Getting to where Seamus was meant I would need a car. I had one at my place, even had Teagan's still there, and she wouldn't hesitate to give me the keys if I asked her and told her it was important. But the last thing I needed was to go back home. After the little episode of me spacing out on the street, if there was someone watching me, they would be suspicious.

Not to mention all the extra questions it would bring when things between me and Teagan were strained enough already.

The possibility of having someone tail me anyway was huge since Quinn was using his wife's death as an excuse to have his daughter followed by guards when she wasn’t at home. Which meant there were people watching my house, even if one of them followed me the second I left. Going back there would be a bad idea.

I walked, not sure where I was going, but getting out of the park was the first thing on my mind. There was a lot of open areas, but there were also a lot of trees. I had to get to the street, and I had to get a car, hopefully without being seen, because I was going to have to steal one. Lucky me, I hadn't thought to take my car when I left or I would have had to dump it somewhere. It was registered under my name and I didn’t need the police looking too closely at me to see if they could tie me to any sort of crime.

I pulled up the hoodie on my jacket as I stepped out of the park and onto the street. I moved at a slow jog, keeping an eye out for where there were fewer people and cars. I took a few turns, went down an alley, crossing it at a brisk run, and emerged on the other side to find what I'd been looking for. It was a decent distance from where I lived, so no one who saw me would recognize me.

Inside my pocket, I had a key that acted as a sort of skeleton key, that I used to unlock plenty of car doors. It wasn’t even the original key for my car, but it was the one I used. I looked around for something inconspicuous and headed for it, glancing up and down the street. Someone might see me through a window, but hopefully, they wouldn’t get a good enough look at my face.

Judging by the neighborhood, I checked to see if the car was unlocked before I tried with the key. I breathed in relief as I pulled the door wide and sat in the car. The first turn of the key in the ignition made the car sputter, but it didn’t come on, and I could feel the dread growing again. If the car didn’t work, I'd have to go try on a different street. Opening two cars on the same street would look too suspicious. I turned the key again and the engine roared to life. I released the breath I was holding.

I pulled out of the parking spot and drove around, keeping my eyes open in case anyone was following me. I did it for five minutes to be sure no one was on my tail. Just to be thorough, I parked in a different area, wiped down wherever I'd touched the car with my T-shirt to get rid of any fingerprints and got out of the car. I stole a different car and drove it to a nearby location, about a fifteen-minute jog away from where I needed to get to. Again, I parked the car and wiped my fingerprints before throwing myself out of the car, moving at a fast jog. Because I was now a paranoid idiot, I took a few detours and arrived at the location twenty minutes later.

I saw Seamus a few feet away. It could have been anyone, except he was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, much like I was, with the hood pulled up, and he was the only person there. As I slowed down to a fast walk, he looked up and I could see his face. He surprised me, pulling me into a hug as soon as I was close, and I only hesitated for about a second before returning it.

"Damn, kid. You have no idea how happy I am that you're safe." He pulled back with his hands clamped on my shoulders, and I was surprised by how haggard he looked.

"I worry more about you than myself," I told him honestly.

If he did know of my involvement with Seamus, I didn’t doubt Quinn would still try to kill me, even though I spent most of my time with his daughter. But being around her, even though he didn’t like me, I knew he wouldn’t risk anything, like her getting caught in the line of fire. I also didn’t have the police after me. Yet.

He had it so much worse than me and the silence had had me thinking the worst.

"What the hell happened after I left that party? I thought everything was going fine, and then the morning after Teagan gets a call from her dad to meet him at the hospital."

He sighed, seeming to age years right in front of me. It shook me to see him so vulnerable, the pain in his eyes so strong I almost felt it.

"It was supposed to be. But something unexpected came up, and…"

"Just tell me what happened."

"Brigid."

I frowned at how he said the name, looking and sounding almost heart broken. "Wait, isn’t Brigid Teagan's mother, the one who died?"

"Yes. At the party, she… The plan was set, I just needed to carry it out. But I wanted to talk to her, just a little bit. I didn’t expect what she did, though. She took me to a room, away from the party, she looked so… She sat me down and told me Teagan wasn’t Quinn's daughter."

He looked up at me and I could feel my breath hitch, the pain in his eyes alone could tell me where this was going. I didn’t even need him to answer the question of who killed her. It was obvious with this new information.

"Teagan is my daughter, Ronan."

Crap. Right there was the guilt, mirrored in me through his eyes. He was likely thinking about all the time he'd spent telling me all about her so I could get close to her, and we could use her as bait in our plot to kill the man she thought was her father. Hell, I had slept with her, plenty of times, and he had told me at one point that if it was necessary to the plan, I should do it. The original plan was to make her fall in love with me. Aside from it unsettling Quinn, there were several ways we could have turned it to our advantage.

