ep 4 ~°

▪I tap my foot and dart my eyes around the office like a junkie. I hate these confines. These gray walls and the smell of recycled air. Proof. Where else can I get proof?

▪ My eyes snap up to Agent Cameron’s, and I make my boldest suggestion yet.

▪ “Send me in,” I say. “I’ll go undercover. No need to pay me. You can just liaise with me or whatever the hell you call it.”

▪  She presses her lips together and the shutters come down over her eyes.

▪  “We would never authorize anything like that Miss Wilder,” she says firmly. “So please don’t go getting any bright ideas.”

▪  She grabs the requisite white business card she’s going to send me packing with and stands up. I follow, because it’s clear there’s no help to be found here.

▪  “If you think of anything else that might help the case, you can call this number,” she offers.

▪  I take the card and crumple it in my fist as I give her an icy smile.

▪  “Thanks for your time,” I tell her.

▪  When I walk out the door and fling myself into a cab, I come to my own conclusions. Agent Cameron is wrong. And there on the creaky vinyl with a cabbie who smells like salami, I find a smile in the bleakness. Because whether she condones it or not, I think my idea might just work. In fact, I think it’s the brightest frigging idea I’ve had in six months.

...Lachlan...

......................

▪ The city of Boston is washed out, the sky a blanket of gray. An Irish goodbye for the grand-da I never had the chance to truly know.

▪  One by one, the lads come forward to speak their final piece. Niall and Ronan remain by my side, quiet. Condolences are carried away on the Autumn breeze, faintly spoken, and seldom heard. My bones are heavy, clothing soaked, and all that remains is the crispness of an air that only comes after a storm.

▪  Finally, they’ve gone.

▪  When my turn comes about and I stand over his coffin, words fail me, as they often do. Neither of us ever found the right thing to say to another when he was here on earth. What use would it be now?

▪ The white lily in my hand wilts before my eyes. Apart from myself, Carrick was the last remaining Crow. His final wishes weigh heavy on my soul. The burden of making him proud. Carrying on his legacy and his bloodline. How could I deny a dying man his last hope, sputtered between bloody gasps?

▪ It wasn’t false comfort. Every word I uttered to him in those final moments was a promise to him. I will do him proud. I will follow his footsteps to the gates of hell if necessary to keep my word to him. The man who raised me. The man who gave me everything.

▪  On the whisper of a Catholic prayer, the bloom falls onto the glossy wood surface and he’s lowered into the ground. Niall and I repeat the sign of the cross, reciting the code Carrick abided by for the last thirty years. The same code we all abide by.

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