RYDER (Slater Brothers 4)(79)

I focused on him when he began speaking.

“About a year and half ago I fell into a rut where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t want to talk to you about it because I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t have the skills to do anything.”

I frowned, but didn’t interrupt.

“Kane had his landlord and property developer thing going on, Dominic had his personal trainer thing, and Alec was always helping out at the animal shelter nearby. I wasn’t qualified for anything.” He scrubbed his face with both of his hands. “All I’ve ever known is drugs and weapons, and I felt like a failure because I wasn’t made for working in your world. I still have no qualifications for anything… I didn’t even finish high-school, Branna.”

“I know that about you,” I said, “and if you think I give a damn whether you’re educated or not then you don’t know me at all.”

“I know you don’t care, and to you it doesn’t matter, but to me, it matters. I want to be the one taking care of you even though you’re more than capable of doing it yourself. I just didn’t feel like a man, and I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just trying to explain where my head was at.”

I nodded. “I get that, but I still don’t know how everythin’ else comes into play. I mean, the FBI, Ryder?”

“That is actually the easy part,” he grunted. “It’s unbelievable that it happened, but it wasn’t like their heat wasn’t warranted.”

My head hurt. “Explain.”

“I still haven’t figured out the best way to explain it, but here goes nothing,” he said and blew out a deep breath. “Pretty soon after I started to feel like shit, I wanted to do my part around the house to feel like I wasn’t completely pathetic so I went down to B&Q to get some materials so I could paint the rooms, patch up any dents or holes in the walls… shit like that. I was leaving the store when two men in black tailored suits approached me at my car. At first I thought it was funny, they looked like the Men in Black, so they had to have the wrong person, but when they told me who they were and what they wanted from me, I honestly nearly fainted.”

Fear gripped me.

“What did they want from you?”

“They told me a construction site up on the mountain side that was levelling out land discovered a mass grave site.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Trent?” I questioned. “Marco’s men from that night in Darkness when he took Damien and hurt Bronagh?”

Five years ago, Marco Miles, Ryder’s old boss, attacked my little sister and tried to use her life, and Damien’s, as a bargaining chip to keep Ryder and his three other brothers under this thumb. It blew up in his face, and he paid for it with his life, his nephew’s life, and a few of his thugs’ lives.

Ryder nodded once. “They can’t identify the bodies, but mine and Dominic’s finger prints were on one of the plastic bags we used to wrap them up inside. We didn’t clean them as well as we thought.”

My heart was beating so fast I could hear it.

“There hasn’t been a single mention of it in the news though, how could—”

“They’re the Feds, Bran, they aren’t your regular cops. These are the people that hunt you down and find out everything about you know matter where you are on the planet. They have a small team here and only that team and the commissioner of your police knows about this operation. If they want something kept under wraps, you won’t know about it unless they want you to.”

What operation?

“I can’t believe this,” I breathed and lifted my hand from under my leg so I could place it on my chest.

“This is as real as it gets, Branna.” Ryder said, trepidation in his tone. “We were all arrested one time in the States… we did nothing wrong, but the cops arrested us one day just so they could get our finger prints and DNA on record. They knew who we ran with and I guess they didn’t want to take any chances with us. When the cops here ran the prints, they found us through the system, and the FBI was flagged and immediately flew over here. Marco was well known to them, but they could never pin shit on him because his crew was so good at what they did. They wanted to know where he disappeared to, and they also knew we had something to do with it because a source told them Marco came to Ireland after us and that he never left.”

I clasped my hands together, just so I had something to hold.

“Are they goin’ to arrest you both for murder?” I asked, and then held my breath as I awaited his reply.

“If I didn’t do what they wanted, then yes, they would have arrested us, but I did what they wanted so no, they won’t. That was the deal they offered me, and I took it.”

“They can do that?” I questioned with disbelief. “They will completely let you get away with murder if you help them?”

Ryder nodded. “They have our prints on the plastic, but that’s their only evidence and while it’s a crucial piece, there is so much more they can’t get us on, but I didn’t want to test them and actually make them dig for something else to convict us with. I did what they wanted and they let us off the hook.”

“But how?” I pressed. “Does there not have to be a trial before a judge—”