Shit.

Everything was not going according to plan.

I'd left the party yesterday after Seamus reassured me everything would be fine. If he had asked me to stick around because he needed me, I would have. But I wouldn’t have been of much use because Teagan glued herself to my side the whole night, up until she suggested we sneak off and that I leave first.

The only reason I hadn't risked annoying her—not to mention losing time with her—by blowing her off was because I thought everything would be fine.

So, where the hell was this news coming from?

No way Seamus would have killed Teagan's mother. He rarely mentioned Mrs. Quinn, and the few times he did, he sounded like a totally different person. From what he'd told me about her, she would have thanked him for getting rid of her monster of a husband. I didn’t know their whole history, other than knowing one existed, but I did know he had no reason to do it.

The only person he truly hated was Quinn. I'd originally wanted to kill his entire family until Seamus talked me out of it, told me Quinn was the only one to blame and convinced me he was the only one truly deserving of punishment.

He was good at it, but he didn’t enjoy killing. I was sure he would have killed Quinn just because he thought it was a necessity, even though he'd used the revenge card to get me to join him.

So, what the hell was going on?

"Where are you going?"

I froze where I stood with my hand reaching for the door, about to open it, and grimaced. I'd moved quickly and quietly, hoping not to get caught, so I wouldn’t have to give some explanation, fake or otherwise. I still wanted to keep my secrets, but I didn’t think she would appreciate me pointing it out. I turned around slowly.

Teagan was acting suspicious, of pretty much everything I did. Every time I glanced at my phone, mentioned stepping out of the apartment without asking her to go along, even stepping out of a room she was in, she asked why. It didn’t help that she'd stayed at my apartment almost exclusively for the past few weeks. Even when she had to go home, she made sure to spend the day at my place.

I was trying my hardest to be sympathetic, but I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so trapped.

"Just out."

"Out where? It's pretty early in the morning."

Yeah. I'd planned on going out and hopefully get back before she even woke up, since she would ask where I'd been once I made it back anyway.

"Teagan, I have my cell phone on me. I promise I'm not going far, and if you need me I will come back. Just go back to sleep, or get yourself something to eat. I really do need to go."

She stared at me, arms crossed over her chest, but she relaxed after a moment. She stepped forward, arms held out and a slight pout on her face. I took the cue, stepping forward to envelop her in a quick hug, and then pecked her cheek before I turned around and left the apartment.

I didn’t want to leave her alone because she hadn't been acting like herself. It was why I couldn’t get mad about how she was acting.

My priority right then was Seamus, it had to be.

I felt all too guilty for getting too attached to Teagan against his better judgment. If I hadn't had to stay with her the past few days, I could have gone out to look for him long before then. He hadn't contacted me and the one time I tried calling his number, it was disconnected.

I wasn’t sure just how bad it was yet, but I knew it was bad.

To make matters worse, Teagan was acting very needy. Which was understandable, seeing as she lost her mother not too long ago. She could act a little spoiled. When she got the call, she'd turned frazzled, a look I'd never seen her with before. I drove her to the hospital since she was in shock and I was worried about her falling apart. She held herself together surprisingly well until we got back home that night and she just broke down.

She expected me to be there for her, and I didn’t mind that. But by the same token, I wanted to go to Seamus. After what the man had done to help me, I couldn’t let him go off by himself with people out to get him.

I was worried that Quinn had framed Seamus and the cops may go after him. No way he killed Teagan's mother, even his constant telling me to get away from her was more to do with feeling protective over a woman he'd known a lot longer than me. If the police were after him, then everything just got a hundred times more complicated.

Then I remembered Seamus saying that Quinn had invited him to the party, and Seamus thought it was because Quinn wanted him to be part of his crew again.

Fuck.

Suddenly, I felt so stupid. Both Seamus and I were naïve and Quinn must have known what we were up to.

Why else would he have called him out of the blue like that? from what Seamus had told me, back when he still worked for Quinn, he'd mostly done dirty work. Quinn basically turned him into a weapon and used him, then let him go after an injury sometime around his early forties. Why would he call Seamus, nearly a decade later to ask him to rejoin his crew?

It must have been a setup. For what, I wasn’t sure, but how and why did Mrs. Quinn end up dead?

I stopped walking down the street, feeling people bump into me but I ignored all the grumbling. Maybe I was just getting paranoid that Quinn knew I was with Seamus, and that we were planning revenge.

It made a surprising load of sense, though.

Teagan had told me she didn’t tell her dad about me until the day of the party, but as overprotective as he was, would he really have taken her word for all her constant disappearances weeks before that when she was with me? He could have had her followed at any time, there was no way she could have been able to tell. If he did have her followed, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to do the same for me.

He must have known.

My phone vibrating in my pocket made me jump. People were still walking on the street, giving me a wide berth and weird looks. I wasn’t sure how long I'd just stood there, staring off into space and silently panicking. I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the number. It wasn’t one I knew, but I wasn’t expecting a familiar number.

I moved, half running so I was somewhere less populated. I answered the call as I walked, I couldn’t risk it cutting off in case it was who I thought it was.

"Ronan."

I slowed for a moment, and then I was running, keeping the phone at my ear. There was a park just around the corner, not all that big, but I didn’t need it to be. When I couldn’t see anyone standing too close, I stopped to catch my breath.

"Seamus, what the hell."

He ignored me, like the last minute didn’t happen; the several days of silence, or that he was getting blamed for murder.

"I need you to meet me."

I rolled my eyes, all the lingering worry suddenly washing out of me. Did anything ever faze him? While I'd been panicking, he sounded pretty much as he usually did, maybe with a bit more urgency. At least it meant he was all right, not dead or being held somewhere.

"Sure. Where?"

He rattled off an address. "It’s a secret location. No one knows where I am and I need it to stay that way. I'm assuming you're alone?"

"Yeah, I'm at a park. But seriously, what the hell?" I had too many questions and I didn’t know which ones to pose first. I struggled as words fought to get from my mind and out of my mouth. Only one thing registered to me as urgent, though. "What happened that night? Did you do it?"

"Forget about that, and calm down. Just come meet me and I will explain everything. Ronan, make sure you're not followed. I'm not sure what he knows, or what the police know, but we don’t need to hand them free information. I'm pretty sure he has his own people out looking for me along with the cops."

Dammit.

I glanced around to orient myself. I knew where he wanted me to go, it was a distance away. Teagan was going to be waiting for me at my apartment, and I wasn’t sure when I would be able to go back. I couldn’t even call her to warn her. But this was too important. I'd have to come up with some believable excuse later. I picked a direction and started walking.

"Don’t worry, Seamus. You taught me well; I won't be followed."