Page 75 of Night of Shadows
I holster the Sig. A bullet is too fast, so I take the knife off my belt.
I crouch in front of him so he can see my face. The pleading stops. Something in Igor goes still and cold — the part of a man that has always known the bill would come due.
I do it slowly because there is no fast way that is also honest. I take the blade across his throat in one deep, deliberate pull, and I hold his eyes the whole way, because the man who tookmy daughter does not get to die looking at the ceiling. He dies looking at her father. The blood comes dark and fast. I keep my hand fisted in his collar until the fight goes out of his hands and then out of the rest of him.
It is quiet when it is done. I wipe the blade on his coat, and I stand. I am only a man in a warehouse with his daughter twenty feet away.
Cormac is at the door, covering.
Cormac doesn’t look away.
Declan is in the back office.
He kneels in front of Nora. He’s gentle. Declan, who has not been gentle with anything in twenty-six years, kneels in his coat in front of my daughter and says, "Hey, sweet girl. Hey. We are going home."
Nora looks at him. She’s not seen him in two days, but she remembers him from Cormac's apartment last week. She processes the information for one full second. Then she says, "Where is Daddy?"
My chest tightens.
Declan says, "Daddy is here. Daddy is just outside. Do you want to come with me to him?"
"Yes."
Declan picks her up. Brontos comes with her. Her arms go around Declan's neck. He carries her out of the back office and through the warehouse. He carries her with the careful, frightened tenderness of a man who has not held a child in many years and is holding mine the way he’s going to hold one of his own when he eventually stops pretending he’s not going to.
He passes me on the way to the SUV. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at the floor. He carries her past me and out the door.
Cormac stays with me for two minutes.
I do what is needed.
Then I follow.
? ? ?
In the SUV, with Nora asleep against Declan's shoulder in the back seat with Brontos pressed to her chest, I take out my phone.
I dial Maeve.
She picks up before the second ring.
I say four words.
"I have her. We're coming home."
I hang up.
Cormac drives.
Declan is in the back seat with Nora. Nora's hand is in Declan's coat pocket. She’s fast asleep. The cabin of the SUV is warm. The dashboard light is on the side of Cormac's face.
Cormac glances at me. The glance is a long glance.
"Lex."
"Yes."
"Padraig has a parole hearing in March. He wrote me a letter last week."
