The Last Bride in Ballymuir (38 page)

He couldn’t have her, couldn’t love her, but
he could leave something for her to remember him by. Fighting back
the emotion closing its fingers about his throat, he walked into
the store.

“
Can I help you?” asked a
young woman from
behind the counter. The
small gold stud from her eye
brow piercing
glittered in the overhead light. The sight
of it gave Michael strange comfort. She looked every
bit as out of place in the posh surroundings as
he.

“
There’s a ring in the
window . . . some kind of bluish stone.”

She smiled. “Ah, the
aquamarine.” Slipping a set of
keys from a
chain about her wrist, she unlocked the display and brought the
ring to him. “This is an heir
loom piece.
We get them now and again. Pretty thing,
isn’t it? The stones on either side are diamonds—an old cut.
Not modern enough to suit most women.”

He knew one whom it would suit to perfection,
and it pained him that he wouldn’t be sliding it on her finger
himself.

“
In fact, the store owner’s
been pressing me to put the ring back into the vault. But I’ve had
this feeling . . .” The clerk paused, then tilted her head and
gave him a look that could have been Vi’s, had it not been coming
from a girl a full head shorter and with eyes of brown instead of
green. “I’ve known that the right person would be coming for it.
Soon, too.”

A day too late, to his way of thinking, but
he kept his sorrows to himself.

Ring all prettily packaged together with a
note of love and apology he’d written, Michael left the jeweler’s
and wove into the crowds. Briefly settling his hand over the box in
his jacket pocket, he walked on.

It was time. Past time, actually. He pulled a
slip of paper from his pocket.

“
O’Gara’s Pub,” he murmured,
thinking of the meeting place his prison padmates had spoken of.
The terrorist’s flavor of the month in munitions, money, whatever
one fancied, they’d said old O’Gara knew where it could be
had.

It took only a few questions of a man behind
the counter at the corner bookshop, and Michael was on his way.
Instead of taking the bus line that had been suggested, he walked,
of course.

The streetscape gradually changed from urban
to seedy. Shop stoops went unswept, paint peeled from doors and
shutters. Slashes of gang graffiti scarred bleak brick walls. This
might be another city and another time, but truth remained
constant: He had walked straight to his own past.

Two men walked by, caps pulled low. Though
they didn’t slow, he knew he was being watched. These were the sort
of streets on which one didn’t stop, not without raising suspicion
and risking a beating—or worse. Pulling on a cold, closed
expression, Michael walked with absolute intent.

Not much farther down, next to a vacant shop
front, stood O’Gara’s. Its windows were painted over, cutting it
off from the rest of the world. Trash littered the walk. It was
exactly as he’d known it would be. He pulled open the door, walked
in, and settled at the bar as if he’d been there a thousand times
before. In a way he had, for in his days with Dervla, he’d seen
plenty of places like it.

Four men sat to his left,
each hunched over a glass,
and each with a
cigarette anchored in the comer of his mouth. None looked familiar,
though with the dim light and heavy pall of smoke, his own brothers
could be here, and he’d not know it.

The bartender, with his stained tee shirt and
shaved head, was too young to be old O’Gara.

“
A Paddy’s,” Michael
said.

The drink arrived in a glass
that looked as though it had never seen soap or water. He downed
it, then
cadged a cigarette from the man
closest to him. As he
sat there, it
occurred to Michael that while Rourke wasn’t a stupid man, he quite
possibly was. Without old O’Gara to drop names with, no one was
going to speak to him. He waved the bartender over, ordered another
whiskey, and gave one last try.

“
I’m looking for O’Gara,” he
said when the sullen man slapped down a refill in front of
him.

“
Dead.”

No point in offering condolences, and no
point in making chat. “Then what about Brian Rourke?”

The bartender’s expression slipped from
sullen to overtly hostile. “Don’t know him.”

It was a lie, but arguing would change
nothing. Only finding Rourke would. Michael put a few bills on the
counter.

