it or not.
She shoved the twenty in her pocket and headed for the door.
The day was sunny but cold, and she tucked her chin into her scarf as she started down the sidewalk. She spotted Nolan’s car immediately, parked a few feet from a fire hydrant across the street. It took effort to ignore it, to pretend she hadn’t seen it.
She considered taking her car — it would be easier to act natural within the confines of a vehicle — but that’s not what she would do on any other sunny winter day. Acting natural was being unwilling to risk her parking spot when she could walk the twenty minutes to the courthouse.
She squared her shoulders against the cold and walked purposefully downtown, trying to focus on the Ramirez motion, the pastrami on rye she would order for Sheridan at Morrey’s, anything but the fact that Nolan and Will were watching, and Baren Maguire’s son with them.
9
Nolan’s heart almost skipped a beat when she stepped out of the office building. She was wearing her black puffy coat, her hair pulled into a ponytail that hung in waves over her green scarf and down her back. Her bag was slung over her shoulder, her chin hidden by the scarf. He willed her not to look their way, exhaling only when she headed downtown without glancing at the Lexus.
“Pull out,” Sean said.
Will twisted in the passenger seat to look at Sean in the back. “You see a steering wheel back there?”
Nolan saw Sean’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror. “She’s going to get away.”
“How many people you tailed?” Will asked. Sean didn’t answer. “Thought so.”
“Don’t mind him,” Nolan said. “He’s on his period.”
It’s the kind of joke he never would have made if not for the fact that he was pandering to the backwards, regressive mentality of a bunch of ex-terrorists, but it did the trick.
Sean laughed, leaning back in the seat like he wasrelieved to realize he was among likeminded colleagues, oblivious to Nolan and Will’s good cop/bad cop routine.
Fuck you,Nolan thought.Fucking daddy’s boy.
He started the car and pulled away from the curb, glad there was enough traffic to make his tail look good for Sean, who would undoubtedly report back to Baren.
He thought about Baren as he crawled through city traffic, his eyes on Bridget, who was obviously heading to the courthouse. Was Baren acting alone in ordering a tail on Bridget? In ordering Will and Nolan to do it? Did he suspect Bridget of selling out Seamus? Or did he just suspect that she was closer to Will and Nolan than she let on? Was the tail a routine test of her loyalty? Or a way to measure Nolan and Will’s loyalty in their reporting of her?
He had no fucking clue. The dossiers Christophe had emailed to the encrypted inbox hadn’t been much help. The backgrounds of Baren and his men had been unsurprising — raised in poverty, no formal education, initiation into the IRA before they were twenty, multiple arrests for everything from assault to auto theft — and nothing in them had given Nolan a window into Baren’s thinking.
“She’s got a nice fecking ass, doesn’t she?” Sean muttered appreciatively from the back. “Shame she’s an uppity feminist type.”
Nolan clenched the steering wheel, fighting the urge to stop the car and haul Sean from the backseat, leave him in a bloody pile on the sidewalk. He was relieved when Will reached back and gave Sean’s head a slap that Nolan heard rather than saw. They stopped at a red light and he looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see the humiliation on Sean’s face replaced with rage.
“What was that for?” he asked, his cheeks flushing deep red.
“I’ve known her since she was in diapers, you eejit. You might as well have complimented my sister’s ass right then,” Will said. “You think I like that? Want me to talk about your sister’s ass?”
“No,” Sean muttered, rubbing his cheek.
“Be a professional, for feck’s sake,” Will muttered. “What are you, twelve?”