The Last Bride in Ballymuir (42 page)

He might not have killed
Brian Rourke, but Michael was goddamn well going to murder
Gerry
Flynn. Breaking free of the Gardai
who held him was
no great challenge. They
seemed almost inclined to let him get in a shot or two. Gerry
wouldn’t have been much in the way of a fight at all, except that
someone else chose to dive into the fray.

“
Stay back,” he shouted at
Kylie, grabbing Flynn by the shirt and ducking his flailing arms.
“I don’t want you hurt.”

Before he could stop her, she had Flynn from
behind, her fingers dug into his face. Then Flynn drove his elbow
back with brutal force. Kylie’s head hit the floor with a sickening
thud, and Michael’s world went black with rage.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Necessity knows no law.

—
Irish Proverb

Kylie drifted up from blackness. She felt as
though she’d been ground to bits, with a mysterious ache in the
back of her head throbbing especially hard. She opened her eyes,
and her head rebelled at the introduction of light. When she tried
to bring her hand to her forehead to ease the pain, something
tugged at her. Squinting, she focused on plastic tubing biting the
tender underside of her forearm. That brought her wide awake.

The hospital. Even dizzy and hurting, how
could she have missed the hated noises and scents of this place?
She was in the hospital. And Michael was—

She clenched the sheet with her free hand and
felt the band of a ring press into her skin. Dear God, it was
coming back to her now in terrifying detail. Michael’s arrest, the
way she’d launched herself at Gerry Flynn, and the sharp pain in
her head before blackness swallowed her.

“
So you’re back with us
now?”

Her gaze shot to a figure at
the side of her bed. Her
da was
there.

“
How long have I been here?”
She winced at the parched sound of her voice.

“
A couple of hours. They say
you fought like a real
O’Shea. If you
hadn’t hit the floor quite so hard—”

She braced herself on her elbows and slowly
sat up. For the effort, pinpoints of bright-yellow light shot past
her eyes. “I don’t have time for this. I’m leaving, I have to get
to Michael.” She fussed with the intravenous lines attached to her
arm. “Find someone to get this out of me.”

Her da patted her shoulder,
then took a hasty step back when she glared at him. “Now Kylie,
you’re not well. Not enough potassium in you, or something
like that. The doctors say you have to stay the
night.”

“
I’m leaving,” she repeated,
then began to pick at the tape holding down the lines.

“
Darlin’, there’s nothing
you can do for the man. They took him back to Galway as soon as
they
patched him up. And he did it, Kylie.
He killed a man.
Evie Nolan was telling
everyone there’s no doubt.”

She’d never felt so close to madness, yet had
everything so clear at the same time. “I don’t care if Evie says
she watched Michael do it. Just get someone in here, and get me
unhooked. Now, damn it!”

Johnny retreated from the room.

After signing a bunch of bloody forms that
said she was taking her life in her hands by leaving without the
doctor’s consent, Kylie was released.

Before leaving the hospital, she made a
frantic phone call to Vi, who confirmed that Michael was in Galway,
and that given his and Rourke’s paramilitary connections, they
could hold him for three days before charging him with a crime. The
family was hiring a solicitor and an investigator. Beyond that, she
offered nothing.

“
Michael doesn’t want you
involved, and at present it’s best to keep it at that,” Vi had
said in a firm voice, then hung up.

No, it wasn’t best. It was Michael skewering
himself on his own sword. And Kylie would have none of it.

Her da helped her into
Breege’s car, which he’d found outside the Village Hall with the
keys still in it. As they drove back to Ballymuir, she shifted in
her seat and looked at him. Gerry’s taunts still whispered
insidiously in her mind. If she could do
nothing for Michael right now, at least she could free
herself.

The day’s troubles had given her no patience
for subtlety, so she said it straight out. “Da, Gerry Flynn says I
prostituted myself to settle your debts, and that you arranged for
it.”

Her father nearly swerved off the road.

“
Watch
out,”
she cried. After she’d calmed
enough to pry her fingers from the dash, she asked, “So is it
true?”

“
Never,” he said with such
vehemence that she wanted to believe him.

“
But you know what I’m
talking about.”

He was silent for a moment, then said,
“Keefe.”

The word hung in the air between them. Kylie
knew if they didn’t finish this now, they never would. And that any
hope of finding her way with her father would vanish.

“
Suppose you tell me what
happened.”

Her da gave in without a
fight. He blew out a slow
breath and seemed
to grip the steering wheel tighter before beginning.
“The night Keefe came to our house, I woke
feeling
fuzzy, so I went downstairs to
drink a hair of the dog.
I was walking
across the salon with the decanter in my hand when my foot hit
something. It was a pearl. Just like the ones you’d been wearing.
They were everywhere. God in heaven, I was so scared for
you,
Kylie. I couldn’t find you. I ran to
the garage thinking
I’d go looking for you,
but my car was gone.”

“
I had taken it.” Though she
had never been willing to admit it to herself, she’d seen him—a
ghost in an upstairs window—when she’d returned. And she
had
always
wondered.

“
I walked to the road, then
sat there and cried and drank from that goddamn decanter. Gerry
Flynn appeared, I don’t know how much later, and helped me into the
house.”

Flynn. Always bloody Flynn at the bottom of
her woes. “And what did you say to Gerry?”

“
I don’t remember. I plain
don’t remember, but I can promise you I didn’t do what Flynn
said.”

The choice between Flynn and
her own father was
an easy one. “I believe
you, Da.”

