“Who’re you writing to?”

I quickly shut the notebook.

“No one,” I mutter, shooting a dark look at Seamus as I stuff it back into my pack.

He raises a single brow at me as he takes a sip from his flask. “Didn’t look like no one.”

“It’s just shit, man,” I shrug, playing it cool. “Just thoughts, ideas, you know, shit to remember later.”

“Grandiose plans, is that it? Deep thoughts on the nature of the human condition?”

Seamus grins at me, and I fix him with another glare. “Calm down.”

“A regular fuckin Ernest Hemingway are ya?”

I ignore him as I start to stand.

“The fuck you think you’re going?”

“Me and my deep thoughts are going to go find another place to do recon on this place.”

Seamus reaches out and tugs the strap of my backpack. “Alright, alright. Relax, boy-o.”

I glance back at him to see him roll his eyes.

“Here, a peace offering.” He hands me the flask. “Sit.”

I take another beat before I finally drop the bag and sit back down.

“Shit, you’re such a classic American.” Seamus shakes his head as I take a pull of his whiskey. “You’d be a better thief if you weren’t such a hothead, you know.”

“And you’d be a better leprechaun if you actually had a pot of gold, but you don’t see me hanging that over your head.”

My short, stocky, Irish compatriot grins a toothy smile. “Who says I don’t?”

“If you did would we be here freezing our asses off?”

Seamus laughs. “Fuck no.”

I grin, taking the whiskey back from him and turning to glance across the street.

“Here” is the empty rooftop across the street from the O’Toole mansion – a lavish old-style town house in central Dublin. Also, the target of our hit tomorrow, after the Russian Faberge Eggs Mrs. Grace O’Toole recently purchased at auction with her late husband’s fortunes arrive to guild her mantel.

Seamus and I are on recon tonight, taking last minute stock of guard schedules and looking for any yet-unseen surprises in the security before the hit.

This is life in Dublin for me.

This is pulling jobs for Nolan Callahan, who heads up the Dublin chapter of the Dark Saints – which is basically the Corleone family of the Irish mob. If you missed that Godfather reference, it means they’re the top of the chain when it comes to generally below the level dealings in the Irish crime world.

When the storm of that night back home in Shelter Harbor blew in like a tempest, this is the shore I washed up on.

Dublin, working for the Saints.

Missing her.

Missing her like I’ve been missing her for the last two years since I got here. Missing her and thinking about what she might be doing, what direction her life’s taken since that night.

Me? Well, I became everything everyone always assumed I’d be - a professional low life. A thief. Shattering the trust and the love of the only family and the only girl that ever mattered.

In two years, I know she’s gotten older, and wiser. So have I. In two years, I’m sure she’s smart enough to have realized by now what a fucking mistake ever getting involved with me was.

I know she’s moved on, too. Thanks to the internet and fucking Facebook, I know she found someone else when she went away to college, after I vanished from her life to come over here to Ireland. And I thought that’d hurt less as time went on, but it really only cuts deeper every time I think about it over here.

Here, in my purgatory.

My penance.

My prison – the payback for that night when it all went to shit. The night I let her down, and her family own, and the future I might have had with her slipped through my fingers, because of mistakes I made.

“So, what’s her name?”

I glance back at Seamus. “I thought we were dropping it.”

“I was, until you got that sour look on your face, ya wee brooding little poet.”

I start to frown again when he grins. “Aye, there it is.”

As annoying as Seamus can be, he’s got this annoyingly infectious ability to make people smile. Even scowling, brooding, missing home, full of regrets people like me.

“She got a name?”

I start to shake my head.

“Oh, right, right. Can’t tell old Seamus. I might find out you’ve actually got ticking heart in that chest, yeah? You can share my whiskey but God forbid we have an honest discussion. “Please,” he holds his hands up. “Please, by all means, go back to your sad bastard poetry of whatever the fuck you were writi-”

“Her name is Ivy.”

His mouth snaps shut, and he nods.

“This Ivy mean a lot to you I take it?”

I don’t answer him; I just glance back at the O’Toole house. He nudges me with the whiskey flask, and I turn and take it.

“It’s a long story.”

“Life’s a long story, boy-o,” he shrugs. “Look, it’s not like Mrs. O’Toole is suddenly going to start throwing a wild party down there. Go ahead and finish your damn love letter, I’ll take watch.”

I shake my head. “Nah, it’s fine.”

“Oh, did I interrupt your muse?”

I roll my eyes. “No, just not a love letter.”

“So it is deep thoughts on human condition.”

I smile and shake my head. Something catches my eye, and I turn to see the guards out by the front door making their scheduled change-over. I nod at Seamus, who makes a note of it in his little notebook.

“Think we’ll have any surprises tomorrow?”

He shakes his head. “I doubt it. This’ll be a simple in-and-out.” He pulls out a pack of smokes, sticks one in his mouth and lights it, and then hands the matches and the pack to me. The match flares before I cup it with my hand, pulling gently on the cigarette as the nicotine hits my system, calming me down.

“Who the hell spends 2 million on gilded eggs?”

Seamus smirks as he takes a drag and lets the smoke out slowly. “People who won’t be keeping them for very long, that’s who.”

I grin and glance back at tomorrow’s target as I smoke the cigarette.

“So you’re really not gonna tell me about this love letter are you.”

“It’s not a love letter.”

“And I’m not a short, drunk little Irish bastar-”

“It’s an apology.”

* * *

I sit on the hood of my truck out at the end of Commercial Street, at the edge of the piers where the town sort of runs out into the edge of the woods. From here, the long stone and evergreen curve of Turner State Park circles out around the harbor itself.

The park’s closed after dark, which also means there’s not a soul around down here, which suits me just fucking fine right now.

I reach for the pack of smokes in my pocket like some sort of phantom limb syndrome. They’re not there, of course, but the habit of putting my hand on that pocket remains, even though I gave them up years ago.

I gave a lot up years ago.

So now I’m home, I guess. Home in a place that isn’t even home anymore - a town that’s forgotten I existed, and a girl who wishes she did.

Oh yeah, coming back here was a great fucking plan.

Of course what she doesn’t know - what I don’t think anyone knows aside from Rowan is that I’ve been a lot closer to home than Ireland for the last year.

Because after five years in Dublin doing everything I always said I wouldn’t get into, I finally threw in the towel and came back to the States.

It’s worth mentioning that five years in the Federal statute of limitations on bank jobs.

Except I never actually made it home until three days ago. When I touched down at Logan, I never made it past Boston itself. And so I landed in Southie and then spent three years working up the courage or whatever to make it to Shelter Harbor.

Because there was nothing for me here.

And yet here I am, and I already know it was a mistake coming

back here. I also know my being here puts Rowan in a tough spot. Besides that, there’s the guilt. I mean hell, the guy knows I dated his sister, but he doesn’t know how much deeper it got.

None of the Hammonds know how “like family” we all really are.

My hand makes one more phantom pass for the cigarettes in my pocket that aren’t there before I shake my head. I bring the same hand up instead, pushing my fingers through my hair as I watch the last of the light fade over the breakers on the other side of the harbor.

Fuck it, this was a terrible idea. Because all it’s taken is one run-in with the girl whose heart I broke to know there really isn’t anything left for me here.

The engine turns and the truck creaks into gear before I turn it around and head back downtown. I’m heading to O’Donnell’s to see Rowan, and then I should just keep on driving until I hit Boston.

I’d also really like to ask him how it is Ivy had no idea I was going to be here.