Chasing River (Burying Water #3) (3 page)

Duffy must see my irritation. “He ran. Innocent people don’t run.”

My eyes drift to the spot in the trees where I saw him vanish, and I start to question myself. Am I a fool for believing him the second the words came out of his mouth? I didn’t even question why he might say something like that. Maybe . . . he knew the bomb was there, lying in quiet wait in the grass. He knew exactly where it was and he must have known when it would go off, the way he ran at me. If he had nothing to do with it, how would he know those kinds of details?

Maybe a bomber’s word isn’t worth much when he’s . . . a bomber.

But he saved my life. He put himself in harm’s way to protect me. Maybe innocent people don’t run, but bombers don’t save lives.

I dismiss the detective’s suspicion. After all, five minutes ago, he was ready to accuse me.

“What else did he say?” Duffy pushes.

“He asked if I was alright,” I mumble. “And then he ran.”

Duffy scribbles it down. “Good, Amber. What else? What about hair color? Eye color?”

“Green eyes.” Rich, insistent green eyes. “And I think he was hurt.” Because he put himself in harm’s way . . . for me. Suddenly, I don’t want to tell these two officers anything else. Not until I can wrap my head around this. “That’s all I can remember. I’m sorry.”

Duffy brings his radio to his mouth and begins spouting off a series of words and numbers that I can’t identify beyond knowing it’s police code. Buzzing fills the air and several uniforms scatter, directing each other with fingers and shouts. They’ll be canvassing the park and the area beyond the walls.

I wonder if they’ll find him.

“That’s helpful, Amber. We’ll check the hospitals.” He pulls a business card out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Ya may remember more after a few hours or a few days. Give me a ring if ya do.”

“They’re going to be wanting to talk to ya.” O’Brien nods toward something in the distance. I peek out around the back doors of the ambulance that shield me from prying eyes. News crews have begun to trickle in, their mammoth black cameras sweeping over the area. Fortunately they’re held back by a wide perimeter of tape and I’m still hidden.

I can see the headline now:
American Girl Saved by Irish Good Samaritan, Who Then Runs.

I’m guessing this would be a story that the media would love. It would probably go viral. It would certainly be my way of making sure my thank you reaches him.

But it would also reach my parents, and guarantee that my dad’s first trip out of America would be to Ireland, for the sole purpose of dragging his daughter back in handcuffs if need be, twenty-five years old or not.

I pull the rim of my pink baseball cap down. “Any chance we can avoid them? And keep my name and picture out of the media? My dad won’t take this too well.”

Duffy eyes the gathering crowd. “They are hounds, aren’t they? Maybe we should give ya a lift somewhere.”

“That’d be great. I’m staying at a house on Hatch Street, just off Leeson. It’s a few blocks away.”

“I know the street.” He radios for a spare jacket, and I use it to shield my face and upper body as they usher me to their car.

“What’s the story, lad?” Eamon stands in his doorway, his robe tied tight around his scrawny waist, his thinning white hair standing on end. One long, shrewd look at me—my teeth gritted to hide the pain, a cold sweat coating my face—and he ushers me inside as quickly as his eighty-six-year-old bones can manage. “Didn’t expect to see ya like this, River. Your brother, of course . . . but not you.” His slippers scratch across the dated linoleum floor. I’ve been to Dr. Eamon O’Hare’s semidetached house a handful of times in my twenty-four years. It has never changed. The same vinyl flowery tablecloth covers the kitchen table, the same braided rug—a worn shade of sky blue—protects feet from the cool living room floor. The lace curtains that I remember watching his wife—God rest her soul—stitch still hang over the windows, growing more gray and dusty as each year passes.

“What have you gotten yourself into?” He leads me into the dining room—a cramped room with no window, dwarfed by a sturdy wooden table and lit by a gaudy bell-shaped light from above.

“Aengus,” is all I say. I don’t need to explain any more. Eamon has known us since we were shitting diapers and sucking on our ma’s teat. He knew my father when he was shitting diapers and sucking on
his
ma’s teat. He’s been a friend of the Delaney family for decades, fixing one generation or another up when going to the hospital isn’t an option. He doesn’t ask too many questions and he doesn’t report anything.

“Let’s have us a look, then.”

With slow, pained movements, I peel off the forest-green football jersey. The few minutes of mass hysteria after the bombing allowed me the opportunity to swipe a hat and shirt from a street vendor just outside the walls of the Green. I used them to help cover my wounds and hide in plain sight.

The pub T-shirt I wear to work—the first thing I grabbed from the floor this morning, in a rush to follow Aengus—comes off next.

Eamon harrumphs.

“How bad is it?” Because it feels bloody awful and the shredded rag in my hand now doesn’t look promising.

“Looks superficial, but you never know with these things.”

“I was on the ground when it went off, if that helps any.”

“It must have. I’d say you were very lucky, from what I’ve seen before. These two here,” he taps two spots on my back, “are protruding slightly. I’ll need to remove them. This one, though, I could leave in—”

“No, get it out.” I don’t want any pieces left in my body. The image of my father’s friend Glenden pulling a chunk of metal out of his cheek at our kitchen sink, and the mess of dark lumps still waiting to work their way out, comes to mind. I was five, and the sight still haunts me to this day.

Eamon opens the china cabinet and pulls out his doctor’s bag, which I doubt gets much use anymore. He’s long since retired. Rifling through it with a low hum, he finally shakes his head. “Do you have anywhere to be today?”

“Just the pub.”

“Best you call in sick. I don’t see you being in any shape to work.” He sets a bottle of cheap whiskey on the table. “I’m out of the good stuff.”

No anesthetic. This is going to fucking hurt.

While Eamon heads to the kitchen, I pull out my phone to text Rowen.

I can’t cover the bar today. It’s because of Aengus . . .

