Page 13 of The Dangerous Dance

I open it again at the traffic light.

I close it again and put the phone face-down on the passenger seat and drive, and I do not open it again until I am home and there is no one to notice.

She's still at the studio.

I sit with that longer than I should. Then I go to bed.

CHAPTER 6

Liam

Mackenzie has been home for four days when I find out she went to see Declan.

I find out because Declan tells me, and the fact that he tells me at all is half the story. Declan hasn't volunteered me anything in six months that wasn't extracted through sustained pressure and occasional shouting. The fact that he walks into my office on a Thursday morning and sits down and says, without preamble, "Your sister came to see me yesterday," means one of two things — either he's angry enough about it that he wants me to know, or she got through to him enough that something shifted, and he's not sure what to do with that yet.

I look at him over the edge of the report I was reading.

"Did she," I say.

"She did." He sits with his elbows on his knees, which is Declan's version of an open posture. He doesn't do it often. "Showed up at the east building. Told the men at the door she was there to see her brother and when they said the wrong brother was there she told them that was fine and she'd see him instead."

"She said that."

"Word for word." Something moves across his face that is not quite amusement and not quite exasperation. "She brought food."

"She bribes with food."

"She always has."

We sit with that for a moment — Kenzie at fourteen showing up to whatever argument was happening between us with a plate of something she'd made, setting it on the table like a peace offering. She'd been doing it since she was old enough to reach the stove.

"What did she say," I ask.

Declan leans back. He is quiet for a moment in a way that tells me he's organizing it rather than avoiding it. "She said I was being a bastard," he says eventually. "Those were her exact words. She said I was being a bastard and that she'd been watching from a distance and she understood why — that she knew the last two years had been hard and that losing Da and then watching the whole direction of things change without being consulted was the kind of thing that could make anyone feel like they were disappearing — but that I needed to stop taking it out on you."

I say nothing.

"And then she told me off for about four minutes straight," he continues, "without stopping for breath, which I'd forgotten she could do. She gets that from Mam." A pause. "And then she asked me what I actually knew about your conversations with the Italians. What I actually knew, not what I'd assumed or what Connolly had told me."

"What did you say?"

"I said I knew enough." He looks at me. "She said that wasn't the same as knowing. And then she made me sit down and she told me what she knew. What she'd been reading, what she'd been tracking from the UK, what she'd put together on her own." He shakes his head once. "She's been paying close attention, Liam. More than I realized."

More than I realized too, I think. But I don't say it yet. "And after she told you what she knew?"

"She asked me what I was actually afraid of." He says the word afraid the way men in this life say it — with a careful neutrality that's doing a lot of work. "Not what I objected to. What I was afraid of." He stops. "I told her I was afraid the alliance with the Italians would make us into something we weren't. That we'd start taking orders from Vito Rosso and stop being Irish and start being an extension of their operation."

"That's not what⁠—"

"I know," he says. "She told me. She told me rather specifically what the agreement actually is, and what your conditions were, and what Vito agreed to and didn't. She knew the details, Liam. She'd done the reading." He meets my eyes. "Where did she get all of that?"

"I sent her updates," I say. "When she was away. I didn't want her coming back to a situation she didn't understand."

He is quiet. "You sent her updates but you didn't tell me."

"You stopped taking my calls in March."

Another silence. This one is different — heavier, carrying the weight of something he can't argue with.