“
If you do happen to meet
Rourke, tell him Kilbride came to spit on his grave.”

He drank down the rest of
the whiskey, then readied to leave. He knew he had the advantages
of time and no other ambition. He’d walk the streets, find himself
a hidden corner, then wait as long as it took
to make Kylie safe. He trusted the job to no one
else.

Just before Michael turned
away, a door next to the bar swung open. The heavy figure in the
entry
was silhouetted by yellowish light.
“You can’t spit on
a live man’s grave,
Mickey.”

Michael froze. He’d thought he could handle
this with the same icy coldness that had gripped his heart since
last night. But he’d made one crucial error. It was fire that had
seized him, not ice.

“
The name’s Michael,” he
fought past teeth clenched nearly as tight as his fists.

“
Ah, but you were Mickey
when I last saw you.
‘Quick Mickey’ is what
Dervla called you. You’re late
enough
getting here, though. I expected you after the first time I
called.”

Brian Rourke walked from the
doorway beside the
bar and stood in front
of him. Michael would never have recognized him. Fourteen years.
Fourteen years in which Michael knew he had aged, yet somehow had
expected Rourke to remain as he’d last seen him.
But the man had changed. Bulky muscle was going
to
paunch and hair disappearing altogether.
He was still threatening enough, but not the figure of Michael’s
nightmares. Perhaps that man had been a creature of his own
making—all the hatred and sorrow of his youth rolled into his own
private demon.

“
So what do you want,
Mickey?”

“
I’ve come to bring an end
to it—to work a truce.”

Rourke’s laugh ended with a phlegmy cough.
“An end to it? Just what kind of stupid bastard are you, to think
there’s an end to any of this?”

But
there was an end, and Michael was ready to lure Rourke to it.
He shrugged. “Not so much stupid as desperate.”

“
Take it from Dervla,
desperate’ll get you dead.”

He eyed the man before him, face and belly
bloated from drink. Eyes flat, already dead. Taking him the rest of
the way would be almost a pleasure. “I didn’t kill her, and I sure
as hell don’t mourn her.”

“
Well, I do.” Rourke’s fist
connected with Michael’s
nose, rocking his
head.

With a slow, deliberate motion, Michael used
the back of his hand to wipe the rivulet of blood that worked its
way from his nostril to his upper lip. “More the fool, you. Come
outside with me, Brian. We’ve matters to discuss.”

“
And who do you have waiting
outside, the Gardai? They’ve nothing on me, you know.” He smirked.
“Nothing yet, at least.”

“
I came alone.”

“
Well now, that’s exactly
what Dervla used to say
about you. ‘Too
quick on the draw, that boy.’ Did you
ever
really think she’d let you have her?”

Michael set his jaw, holding
back ancient humilia
tions. “Meet me
outside or spend the rest of your days looking over your
shoulder.”

Eyes fixed on Rourke, the bartender moved
toward the ancient black telephone hanging behind the bar. “Do you
want me to call Coyne?”

Rourke shook his head. “I’ve already got
trouble enough with Coyne. Besides, this is nothing. I’ll handle
it myself.”

First one outside, Michael glanced up and
down the deserted street as he waited for Rourke. The wind blew
stronger now. Maybe colder, too, though Michael couldn’t feel it.
He wiped at his nose again. The blood was slowing already. The fool
couldn’t even land a good shot on an open target.

Rourke stepped from the bar to the empty
sidewalk. “So you think to end this?”

“
You shouldn’t have bothered
me, Brian. And you
never should have
threatened those I love.”

“
You don’t know shit about
love, and you won’t until you’ve seen someone you love with her
brains half-gone. Rory was aiming for you that night, did you
know?”

Michael offered a two-word answer. “He
missed.”

Veins stood out on a bull-thick neck. “You
killed her as sure as you pulled the trigger yourself.”

This was what he wanted—Rourke past thinking.
He curved his mouth into a smile. “Dervla wasn’t worth the stain
she left on that rug.”

