Page 21 of The Irish Redemption

I oblige, lifting the phone to show the motel room. It’s mostly as clean as I remember, only now every surface is dusted in black powder from the cops collecting fingerprints. It’s everywhere, even on the walls and around the plug sockets.

“Are there any vents? Or a ceiling fan?” Cormac asks. His voice is tight, like each word is being forced through a very narrow gap.

“No ceiling fan,” I reply. “But there is a vent behind the bed and one in the—” I swallow thickly as my tongue weighs heavily in my mouth.

“In the bathroom?” Cormac prompts.

“Yeah.” I glance at the closed door leading to the scene of the crime and coldness settles across my shoulders. I shiver sharply and turn toward the bed. “Is that what Brenden would do? Hide things in the vents?”

“Not exactly,” Cormac explains as I get down on my hands and knees. “Something like that is too obvious, but if he had hidden something somewhere, he’d leave a clue in an obvious place that I could follow.”

“Did you guys talk about this kind of stuff?” Reaching behind the bed, I use all my strength to start shunting it away from the wall enough that I can get behind it. “Like, what to do if you ever get caught by the cops or something?”

“Sort of. My mom had this kind of stuff drilled into us from a young age because you never know what’s going to happen.”

“Damn,” I mutter, panting heavily by the time I’ve shoved the bed a few feet. “Must be nice to have a parent who gave a shit even when you were little.”

“Doesn’t every parent?”

I roll my eyes. How is a criminal a better parent than my Ivy League, honor student mother? All she cares about is how quickly I can start churning out babies with a man she approves of. Never once has she given me a talk about personal safety.

Maybe that’s why I’m in this mess.

Behind the bed, I turn on the phone’s flashlight and shine it at the vent. The surrounding screws are covered in the same black powder as the rest of the surfaces and luckily, whoever put this vent back together didn’t do it properly. It takes only a few seconds to work the cover off the wall.

“What am I looking for?” I ask, coughing slightly as the dust from the vent clouds around me.

“Smears,” Cormac replies. “It’ll look like oil smears or some kind of lubricant. Something that looks like it should be there, regardless.”

Shining the light into the vent, we come up empty. There’s nothing but dust, a few dead bugs, and a balled-up piece of paper that’s a receipt from two decades ago.

“Sorry,” I murmur as I shove the vent cover back on. “I was really hoping there would be something there.”

“Why?” Cormac asks.

“So you can focus on something other than me,” I mutter. “Wouldn’t that be better for both of us?”

Cormac makes a sound that almost sounds like laughter. “I just want a reason.”

“A reason I don’t want to die?” Does he really care?

“No, a reason Brenden died. I have nothing, so I need something, a clue or an idea of where to start.”

I kick myself as a wave of foolishness washes over me. Of course Cormac wasn’t referring to me.

After the bed is back in place, I puff out my cheeks and wipe some sweat from my forehead. If I get caught here, I’ll have one hell of a struggle explaining why I’m helping this man. Twice, he’s given me enough freedom that I could just tell the truth or run away, and both times, I’ve chosen to help him.

I don’t even fully understand why. Maybe it’s because he was tender with me back in the laundromat, or maybe it’s because I sympathize with the loss of his brother.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen more love in his family than I’ve ever experienced in my own life. I can’t think of anyone, past or present, who would go to these lengths if I were found murdered in a motel.

“Where did you find the body?” Cormac’s voice cuts through my thoughts and I turn toward the bathroom.

“In there.”

“Show me.”

Oddly, my heart begins to slow as I approach the bathroom. The frantic patters fade into slow, powerful beats that rattle my ribcage and make my head throb.

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