“Elle, I don’t want you doing this,” Logan hissed as he took his seat beside me.
I needed to come clean. To tell him I doubted that Michael would ever hurt me. That he wanted me to be with him. But the fact that I had entertained those plans when I thought Logan had left me made me feel so guilty that I had a hard time getting the words out. Before I could push them up my throat, the door to the employee lounge flung open.
“Sorry about that, boys,” Frank said, dragging his arm across his forehead. “Molly’s going to burn the fucking place down with all these new electronics she’s installing. Her latest gimmick is some fancy margarita machine that—” His eyes fell on me and for a moment they seemed haunted. I’d seen that look before on Sean McPherson the first time he saw me. The ghost of Emily Flannigan, I thought this time. It should have bothered me, but it didn’t. Logan assured me I was nothing like her beyond a superficial similarity and that what he felt for me had nothing to do with her.
There was a chorus of hey, how are you from around the table.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know we were in mixed company,” Frank said, and he wiped his hands on his jeans before walking toward me and extending one. “Frank Reilly.”
I smiled at him. “Elle Sterling.”
I’d seen him once before, but he wasn’t paying attention to me that night. He’d just wanted his daughter away from Logan. I wondered if with Patrick in jail and Tommy dead, he still felt that way.
“So what did you need?” He directed his question toward Logan, extending his hand and then pulling Logan toward him for a slight hug.
Frank was a big, billowy man. He’d been an informant for the BPD for years and had been the link between Agent Blanchet and Logan while Logan was being coerced to assist the DEA. As I watched the interaction between the two men, I couldn’t help but observe the fondness Frank felt toward Logan. Odd; up until now I thought he didn’t care for him.
But then again, he had allowed the break room at his pub to serve as the meeting place for this renegade task force, which, depending on what was really going on, could put him in harm’s way.
“Got a minute to sit down?” Logan asked him.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, and took a seat in one of the flimsy folding chairs that surrounded the small rectangular table.
The room was a hodgepodge of items that looked to be worn-out pieces from days better seen in the pub. Broken beer signs hung on the wall. The table was warped and the wood laminate was peeling off. Of the six chairs surrounding it, only two were sturdy enough to hold any real weight. I was worried the ones Miles and Frank were sitting in might just collapse.
“I want to pick your brain,” Logan started.
Frank eyed him warily but gave him a slight nod.
“My grandfather told me a story once about Mickey O’Shea.” He paused for a moment, and I knew the thought of Killian McPherson still made his heart heavy. I could see it on his face. With the slightest shake of his head he pushed the sorrow away. “He told me that when Mickey was a young man he went to prison, and that when he got out of prison he started up his own gang,”
“Yeah. They were small-time, though, a skeleton crew of twenty men at most. At the time, Paddy Flannigan was his number two. I don’t know how much income they generated. I know they were extorting protection payments from the strip clubs, which is how Paddy got the idea to run his businesses through them, lots of cash I guess. But back then, they ran the cash through Mickey’s mother’s flower shop.”
Logan nodded as if he already knew that.
Declan sat up straight.
And Miles eased his chair closer to the table.
“What do you know about Mickey?”
Frank looked uneasy.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say.”
“Is it about his gang?”
“His wife,” Frank said flatly.
Everyone perked up. “What about her?” Logan asked.
Frank closed his eyes for a moment before speaking. “Have you seen a picture of his wife?”
I had, but everyone else around the room shook their head.
"Rose O’Shea was a knockout. Picture Maureen O’Hara mixed with Lana Turner and eyes the color of the clearest blue sky.” He seemed to shake his head at the very thought of her but then cleared his throat, probably when he remembered I was in the room. “She was one of those women who turned every man’s head no matter if he was in love, straight or gay, and she knew it. She loved the attention and often sought the company of other men. Word on the street was that she was a tease, which was ironic because she claimed to be such a good Catholic girl. Went to church twice a week.”
Something like anticipation crested under my skin. The way he was talking drew all of us in, even the man I loved sitting beside me.
Logan crossed his arms over his chest and stretched those long legs. “Do you know how she died? I mean people say it was gang related, but that’s all. Never any details.”