Page 22 of Blood in the Water
“Some motherfecking cocksucker from the Syndicate blew up my fecking house,” he said. “That’s what fecking happened.”
She looked at the house. Flames licked from the ground floor windows, black smoke billowing from the second floor. “Do they have a report already?”
“I don’t need a fecking report, Monaghan,” he shouted. “You think this happened by itself?”
She forced herself to stay calm. Seamus never shouted at her. At the men, yes. Never at her. “I’m sorry.” She put a hand on his arm, hoping to calm him. “Let me see what I can find out.”
She avoided Nolan’s eyes as she made her way to a man in a black fire slicker, surrounded by firefighters in yellow.
“Are you the person in charge?” she asked. He was tall and broad shouldered, his face lined, whiskers shadowing his cheeks and jaw.
He glanced at her before looking away, his eyes trackingthe men working the fire. “Who’s asking? Press?”
“I’m the victim’s counsel,” she said. “Is there anything you can tell us?”
His expression was more open now that he knew she wasn’t with the media, although not exactly welcome. Being a lawyer tended to guarantee that kind of greeting. “Yeah, I can tell you some kind of explosive device ripped through this house like a freight train. We’re lucky it didn’t take out the rest of the block.”
“And you know that for sure?” she asked. She did not want to be the one to confirm Seamus’s initial statement about arson, because if someone had planted an explosive device in Seamus O’Brien’s house, he was right: the Syndicate was the only possibility. “You don’t need to do an investigation?”
“There’ll be an investigation, but that’s what it’ll find.”
“How long before you’ll have the fire out?” she asked.
“Probably an hour, it’s mostly burned itself out, but it’ll be a couple days before we can vouch for the safety of the site.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a business card. “Call my office and give them your number. We’ll let you know when your client’s clear to come back for salvage.”
He gave a hand signal to someone over her shoulder, his face twisting in an expression of annoyance as he started to move away from her. He was quickly swallowed by the sea of yellow coats and flashing lights.
She made her way back to the huddle of men around Seamus. “They’re doing an investigation," she said, “but the preliminary finding is that it’s probably arson.”
“Like I fecking said,” he shouted.
The other men shuffled on their feet, obviously out of their element, unsure how to handle the new development. She suspected the discomfort she saw on Nolan and Will’sface had more to do with the fact that they’d been tailing her less than an hour before. Only Baren seemed at ease, his face stony as he stared at the flames licking from the first floor windows.
“You won’t be able to do anything here tonight. They’ll have the fire out soon, but they won’t let you in until they know the site’s safe.” She put her hand on his arm. “Let’s get you out of here, checked into a hotel or something for now. I have the captain’s contact information. I’ll follow up in the morning. Once we have the go ahead, we’ll come back and see what we can save.”
She was surprised by the calmness of her voice. Nolan had told her about his meeting with Christophe and about their strategy to destabilize Seamus’s crew. She just hadn’t expected it to happen in such a spectacular fashion, and while she couldn’t yet piece together the Syndicate’s plan with the explosion at Seamus’s house, she knew without a doubt the two were connected as Seamus had insisted.
It was difficult not to look at Nolan as she and Seamus passed him, but somehow she managed to keep her eyes in front of her, her attention on Seamus as she led him to his car, Mick and the others trailing them through the crowd that had gathered to watch the house burn.
She didn’t know what would happen next, but the explosion was no small move by the Syndicate. Attacking Seamus’s home — not his business, but the home he’d shared with his wife before she died — was sure to bring out the worst in Seamus, and in the men from Ireland who called themselves his brothers.
She would have to play it cool and hope she didn’t get caught in the crossfire, or even more likely the way things were going, that she didn’t end up with a target on her back — and more than one person aiming in her direction.
11
Nolan was still replaying the events at Seamus’s house when he drove to J.J. Foley’s that night. He didn’t give a fuck about Seamus’s house, but he couldn’t get Bridget out of his mind, the way she’d squared her shoulders and lifted her chin as she approached Seamus, the way she’d put a hand on Seamus’s arm to calm him. Nolan had wanted to stop her as she’d gotten in her car to follow them to the hotel, all of them stumbling over themselves to protect Seamus, Bridget forced to play the same role.
Then there had been Baren, quietly studying the scene playing out around him, his eyes landing on Bridget one too many times. His attention to her had frozen Nolan’s blood. Despite her assertions to the contrary, she was in every bit as much danger as Nolan and Will. Men like Seamus — and especially men like Baren, who seemed to be taking an increasingly active role in Seamus’s organization — had an inherent distrust of lawyers and women, which gave Bridget two strikes from the outset.
Nolan had never totally bought Seamus’s fondness for Bridget. There had always been an undercurrent of sarcasmin the shower of Seamus’s compliments that Nolan didn’t think he was imagining. It wasn’t hard to imagine a scenario where he or Baren decided they’d hold her feet to the fire and see if she screamed.
Nolan had had to force himself not to keep her from going with them. Seamus would be unstable after the explosion, his rage possibly unfocused, his earlier paranoia vindicated. Nolan didn’t trust him not to start killing people off and asking questions later, and Bridget was way too close to the action for Nolan’s liking.
He pulled into a spot on the street outside Foley’s, then glanced at his phone when it rang: his mother.
He hesitated. It wasn’t the best time to catch up — not that they ever said anything of importance — but his impending meeting gave him an automatic clock on the conversation, which wasn’t a bad thing.
“Hi, Mom.”