“
Keefe called a week later,”
he said in a ragged voice. “He told me I could consider my debt
settled. Then, I knew. I knew and I hated myself for putting
you in harm’s way. And God forgive me, Kylie, it
got
so I couldn’t bear to look at you, the
guilt was so bad.” He dragged a hand over his face. “The truth is
that I’d give the world to take it all back. All of it.”

That, at least, was a sentiment she knew
well.

It was an old refrain, the
same whether in the Maze
or Galway City:
Concrete walls, concrete floor, pride
and
privacy stripped, dignity gone. Michael sat on the edge of his cot,
head dropped and hands hanging limply between his knees. When
questioned, he had told them the truth about seeking out Rourke,
about
the fight, of his every step in the
city. At least until the
truth crossed path
with Kylie.

It was no great risk, protecting her
reputation. Even if it were, he would have done it without a
moment’s hesitation. Because truth, as Michael knew, meant nothing.
And for the ultimate truth—that he had broken Rourke’s face, but
not caved in his skull—he had only his word to give. That, and the
argument he’d hardly have given them Rourke’s location if he’d
killed the man. But in the eyes of the authorities, his word meant
nothing, too.

He supposed there was some
chance that Rourke’s
true killer would be
found—if anybody cared to look. Sitting where he was, on the wrong
side of the bars, it
took an impossible
leap of faith to believe they weren’t already content. They had his
fingerprints all
over a gun, even if they
couldn’t quite come up with a bullet hole to match. He’d seen them
overlook
details
before.

He
might well die in a place like this. The first time he’d been
jailed, that had been simply a matter of comparing shades of gray.
But now, having loved Kylie, he was plunging into lethal blackness
from a rainbow’s embrace.

Michael stretched out on the
mattress and stared at the drab plaster ceiling. If possible, would
he give back the joy and the loving? Erase Kylie from his
memory
for the chance to
live out his days in numbness, instead of the agony awaiting
him?

No, he wouldn’t trade a
moment of it, neither the happiness nor the sorrows. But he
would
mourn.

God, how he would mourn losing Kylie.

Kylie had practiced her speech over and over
until she was sure she had it down to an art. But confessing to a
man who’d last seen her trying to rip out Gerry Flynn’s eyeballs
was a bit dicier than chatting up the bathroom mirror.

She’d been hoping for a more
familiar face from
the
local ranks of Gardai. Not Gerry, of course. But since he was
in the hospital with his jaw wired shut, he was no concern of
hers.

So now she faced one of the
Galway Gardai, still wrapping up loose ends in Ballymuir. As she
stumbled over her tongue, the officer wasn’t doing
much
to hide his
disbelief.

Kylie cleared her throat and pressed on. “So,
you see, I never left Michael’s side, not once the whole time he
was in Galway.”

There now, she had it out.
And please God, let it be
enough.

The officer took a sip of
his tea, then fiddled with
the papers in
front of him. “Interesting, Miss O’Shea.
We’ll be in touch if we require anything more.”

“
Interesting? That’s all you
have to say?”

He leaned back in his chair and shot her an
amused look. “What would you have me do, ring the jail in Galway
and ask that they free Mr. Kilbride?”

That had been the general—if
hazily-thought-out—plan. She had known it wouldn’t be enough to say
that she’d been with Michael for the hours they’d really shared.
Only full measure would work. So full measure she had given, and
would have handed over her life, if she thought it would help his
cause.

“
Well, no, I wasn’t
expecting him to be released this instant,” she said
aloud.

“
Fine, then. Good day, Miss
O’Shea.”

And then she was back on the street, but not
without other work to do. If Ballymuir’s tongues were going to
dance, she would orchestrate the motion.

Kylie marched to O’Connor’s Pub. Inside, it
was elbow-to-elbow talk. She borrowed a chair from the corner.
Pushing through the whispered “she’s here’s” and “did you see’s,”
she dragged it into the middle of the crowd and climbed atop
it.

Now head and shoulders above everybody else,
she called out, “Excuse me.”

Since the place had quieted at the sight of
her, it took nothing more for silence to fall.

“
I know many of you were at
the Village Hall this afternoon, and those who weren’t have heard
the
story by now. But I wanted to add a few
things Gerry
Flynn might have missed, since
he won’t be talking for some time to come.”

Heartened by the few
approving chuckles, she dragged in a shaky breath and thought, here
you go,
girl, time to toss out your life
and start again. Time to
truly fly
free.

“
One of the things Gerry
failed to mention was that I was in Galway with Michael Kilbride. I
won’t give you the details of what we were doing, but I can promise
I didn’t leave him time to be off killing a man.”

There was more laughter, and for the first
time in her life, she didn’t care that it was at the expense of her
precious reputation. All that mattered was easing the way for
Michael’s return. And he would be back with her, if she had to tear
down every bloody jail in Ireland to make it happen.

“
Now, I’m sorry if it
offends some of you to hear that I’d have a bit of fun, and I’m
sorry if I’m offending even more of you by saying that Michael and
I have been ... ah ... together for some time. But you need to know
he’s no murderer. He’s the man I love, and if you can’t accept
that, well then, the devil with all of you.”

Kylie took one last look
into the sea of faces that held people she’d considered friends.
Then she
climbed off the chair and clutched
the back of it, will
ing her knees to stop
wobbling.

In the silence, a single
pair of hands started clap
ping. “That’s my
girl,” she heard Black Johnny O’Shea
shout.

“
Thank you, Da,” she
whispered. “Thank you.”

When more hands joined in, Kylie cried tears
of joy.

But by midnight, she had received the word
she expected from Mairead Corrigan. Mairead was terribly sorry,
but it was out of her hands. Until the matters involving Michael
Kilbride had been resolved, Kylie was officially suspended from her
job.