Learning she was Seamus’s daughter, was probably the worst news he could have gotten, while at the same time possibly being some of the best.

"What happened between that and her dying?"

"I'm not sure. The room she pulled me into was private. No one was looking at us when we left, but someone could have seen us, I suppose. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been. I suspect he had the room bugged, which was why it was so easy to get into without getting noticed by any of the guards when pretty much every other room not being used for the party was sealed off. Shortly after Brigid told me, I was still trying to get my head around it, when Quinn burst into the room."

He stopped and looked down so his hood blocked my view of his face. He took a deep breath that sounded too shaky for my piece of mind and blew his breath out in a gust.

"I wasn’t expecting him. I know what that man is, and in his house, with his wife, I let my guard down. He was unarmed, and I may be better at fighting hand to hand, but he caught me by surprise. He was walking toward me, not even yelling, his face was just cold. I was expecting him to, I don’t know, hit me, scream at me. But he pulled my gun from my shoulder holster and just… shot her. Neither of us could have had enough time to react."

He paused and pulled away from me, pacing then abruptly turning around going back the other way, with his head facing down.

"I shouldn’t have let him get so close. I should have just taken the chance then, I would have gone to jail for it, and so what? Him dead is all I've ever wanted, I would have taken prison. But I didn’t, and Brigid is dead. And he is blaming me for her murder."

He looked up then and I could see his eyes. His expression was still devastated, but his eyes had hardened, glinting in his anger, and I would have stumbled back a step if I hadn't been on the end of that look a few times before, particularly when he was training me.

"He was holding the gun—"

"But it is registered under my name. Even if he pulled the trigger, all he had to do was wipe it down where he touched it or explain it away, say he took it from me after I shot it. Even if no fingerprints were pulled from it, it was mine, therefore, it was my responsibility. Which meant it was his word against mine. I ran, and that practically confirms my guilt as far as anyone, including the police, cares. I ran all over the place, and I made my way here, thought I'd lay low. I worried about contacting you in case he already knew about you and me."

So, he was thinking that, too.

Well, shit. Even if the plan wasn’t already screwed, I didn’t think we could carry it out. To be frank, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. With how Teagan was acting now with her mother gone, how would that change when her father died, too? Or, worse, she found out the man that killed her mom was the man she thought was her father.

Or that the man being blamed for her mom's death, was her biological father, a man she'd seen around, but whose name and face she barely even knew. A man she had no knowledge of, except that he was best friends with the man she called Dad.

Well, damn.

"Did you ever suspect Teagan was your daughter?"

We both had other, more important things to think about, but I was in shock. Of this one detail. The man had been friends with Quinn since before Teagan's birth. I didn’t think about him having an affair with her mother, and it wasn’t really any of my business. I could tell he'd cared for her by his reaction, but how could no one have known? How could he not have suspected?

"Believe me, kid, I didn’t have the slightest idea. Brigid was… I loved Brigid. For a long time. Sleeping with her wasn’t something I planned, I owed Quinn my life and a hell of a lot more, but she deserved better than him. She knew what he was, that he was a killer. She knew long before I did, long before our affair started, and I didn’t find out until years later. He dragged me into his business, pretended to be my best friend, using the excuse that I owed him so he could use me. I stuck it out for years."

"Then what happened?"

He frowned at me and then moved to lean over a patch of wall, tilting his head back.

"The real reason I left the business was because I wanted to be with Brigid. I no longer wanted that life, and I knew she didn’t want to be a part of it. I didn’t have a lot of money, I didn’t have the luxury to offer her. It was still better than the life she was living, and I knew she cared for me. I would have taken Teagan as my own even when I thought she was his.

"But Brigid refused. She didn’t want to because she was always too scared, said that Quinn would track us down and kill us both. I didn’t doubt it, but I was willing to risk it and she wasn’t. But I never expected Teagan to be my daughter. I saw her grow up, but I was never a part of her life. In my head, she was always his child and he tended to be possessive about what was his. But I turned my back on her and left, just like that. God, if only I'd known."

I watched him for a moment before I looked away, moving so I was leaning against the wall beside him and tilting my head back. I stood there and pretended I hadn't seen the tears leaking out of his eyes; like I didn’t hear it when he sniffled and struggled to hold back more tears. He was probably glad to have someone there even though neither of us looked at the other, would never admit it.

Thinking of the major clusterfuck we currently found ourselves in, I slid down the wall until I was crouched down and let my head hang down.

"What now?"

There was a short silence, and then Seamus slid down beside me, sitting on the ground.

"I haven't got a clue."

Well, fuck.