“Fucker.”
For the first time in a long time they agreed on something.
“What do you need?” he offered. There was no question that her pursuit of him was not over. No, she was going to find him, catch him and make him pay.
“I need a stash of cash. I have a plan, but I’m going to need to move under the radar. His operation is no joke.”
“Done. I found you a car too. Used. Not a lot of miles. It will take you wherever you need to go.” He handed her the keys and she took them.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He nodded. “I’ll go put together some money.”
Sinead had to consider what this made her. She’d been a cop. Now she was going to take her dad’s illegal gains and use them to do bad things. A sensible woman might take some time to grieve, move on and start a new life. Hell, he’d even offered her money to start over, which knowing him would not be an insignificant amount.
But as her father always used to tell her, when O’Haras fell, they fell hard. And Sinead was very much her father’s daughter.
Which meant if she was going to find him, she was going to have to figure out what his connection to Garrett Huntley, the owner of the house, actually was. Sinead got out of the car and made her way up the driveway. She rang the bell and waited. A second later Huntley answered the door with a scowl on his face.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I want to know what you had in the safe,” Sinead said as she blew past him into the living room.
“I told you I don’t need the cops. You’ve done enough.”
“I’m not a cop anymore. And you and I have something in common. We both want the guy who took whatever was in that safe. I have my own reasons. You obviously want your shit back. The fact that you don’t want cops investigating tells me that shit is illegal. Guns? Drugs?”
His eyes narrowed. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of trap?”
“Check with the department. I didn’t even wait to get fired, just gave them my notice. You from around this area?”
“Yeah.”
“You know the name Bill O’Hara? A former cop.”
He scrunched up his face, which Sinead imagined was his way of thinking. He wasn’t nearly as handsome when he did that. “But a bad cop, right? He was in the news a while back. But that was years ago.”
That was true, but it was one of those stories that lingered in people’s minds because of all the tragedy that surrounded it. Good man turned bad. Brought low by grief.
“That’s my dad. I do not come from a long line of true blue law enforcers. I know the score on both sides of the law. A con that cost what this cost was no small fish. I figure that’s a lot of effort to take something out of your safe. What was it?”
Garrett seemed to consider her. “Pharmaceuticals.”
Sinead snorted. She wondered if she’d been that gullible with David.
Garrett Huntley was certainly an easy target.
“What happens if you don’t get them back?”
The fear in his eyes then was real. “I have to get them back. I can buy a week, maybe two without them knowing I’m back in town. I don’t show with their product, heads are going to roll. Mostly mine.”
“How did he know they were in your safe?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Sinead looked around the living room and her eyes stopped on the wedding pictures on the table by the foyer. She hadn’t bothered to explain why she’d done what she’d done regarding the security system. She didn’t see the point.
“You actually married?”
“Yes.”
Oh didn’t I mention that his wedding was the single best day of their relationship? Every day after that was shit. They recently divorced.
Sinead remembered the picture on Huntley’s dresser in the bedroom. His wife was a petite beautiful blonde. She looked over Garrett’s shoulder to the table in the foyer.
The picture David showed her that night, of him and Garrett together, was gone.
“Where is your wife?”
He looked away, but not before something ugly moved over his face. “We’re going through a thing right now. She’s with friends. But we’ll work it out. We love each other.”
Yeah, Sinead wasn’t getting the love vibe. She was, however, getting the creep vibe.
Garrett Huntley was not a good man. That’s what he’d said.
Except she didn’t care about Garrett Huntley.
“Tell me about her.”
“What?”
Sinead had to grit her teeth together. Standing here with this scumbag meant she was wasting time. A lot of time. Time she knew was important. There had been a wedding. Between Garrett Huntley and the petite blonde. He had been at that wedding. The picture could have been doctored, but she didn’t think so. No, if he’d been at the wedding—and it was very clear he and Huntley weren’t actually buddies—then perhaps he’d been part of the bride’s party.