Sister Teresa had been interred with all the honor, love and respect due to such a giving and wonderful woman.
The service, delivered beautifully by the archbishop, was over.
Naturally, the mourners had all gathered at Finnegan’s.
With the amount of people who had attended the service and then come to the pub, Kieran had spent the first hour running back and forth with each and every one of her siblings and all their employees to keep the beer, wine, whiskey, water, soda, tea, coffee and food all moving at a respectable rate.
Eventually, it all died down, others were able to manage, and Kieran sat with Craig, Mike and Egan, and her brothers and Mary Kathleen, along with a number of the detectives who had joined them throughout the day—Jacob Wolff, Randy Holmes, Abel Harding and June Chopra.
Jacob still had a bandage on his head—luckily, David Beard’s shot had just nicked him.
The shot had knocked him out. Tanya had hit her head on the edge of Jake’s desk when they fell together.
Abel Harding was also all right; Ralph Miller had creamed him over the head with a stapler after luring Chopra out on the street with a report that someone with a gun was down there, threatening people who were just walking by.
Ralph Miller had, though, paid the price. He’d been shot straight through the heart. From what they could figure out, Ralph had been a late addition to the crime family; after Alexandra had come to Kieran, they’d threatened his life—and his mother’s. It would have been sad if the detectives hadn’t discovered Ralph had also been paid off. With money—and with girls.
“Such a terrible thing. They killed so easily. And they used the goodness of a woman like Sister Teresa, and they stole what might have been years more of life from her!” Mary Kathleen said, shaking her head. “And that Riley woman. Oh, she used me. I’ll be Declan’s wife and an American, but I’ll always love Ireland. How could she do that? I’ll always want to help people. And now...”
“You’ll still help people,” Declan assured her.
“You won’t stop me?” Mary Kathleen asked.
“I’d be afraid to try,” he said with a laugh, and she smiled.
They were so perfectly suited, Kieran thought.
“Riley wasn’t Irish at all,” Craig informed them. “Just like David Beard, Riley was homegrown American. We discovered that she might have had an ancestor on the Mayflower, so go figure. She was an actress. She had that Irish accent down pat. She speaks a number of languages, all to help threaten and manipulate people.”
“An actress?” Kevin said. “Ouch. That hurts the profession.”
“She was a very good actress, really,” Mary Kathleen said.
“She even had Tanya fooled. She escaped with Tanya and used her innocence to find out just what the police were doing, what they knew, and if everyone was suspecting David Beard. She used Tanya to get close to all of us,” Kieran said.
“She had me fooled,” Jacob Wolff said with disgust. “At the end...”
“At the end, she gave herself away. I’d never known Kieran speaks Gaelic!” Craig said, smiling at Kieran across the table.
She laughed softly. “I don’t.”
“Then...?”
“That happens to be one of the few sentences I do know,” Kieran said. She looked over at Declan, who had finally seemed to forgive both her and Craig. Not for the danger they might have been in, or even for the danger they might have caused Mary Kathleen or the pub.
Simply for not staying in closer contact.
“I know it thanks to the pub.”
“What was the sentence?” Declan asked her.
“Beidh tú ag íoc,” Kieran said.
Declan laughed.
“What does it mean?” Craig demanded.
“You will pay,” Declan told him. “We have some old guys who come in here. They argue over the check every time. You will pay! You will pay!”
“When she didn’t know the sentence, I knew that Besa was the innocent woman in the room,” Kieran said.
“Go figure!” Mike said. “All those languages that Riley knew, but Irish wasn’t among them. Guess she figured she wouldn’t need it.”
“But what will happen with poor Besa now? Didn’t you just teach her not to bite?” Mary Kathleen asked.
“I think Besa will be fine,” Jacob Wolff assured them.
“There are certainly no charges against her that we know about,” Randy Holmes said.
“No. No charges,” Egan said. “As to Riley—whose real name is Linda Jones, by the way—and David Beard... Federal charges. State charges. They’ll never be on the streets again. As to those who were threatened by them, or under them, hopefully, we’ll mop up what’s left of the operation soon.” He paused, grim for a moment. “Beard wants the possible federal death sentence off the table. He’s talking like a parrot. A true reign of terror is actually over.”
There was a lot to talk about. And the group talked until they were the last ones in the pub. Finally, it was time to head out, to go home.
And have a few days off—the good Drs. Fuller and Miro had told Kieran that she must take some time, and Egan had done the same with Craig and Mike.
They had all agreed.
And they were about to take off for a lovely Caribbean island.
But Egan had promised them a surprise. The surprise was coming late, but it was coming.
Right when everyone else was gone and Declan was about to lock up, the door opened instead and a beautiful young woman stepped in, accompanied by Tanya and the US Marshals Madison Smyth and Hank LeBlanc.
She was holding a bundle in her arm.
A bundle Kieran knew well.
She let out a squeal of delight.
Then they were all introduced to Yulia Decebel, the mother of the baby. Her English was poor—her language was Romanian—but Jacob Wolff managed just fine translating for them all.
Yulia Decebel had not been killed; she had stayed deep in hiding, barely even coming out of the basement where she had found a refuge to look for food. But the news of the downfall of the King and the Queen had brought her out.
It was an amazing evening.
Despite the fact that the King and the Queen were down, it would take a long time to make sure that the entire operation had really been dismantled.
And so, Tanya, Yulia and the precious babe would go into Witness Protection.
They were lucky.
They would have each other.
Finally, the night drew to a close.
Kieran and Craig went back to Kieran’s apartment; it was where they had been staying, and though they had finally decided they were going to move everything over to Craig’s better apartment soon, they just hadn’t done it yet.
Karaoke was done for the evening.
But, Kieran thought, heading up the stairs, she did owe Lee a big thank you somewhere along the line. This case had been full of pieces, like puzzle pieces, and every time a missing piece had been found, it had brought them closer to seeing the real picture.
Upstairs, she headed to her room and looked out the window at her St. Mark’s neighborhood.
Craig came up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist.
“Yes,” she said.
“Pardon?”
She turned in his arms. “I think I said ‘yes’ already, but I’m just reiterating. You asked me to marry you. Yes, of course. I love you. I could never even think about being with anyone else. We’ll have a lot of planning to do. First—”
“A venue, of course,” he said.
“No, first I get back to the firing range. I really need to know how to protect myself. I mean, neither of us is ever going to leave what we do. Then...”
“A wedding party!” Craig said, grinning.
“Then we get settled in your place, and see to it that we have a good alarm system.”
He laughed. “No dress, huh?”
She shrugged. “Somewhere along the line. As for venue...well, the church where Sister Teresa is interred, of course, and the party after...”
“Finnegan’s on Broadway. Where else?” he asked.
She nodded.
“First things first. The gun range. Beautifully romantic!” he said.
“No one ever said our jobs were full of glamour and romance.”
“That’s all right. I can work on the romance,” he said.
He swept her up.
“I think you’re working on the sex part of it.”
“Your point? I mean... I think we’re romantic. With sex.”
She laughed.
Yes, for the moment, the sex part sounded just divine.
Very romantic, indeed.
* * * * *