She’s my wife. She’s my sub. Sometime in the past three months, I’ve learned to parse every expression on her face. She isn’t telling me the truth. Or, at least, she’s not telling all of it.
I can challenge her. Instead, I say, “He’s a fucking idiot.”
“He’s a vicious, rabid dog,” she counters. “And we’re the ones putting him down. He’s already using Viktor. I’ve seen the logs.”
“That’s good enough for me.” I watch the tension in her shoulders ease.
We don’t speak again until we arrive at her father’s stronghold in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood. The guards at the gate recognize Kate, and they wave us through. We find Barry and Orla Lynch upstairs, huddled in his office.
Barry’s face is scarlet as he shouts into his phone. Sweat streams down his cheeks. “And I’m tellingyou, Monsignor. My daughter will be wed tomorrow, or St. Brigid’s will never see another penny from the Lynch clan.” Barry listens. Splutters. Then he bellows, “We’ll see if the bishop is as tied totraditionas you are!” He slams the phone down so hard the plastic casing cracks.
Orla leaps to her feet when she spies us. “Thank God you’re here,” she says. “That feckin’ gowl is about to ruin everything. Cole, we need your help.”
Kate’s own parents don’t even acknowledge she’s in the room. I take a step back to avoid the claws Orla attempts to dig into my biceps.
“Cole, dear,” she says, the Irish in her voice bleaching to a wheedling Baltimore accent. “I’m afraid Breagha has decided toimitate her sister at the worst possible time. She’s set her hat for a totally unacceptable boy.”
Kate pushes past me, refusing to be ignored.
“She loves him, Mam.” Kate turns to her father, who is sucking on his cigar as he flips cards in an old-fashioned Rolodex. He looks like he’s hunting for a winning lottery ticket. “There’s no need to call the bishop, Da. Just let Breagha marry Nate.”
“You ignorant twat,” Orla says.
Kate doesn’t react to the insult; it’s clearly worn soft from years of use. Instead, she asks her mother, “Where’s Tarasov?”
Orla says, “That doesn’t matter to you.”
Kate turns to her father. “Where’s Tarasov, Da?”
Orla’s eyes spark fireworks. She’s not accustomed to being ignored. But Barry answers between puffs of tobacco: “He drove over to St. Basil’s, on Butchers Hill. He’ll see to it the Orthodox church is more flexible than that Dulaney eejit.”
Orla turns to me with the laser precision of a nuclear weapon. “This is what we need, Cole. You must break into Nate Cohen’s records. Give him a past, the type that will get him locked up as soon as the police can serve a warrant.” She rolls her lips over her teeth, stretching her spidery white scar. “Murder should work,” she muses. “Or maybe just rape.”
“Justrape, Mam?” Kate’s temper is sparking. I can hear it in her voice, see it in the tiny tremor of her hands. “Why don’t you turn him into an international spy? Set him up to be executed for treason?”
“Excellent idea,” Orla says, tapping the table as she plots her next steps. “And if he’s a spy, then whatever he’s doing at Johns Hopkins is suspect. You can get in there too, can’t you Cole? Rework his course grades, make him fail out. Delete whatever he’s turned in for his dissertation. You can do that for us, can’t you? Cole?”
She’s a monster—as evil as Shannon, but with her Canton Crew status to spread poison further.
“No,” I say.
“No?” She looks confused, as if she’s never heard the word before. “What do you mean, no?”
“I won’t do it.”
She blinks, and I watch the gears grind together inside what passes for her brain. She’s paging through a deck of possible personas—grieving mother, seductive lover, wounded bird—deciding which one will win me over.
Before she can choose an approach, though, Barry hauls himself to his feet behind his desk. “You work for me!” he thunders, pointing his cigar at my chest.
“I’ve been meaning to speak with you about that,” I say. “I’m terminating our contract.”
“Terminating!” His face darkens from scarlet to crimson. “You can’tterminate. You know too much. The Canton Crew will never let you leave.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Chances!” He rears back like a dying lion. “Here’s your fucking ch?—”
He chokes on the word before he can get it out. His eyes bulge as if they’re trying to escape the furnace of his face. His cigar falls from fingers that have suddenly twisted into a claw. He flails back with his other hand, trying to find his chair, but half his body refuses to obey. The left side of his face droops like he’s a badly carved ice sculpture at a summer wedding.