Page 21 of Monsters in the Dark

I couldn’t be sure about Noah, but listening to Keavy recite the exact same story that Kenneth had sworn was true had thrown me a bit. Of course, Kenneth hadn’t known how she had killed Jacob and Ren, but everything else had been verbatim, and now the woman was telling me that she wasn’t afraid to die, and it was hard to doubt her when she had willingly walked out of that bathroom last night.

Jesus fucking Christ.

She also wasn’t crying, pleading for her life, or acting hysterically in any way. She’d been drugged, then tied to a chair in a basement, yet looking at her, you’d think that she was having tea with a girlfriend at lunch or some such shit like that. Other than looking a little green around the gills, she seemed perfectly fine, and I had no fucking idea what to make of the goddamn woman.

“So, what’s it going to be?” she asked, her green eyes looking me right in the face.

Instead of answering her question, I asked Noah one of my own. “Noah, didn’t you once tell me that you couldn’t collect from a dead man?”

“That’s still true,” he replied evenly.

I looked back at Keavy. “Well, it seems to me as if you owe me two men, Ms. Collins.”

She blinked at me, and I could see the wheels in her head turning, everything shining in her emerald-colored gaze. “Meaning?”

“Ren and Jacob were two of my most loyal men,” I informed her as I pulled her earrings out of my pocket to play with them. “Since you’re the one that killed them, then you owe me their replacements.”

Keavy arched a perfectly groomed brow. “And how do you propose I go about doing that, Mr. O’Brien?” she drawled out, her disrespect on full display. “Should I hold auditions? Are you going to parade them down here, so that I can judge them from this chair? Do I put out an interest request on social media?” She cocked her head a bit as her back straightened in the metal chair. “Since I’m simply a bartender, I’m not exactly sure how the Irish Mob goes about recruiting their soldiers.”

“The last thing that you are is a simple anything,” I retorted.

“Your opinion of me aside, that still leaves me not entirely sure how you expect me to find replacements for your friends,” she went on. “And are you really going to trust me enough to let me out of this chair?”

Noah let out a low whistle, and it was hard not to be impressed by the woman currently staring me down. There’d been grown men in her position that had pissed themselves before I had even gotten around to questioning them, and they were supposed to have been hardened thugs. Meanwhile, Keavy was acting like she was bored out of her mind and would like for me to just hurry along with a bullet to that stunning face of hers.

“No,” I finally answered. “I don’t trust you out of that chair.”

“Good,” she replied. “You shouldn’t. Nice earrings, by the way.”

“Christ, ye really know nothin’ ‘bout self-preservation,” I said, wondering what the fuck I was going to do with her.

“I think that’s a topic that we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on,” she remarked. “Apparently, we have different definitions of self-preservation.”

While I had a million questions that I wanted to ask this rare creature, I finally asked the one that had been bothering me most. “Why in the fuck did you go home with someone like Kenneth Swanson?”

Her head reared back in surprise, her chin going up a bit. “Excuse me?”

Ignoring her surprise, I said, “Ye can’o tell me ta ye don’t really see how ye were ta good fer him.”

“My taste in men is hardly any of your business, Mr. O’Brien,” she answered. “How about you focus a bit?”

“Okay, on that note, I’m going to head out,” Noah announced. “I’ve got to double check on the Maisie shipment, and I need to meet with Cathal about what’s left to do about Swanson.”

I gave him a terse nod to let him know that I’d heard him, not stopping him from doing what needed to be done. I also didn’t blame him for wanting nothing to do with Keavy Collins. I was going to have to have Kevin do a full background check on her, but something told me that he might not find much. There was no way that she could have family, or else she wouldn’t be so cavalier about death. Only people with nothing to lose didn’t care about living or dying. Either that, or she really was insane, and I wasn’t taking that possibility off the table just yet. There was only one other woman that I knew with that kind of backbone, and Kasen Sartori had to be crazy to have had married Nero Sartori.

“What made you go home with Kenneth Swanson?” I asked again, wanting to know.

Her chin went up again, but she actually answered this time. “I needed to get laid.”

I didn’t like that answer.

“And there’d been no better options?”

“For what? Dick?” she replied condescendingly. “I wasn’t looking to marry the man, Mr. O’Brien. Kenneth asked me to go home with him, I was in need, and he looked like he’d be fine with not cuddling afterwards.”

Jesus Christ.

“So, yer a whore, an’ he just ‘appened ta be available?” I asked, jealousy coating my tongue when I had no reason to be.

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