Chasing River (Burying Water #3)(7)

Aengus nods slowly and then pulls a smoke from his own pack and lights up. The real estate agent who’s trying to sell our house warned us about smoking inside, but right now I don’t care. We already had to cancel one showing this morning because I wasn’t about to leave my bed.

A long, uncomfortable silence settles over us, and it almost unnerves me more than what happened. Normally we collide and combust—yelling, punching, swearing at each other. This is different. This means he’s gone too far and he knows it.

Finally he sighs, lifting his cap from his head to run his hand over his scalp. I’m still not used to seeing the copper-top mop gone. It was the trademark of the only Aengus I’ve ever known. You could see him from a city block away. I think that’s why he shaved it off the day he was convicted. It was too recognizable. Witnesses could easily identify him. “What the hell were you thinking, following me there? Ya knew something was going down.”

“What was I thinking?” I level him with a glare, fighting to keep my voice to a low hiss. Though our house may be detached, the night’s quiet and the windows are open. “You almost killed someone yesterday.”

“Fucking American,” he mutters under his breath, taking another drag. “What was she doin’ jumping past the tape anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you imagine the madness that would have stirred up? They’d have all of the gardai on this and you’d be back behind bars within a week, and for a hell of a lot longer than six years. And I’d probably be thrown in there with ya,” I add bitterly. “Da already had one heart attack. You want him to have another one?” Doctors say one more would likely kill him.

Aengus ignores the mention of our father and it makes me wonder if he’d care at all. They’ve been on the outs for years. “Did anyone see ya?”

“Besides the American girl who you almost blew up?” I shake my head. “I used the trees and then I scaled the wall.” Not an easy feat, especially with bits of plastic explosive embedded in my body.

He stabs at the newspaper headline. “What can she tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“The article says that she told police the man who fled the scene had an Irish accent. So ya talked to her.” He pushes. “What’d ya say?”

“I told her help was coming. That’s all.” It doesn’t sound like she told them anything else, but who the hell knows what the gardai didn’t tell reporters? Her name isn’t mentioned anywhere and I know they have that. “She was in shock. I doubt she remembers any of it.” I left her lying in the grass, her pretty light green eyes wild with confusion. I hated doing it, too. She’s the only reason I left the house today, to buy every newspaper I could find within a two-block radius.

I needed to know she was okay.

A part of me was hoping for more information, something to tell me who she is and why she’s in Ireland. How long she’s here for.

Where I could find her, if I just wanted to see her again. Then again, the bomb left me off-balance, struggling to get myself out of there in time. I don’t even know if I’d be able to identify her in a lineup now. All I really can remember is a pink cap, lean strong legs, and those beautiful green eyes.

Aengus’s heavy gaze levels me. “They’re already blaming us, without any proof.”

“Not us, Aengus. You, and rightfully so. You and Jimmy and whoever else he coerced into doing this.”

“Jimmy didn’t coerce me into doing anything,” Aengus snaps and I roll my eyes. I’ve never seen my big brother bend to anyone else, not even our father. But for Jimmy Conlon . . . he’d polish his bleeding shoes if the man held up a foot and a rag. As his right-hand man, Aengus is wrapped around Jimmy’s pinky finger.

And I can’t stand the bastard. He had the nerve to come into Delaney’s about three years ago, order a Guinness, and tell me that he was proud of my brother. How he had proved he was strong for “the cause.”

Jimmy isn’t fighting for “the cause.”

I thought I was going to crack my teeth that day, wrestling down the urge to label Jimmy for what he really is out loud—a lowlife racketeer, twisting what my family—my da, my granddad, and many generations before him—fought for. But I kept my mouth shut because you don’t go up against a guy like Jimmy—a convicted felon himself and a snake if I ever saw one—and come out without a bullet in the back of the head.

I suck back the rest of my beer, the alcohol helping to numb my pain. “You could have blown yourself up, Aengus.” The walk from our house in Crumlin to the Green is a good forty minutes.

He shakes his head decisively. “It was solid.”

I roll my eyes. If my parents were ever asked to put their three sons into boxes based on characteristics, I’d bet my life that Aengus would fit neatly into the one marked “loyal, volatile idiot.” He’s not smart enough to question what really matters, and Jimmy feeds off of that. He’s just using him for his dirty work.

“Just a warning, like I said.”

I crush the empty beer can in my hand, hiding my shudder at the thought of how much worse it could have been. “For who, this time?” If it’s not one gang, it’s another.

He weighs me with a heavy gaze, his beer stalling at his lips for a long moment. “The Gypsy.”