Private Dublin

Chapter 52

We took a series of cabs to ensure we weren’t tailed. The first delivered us to Bow Street, a cobblestone thoroughfare in the historic heart of Dublin, and we caught another outside of Jameson Distillery, which took us to Christ Church Cathedral. Tourists were already gathered to admire the magnificent Gothic building, founded in the eleventh century and one of the ancient landmarks of Ireland’s rich past. Mingling with the tourists for a while to ensure we weren’t being followed, Andi and I caught a final taxi outside of a tiny bistro. We got out a few blocks from Fitzwilliam Square and walked the final stretch. By the time we arrived at the townhouse, I was exhausted and in need of sleep.

“I’m going to lie down,” I told Andi. “You should do the same.”

She nodded, clearly weighed down with fatigue also. “I’ll just make some tea to take up to bed.”

She went into the kitchen while I climbed the stairs, entered my room, shut the door and flopped onto my bed. I didn’t even bother kicking off my shoes.

I must have fallen asleep quickly. When I woke with a start, the sun was low in the sky and the day was beginning to dwindle.

I rose with a woolly-feeling head. I undressed and showered to revive myself and help shake off the blanket of fatigue.

I put on a pair of black pants and a pullover and went downstairs to find Andi at the dining table, which was now our operations center. She had put her portable printer to work and case files covered every surface. She was poring over material.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

“I couldn’t,” she replied. She seemed more than a little wired. “My mind kept going back to that stud farm where we rescued the family. Kearney Stud. A place like that would be great cover for illicit horse tranquilizers. Maybe the reason they were threatening Noah and torturing his kids has something to do with those drugs?”

She’d printed out one of the photos I’d taken through the old mill window, showing the drugs lab, and held it up now.

“I reckon we go back out there and see if the family has returned. If they have, we pressure Noah Kearney about the connection,” she suggested. “Now that we know more.”

I thought about it for a moment. It was a reasonable idea. Kearney might talk if he knew we’d found out about the illegal activity another way and the information couldn’t be tied back to him.

“Okay,” I responded. “But you need sleep at some point.”

“Yes, but for now I’ll just have a shower,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. She seemed agitated, but I didn’t want to push her to rest. I knew how elusive sleep could be when the mind was active, and she was more than capable of making her own decisions.

I used the time to write Justine a loving but suitably vague message. No need to worry her about what we were up against.

Ten minutes later, Andi came downstairs in jeans and a gray-and-black camo hoodie. We caught a cab to Manor Street where we found the Ford we’d abandoned outside of the vacant warehouse. I insisted on driving, and Andi navigated the route to Kearney Stud.

When we arrived, the gates were padlocked shut, so we checked there was no one around and climbed over the perimeter wall.

We made our way through the woods under the cover of darkness. There were a few horses grazing in surrounding fields, but the property itself was shut up and still. Wherever they’d gone that night, it seemed as though the Kearney family had not returned.

“Looks like there’s no one home,” I said.

Andi nodded. “We should search the place.”

We gained entry through the kitchen door. There was plenty of evidence of our struggles against the home invaders, but no sign anyone else had been in the place since.

“You want to take upstairs?” Andi suggested. “I’ll take down.”

I nodded and started upstairs. I paused on the half-landing when I saw something at my feet. It looked like a medicine box, and I stooped to pick it up. It was a box of Xylazine, the same tranquilizer we’d seen at the warehouse on Manor Street. I was sure it hadn’t been here when I’d left the house on the night of the home invasion and attack on the Kearneys. I knew I would have noticed it.

As I stood studying the box, I heard the sound of glass shattering and a rush of air, before the familiar thud of a bullet slamming into the wall beside me. Someone was shooting through the full-length window behind me, and as I glanced over my shoulder and registered the faint glow of a sniper scope, I saw rapid muzzle flashes. The sniper knew he or she had been spotted and was sacrificing accuracy for volume.

The whole window shattered when the next volley hit, and I ducked and tumbled downstairs.

“Andi,” I yelled, and she came running out of the living room. “We have to go.”

The gunfire stopped, and in the eerie stillness that followed, we crept from the house and made our way through the forest. I took great care to keep cover between us and the sniper. By the time we reached the wall, my heart was racing with tension.

We’d be exposed as we climbed, and if we made it to the other side, there was a run across open ground to the car.

“On my count,” I said to Andi, as we crouched by the trunk of an old oak tree.

“Three... two... one... go!”

We both sprinted to the wall. Andi reached the top first, and I wasn’t far behind. The shots resumed when I rolled over the capstones, splinters and chips hitting my face as bullets strafed the stone wall inches from me.

I dropped to the ground on the other side and we raced to the car. Andi jumped in the driver’s seat and I slid in beside her. She had the engine going and the car moving before I had the chance to slam the passenger door closed.