____________

Diarmuid

 

 

 

Now—Limerick, Ireland

 

 

“Brennan.”

Claddagh, my supervisor’s PA, called out to me as soon as I walked into the Limerick Garda station the next morning. She stood at the reception, hand on her bony hip. She reminded me of a school marm, greying hair pulled back tight, slim glasses pinched onto her sharp nose attached to a chain that went around her neck.

“Leary,” I replied, using her surname exactly as she used mine.

Claddagh’s gaze went disapprovingly to the tats that peeked out from my rolled-up sleeves.

“Would you like a closer look at them?” I snapped.

Her grey eyes flicked to mine, the hint of a smirk on her thin lips. “Coilin wants to see you in his office. Now.”

I snorted and pivoted on my foot.

“Hey!” she called out behind me. “Where’re you going?”

I didn’t bother answering her.

If Coilin wanted to see me, that only meant one thing. He wanted to chew my ass out about something.

This was going to take coffee. Stat.

There was a small coffee shop next door to the station which did a roaring trade delivering decent coffees to the Garda station. We had a coffee machine in our break room, but it only seemed to produce undrinkable sludge.

I pushed through the door into the warm, cosy café that reminded me of a granny’s living room, mismatched tea sets and lots of floral pillows. The two girls behind the counter spotted me and I nodded to them in greeting.

By the time I squeezed my way through the chairs and tables to the counter, Marla already had my usual order, a takeaway flat white, ready. She was a sweet-looking girl, long red hair tied back in a ponytail, matching freckles across her pale cheeks. Slender and willowy, she was almost as tall as me.

I handed her cash and she handed the takeaway cup to me, a ritual we’d perfected over the last year or so.

“Marla,” I said to the girl behind the counter in thanks.

She flushed and lowered her chin. It seemed the less I said to her, the more she blushed. She seemed sweet. But I had too many fucking problems to allow her, or anyone, too close.

I nodded to the other girl before striding out of the café.

Coffee in hand, I was ready to face whatever Coilin wanted.

 

 

 

“You’re several reports behind,” Coilin O’Connell, the Limerick area supervisor barked from behind his huge tidy desk, pens all packed neatly in a holder, papers in perfect stacks, the books on the shelf behind him in alphabetical order by author name, it looked. Made me want to go and put Boland in with the S’s and O’Malley up with the A’s just to cause some chaos.

I sat opposite Coilin in one of his cushy bucket chairs, long legs stretched out in front of me.

I folded my thick arms across my chest and grunted. “Don’t I do a good job with my kids?”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t I have the lowest reoffender rate in this whole goddamn country?”

“Yes—”

“Then what’s your fucking problem?”

My supervisor rubbed his forehead, curse words coming out from under his hand. “Diarmuid, you are the best damn Juvenile Liaison Officer that I’ve ever had, but you can be such a cunt sometimes.”

I shrugged. Not denying that.

“The reports will get done if I have the time. The kids come first. They’re all I care about.”

“Yes, but in order to continue to care about those kids, you need to submit your reports for each one. Each one, Diarmuid. Or the committee will come down on my ass and I’ll have to fire you. I don’t want to have to fire you. Got that?”

I glared at Coilin. He wasn’t a bad guy. Just a pencil-pushing suit who never spent a night on the street and cared more for dotting i’s and crossing t’s than anything else. I suppose that’s why they gave him the supervisor job.

“Are you done?”

Coilin let out an exasperated sigh. “Jesus, just go. Get out of my fucking sight.”

Finally.

I raised my bulk out of the chair and strode to the door.

“Your newest assignment is at your desk,” Coilin called out as I opened his door. “Her father should be here by now. I want your reports on her submitted on time.”

I gave him the Hitler salute just to piss him off, then slammed the door between us before he could yell at me some more.

Claddagh gave me a wary eye as I strode past her desk. The walls weren’t soundproof. She probably heard everything. Not that I gave a shit.

Officers leapt out of my way as I barreled down the hall. I knew I had a reputation as an asshole. I preferred it this way. Adults were fucking stupid. Prejudiced, set in their ways, pride-driven eejits most of the time.

I preferred kids, even the lost ones. Kids were easy, open, respectful if you just listened to them, if you first gave them the respect that they deserved as young adults. They were so willing to do better, be better. They just needed the right direction. They just needed someone to care.

Adults could learn a lot from kids.

I entered the “bullpen”, as I liked to call the main open office area.

“You got a reoffender,” Nina, the office girl, said. She threw a file at me as I passed her desk.

I caught it and let out a snort. “You give me all the good ones.”

Nina gave me a smirk. “I put her in room seven. Enjoy.”

I dismissed her with a wave and strode down the hallway to room seven, a cosy living room-style space where we put witnesses and families of victims to make them feel more comfortable. I pushed my way in and halted at the doorway.

Standing at the window was a tall woman, her back to me, fluffing her long waist-length blonde hair with her hands. Her small waist on display in her tight white jumper and her denim shorts hugging the curve of her rounded ass. My reoffender.

She must have heard me enter, because she spun to face me.

The blood drained from my limbs as our eyes locked.

The familiar steel glint like the edge of a blade, a blade I felt tangled in my guts. Her pink lips parted and I could hear her gasp even from here.

Oh dear God.

That was no woman.

That was Saoirse Quinn. The girl I left behind three years ago.

But she was no girl anymore. She was a woman. A seventeen-year-old woman.

And my latest assignment.