Rourke barreled at him, his
head catching Michael
in the
gut.

Michael rolled and pinned
his attacker to the
ground. “You think I
don’t know about love, you poor,
pitiful
bastard?” He closed a hand over Rourke’s throat and squeezed. “I’m
giving it all up—everything—to keep her safe. The second you
threatened Kylie, you became a dead man.” His breath came in
hard gusts as he squeezed tighter.
“Dead.”

Rourke lay passive, so he loosened his grip,
then felt his lip split under Rourke’s fist. Never underestimate a
killer, he reminded himself.

“
Harder to crush than a
cockroach, aren’t you?” Using an anger that the older man could
never match, Michael dragged him to the alley. Cursing and
struggling, Rourke spat into his face. Michael hauled him up
against the wall. Bracing one arm against the man’s throat, he
searched his pockets with the other. He tossed Rourke’s revolver
into a nearby trash bin.

“
Never did learn to fight
fair, did you, Brian? Explosives against children. Dragging down
innocent women. Well, this’ll be fair. I’m using nothing more than
my fists.”

And so he did, until he was
forced to adjust his grip to hold Rourke upright. Then he saw it—a
small blue box at Rourke’s feet. Kylie’s ring. Michael’s breath
whistled from his lungs in exhausted gasps as he took in the
sacrilege of what he was seeing. Averting his eyes, he looked at
his own fist, crimson
with
blood and somehow not a part of him. Yet it was.
And that fist—and the rage driving it—was no better than his
victim.

Ah, it would feel grand to kill Rourke. He’d
fantasized about it for years. But to do it in the name of a woman
who’d die before having harm done in her name? It would be the
worst sort of lie.

Furious with himself, with circumstances,
with life, he loosed his grip and watched Rourke crumple to the
ground. He needed a clean, honest kill.

“
A clean, honest kill,” he
repeated aloud to Rourke, who was alive but in no condition to
fight.

A clean, honest kill.
Another lie, because there was
no such
thing. Before Kylie, he’d have taken that kill,
dirty and brutal though it was. But now? To do it would tear
down everything he’d built, destroy everything Kylie had said he
could be.

He hungered for that kill, but he would not
take it.

After the strife, the anger, and the
emptiness, Kylie had made him whole. If the best he could do was
love her in return, he would love as no man ever had.

As he leaned down to pick up Kylie’s ring, he
heard Rourke stir and groan. “You’re a dead man, Kilbride.”

With his clean hand, Michael dusted off the
box and tucked it into his pocket. “No, Rourke, I’ve just begun to
live.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Study the river before you go into the
middle of it.

—
Irish Proverb

It was Kylie’s own slice of
misery, having Da underfoot after a wretched day at school. Before
she could even start an evening meal, he’d criticized her
house
keeping, commented on her “drab”
furniture, and shot
a few volleys at
Breege, who’d simply responded,
“We’re all
praying for you, Johnny, m’dear.”

More alarming, for all his complaints, Johnny
seemed to have settled in, his worn bag parked in the middle of the
sofa. Kylie frowned at the sight. It was time to give him a firm
shove toward the door.

“
Let’s get you back to town,
Da.”

“
Why’d I be going there when
I’ve not even been fed?”

“
To move into your room, or
whatever accommodations you’ve found for yourself.”

“
Haven’t made any. Couldn’t
seem to find a spot with any of my mates,” he said, then finished
with a mournful—and somehow expectant—sigh.

Ah, she knew this moment well, the one where
she was to be rendered helpless with pity and obligation. Pity for
Da she’d already spent her day’s allotment on herself. Though the
encounter with Gerry had been horrible, it was Mairead’s warning
about Michael that truly galled her. This afternoon, she’d found
herself scrutinizing the mothers when they’d arrived to gather
their children, and wondering who was whispering about her. Given
the speed of sound in Ballymuir, probably all of them. Before
today, she’d always felt safe in her little world at school. Now it
was sullied, too.