I can’t really explain any of this over the phone, but that should be enough for my little brother to understand that this is serious. Still, he’s going to curse me. When he enrolled in summer classes, I promised that I’d cover the bar on Wednesdays and Thursdays for him.

Maybe he can get one of our part-time bartenders in.

I crack the lid on the bottle of whiskey and take a long swig, the liquor burning inside my stomach as I prepare myself mentally, relieved that I could come to Eamon. Walking into a hospital with shrapnel wounds on the day of a bombing wouldn’t have been wise.

Within a few minutes I hear the whistle of his kettle singing. He returns with a bowl of steaming water, fresh rags, and a handful of surgical instruments swirling in a tall glass container filled with what I assume is antiseptic. Thick-lensed glasses rest on his nose now, and he’s exchanged his morning robe for a coat that I’m sure was once pristinely white, but has seen its share of blood that no amount of bleach can completely erase.

“On your stomach,” he instructs, patting the lacquered surface with one hand, while his other fusses with a desk lamp.

I take another swig and then comply, stretching out on the cool wood. It feels soothing against my bare chest.

He hands me a short wooden stick, marred by little divots. “I can’t have my neighbors calling the gardai on me,” he warns.

Fuck.
I comply, biting down on it.

Eamon snaps a glove over his wrist.

I exhale slowly, watching the tendrils of smoke curl their way out the window and vanish into the night sky. The pack I opened earlier today lies empty on the table and I haven’t taken a single puff, content to let the tobacco burn and the red embers glow and then fade into ash while I relish the calm before the coming storm.

Listening for the telltale jangle of keys at the door. Aengus didn’t even come home last night, which was probably the first smart move he’s made in all this, because I would have taken the agony from my day out on his jaw.

And he’d deserve it.

The front door to our house creaks open. Measured footfalls make their way down the hall, his boot scraping the worn wood floor on every fourth step.

“River . . . ya here?” Aengus’s deep voice cuts through the peace. Though we grew up in the same household, in the same city, people have said his accent is thicker, the way Rowen and I speak more refined.

I could answer but I don’t, don’t get up to greet him. I just sit in my rickety kitchen chair, shrouded in darkness, stewing in rage. And I wonder what kind of “warning” could be worth walking four kilometers with a volatile explosive tucked under your arm. I know my brother’s not suicidal, but that . . . only an idiot would do that.

I sense him standing at the kitchen threshold now, his eyes on my shirtless back, no doubt seeing the gauze patches covering the three shrapnel wounds. They weren’t too bad, after all. Tiny slivers that cut into my skin, thin enough that Eamon was able to stitch me up. That didn’t stop me from passing out from the pain as he dug into my flesh for that last one, though.

“Thought ya quit.” A beam of light hits my face as Aengus pulls two cans of Smithwick’s out of the fridge. He drops one in front of me, not saying a word about the five empty cans lined up at the table’s edge. Normally he’d cuff me for touching his beer.

That’s how I know he feels at least some remorse.

“I did.” I take a single haul off the smoke burning between my fingers, exhale slowly, and then mash the rest of it into the heap of other butts. “Funny what almost getting blown up does to a person.”

He drags out the chair across from me and sits down, straddling it. “Ya weren’t supposed to be there.”

I finally meet eyes with my brother for the first time since the Green yesterday morning. His face is rosy from drink and covered in strawberry scruff, the jeans and shirt that he traded his disguise for rumpled. He looks like he’s been hiding at the bottom of a barrel for the past thirty-six hours.

“You made the front page.” I toss the
Times
at him. The
Herald
and the
Mirror
share similar headlines. In fact, I’m guessing that the bombing in St. Stephen’s Green made every front page from Cork to Belfast.

His eyes only flicker toward it. “Been in to work yet?”

I shake my head. “Rowen’s covering.” The youngest of the Delaney boys, and the one I can always count on, had to miss classes both yesterday and today to cover for me. He was mighty pissed yesterday, but after he found me belly-down in bed last night, moaning in pain, he played it off like it was no big deal. Who needs a college degree when you can watch Greta—the tall blonde from Germany that we just hired—bend over tables to hand out pints to customers, he had joked.

That’s my younger brother. Day and night from the asshole sitting across from me.

“Did he mention anyone stopping by there?”

Aengus doesn’t really mean just “anyone.” “Not yet. But they will.” Gardai always come sniffing around our pub when there’s trouble. It just comes with the territory of being a Delaney.

Aengus nods slowly and then pulls a smoke from his own pack and lights up. The real estate agent who’s trying to sell our house warned us about smoking inside, but right now I don’t care. We already had to cancel one showing this morning because I wasn’t about to leave my bed.

A long, uncomfortable silence settles over us, and it almost unnerves me more than what happened. Normally we collide and combust—yelling, punching, swearing at each other. This is different. This means he’s gone too far and he knows it.

Finally he sighs, lifting his cap from his head to run his hand over his scalp. I’m still not used to seeing the copper-top mop gone. It was the trademark of the only Aengus I’ve ever known. You could see him from a city block away. I think that’s why he shaved it off the day he was convicted. It was too recognizable. Witnesses could easily identify him. “What the hell were you thinking, following me there? Ya knew something was going down.”

“What was
I
thinking?” I level him with a glare, fighting to keep my voice to a low hiss. Though our house may be detached, the night’s quiet and the windows are open. “You almost killed someone yesterday.”

“Fucking American,” he mutters under his breath, taking another drag. “What was she doin’ jumping past the tape anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you imagine the madness that would have stirred up? They’d have all of the gardai on this and you’d be back behind bars within a week, and for a hell of a lot longer than six years. And I’d probably be thrown in there with ya,” I add bitterly. “Da already had one heart attack. You want him to have another one?” Doctors say one more would likely kill him.