Page 18 of Monsters in the Dark

I had ended up drinking three whiskeys at the bar, watching her interact with the other customers, trying to get a feel for her. She’d been friendly enough, remembering everyone’s orders, and it’d been easy to see that she got along well with her coworker. They had talked a lot in between helping the patrons, and they also worked fluidly, like they worked together all the time.

Keavy also hadn’t acted like someone that had just murdered two men the night before. Despite Kenneth swearing that she’d had, the woman had shown up to work, acting like nothing was wrong. Though she had balked a bit when I’d sat down at the bar, that could have meant anything. She could have recognized who I was, or she could have just been swayed by my face. Not for nothing, we weren’t a bad-looking lot, and a lot of women had sworn by that.

At any rate, apart from that brief moment, Keavy Collins had acted like a normal person, working her normal job, mingling with normal people, and just living a normal life. She also didn’t look like she could take down two grown men with guns. In all honesty, I could only hope that Kenneth was lying, because if he wasn’t, then Ren and Jacob would be embarrassed as they rested in the ground. To be taken down by a slip of a girl would be hard for any man to accept.

Now, thanks to Kevin’s talent with a computer, I knew which car was hers, where she lived, and almost everything else rudimentary about her. She worked at Miller’s, lived in an apartment complex on Pendant Street, drove a white compact car, was thirty-two, and lived alone, which was the most important thing to know about her.

So, after letting the guys know that I’d found her, I’d had Cathal continue to ‘question’ Kenneth, and Kenneth’s story wasn’t changing. No matter what Cathal did to him, he kept insisting that Keavy had been the one to kill Ren and Jacob, and that’s where it got tricky. He already knew that we were going to kill him, so why keep lying? Why take her down when he wasn’t going to get anything out of it?

Though I absolutely planned on getting to the bottom of this, I wasn’t going to take her to where we were holding Kenneth. Instead, I was going to take her to the O’Brien compound where we had a nice basement that we liked to keep our prisoners. The place was a two-story manor that had five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen, two sitting rooms, a war room, and a basement that tunneled to the five acres of woodland that sat behind the manicured one-acre of land that the house sat on. There were no neighbors for miles, and more importantly, the basement was soundproofed.

As I waited in the dark, I watched for Keavy, and as soon as I saw her making her way towards her car, I stepped out of the shadows, and her feet stopped when she noticed me. Even though she was standing near the driver’s side door, she made no move to get in, and most women would have. It was past two-thirty in the morning, so her safety should have been her utmost concern at this time of night.

However, it seemed as if it wasn’t.

“Lassie,” I greeted as I walked closer to her car.

Her chin went up, and that’s when I saw it. Even with the darkness of night surrounding us, there was enough light from the streetlamps to show off that determination in her eyes. Whatever this woman was, scared wasn’t it, finally bringing some credibility to Kenneth’s story.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice sounding strong and confident.

“Just thought that we should get to know each other better,” I remarked, my voice sounding every bit as strong and as confident as hers.

“It’s kind of late for that, don’t you think?”

I cocked my head as I took a few steps closer to her. “I think that we should probably introduce ourselves properly.”

The delicate column of her neck worked as she swallowed her apprehension. “I already gave you my name.”

“Your first name,” I reminded her. “What’s your last name, lass?”

Because I was watching her so intently, I noticed her hands tightening around the strap of her purse. “Collins,” she answered, actually surprising me a bit. “My name is Keavy Collins.”

“Irish through and through,” I remarked, still feeling her out.

“I guess,” she replied. “I never bothered to check.”

I took a few more steps towards her, and I knew that I didn’t have much time. Though she’d been the last one to leave Miller’s, it was still possible that someone else could come walking around the corner any minute. Like most cities, we had a few homeless people wandering the streets, and I didn’t need any witnesses for this.

Finally standing only a few feet away from her, I asked, “Do you know who I am, lass?”

“I can take a guess,” she answered, her backbone shining through like she couldn’t help herself.

“Then guess for me,” I ordered.

Her hands tightened around her purse strap again before answering, “You’re an O’Brien.”

I smirked at that.

I couldn’t help it.

“Try again,” I told her.

Keavy let out a heavy sigh before saying, “You’re Declan O’Brien.”

“Very good,” I murmured. “Now, can you think of any reason why I think that we should get to know each other better?”

To my fucking surprise, she said, “I imagine it has something to do with Kenneth Swanson.”

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