Sixteen

Ava

“Daddy? Where are you?”

Silence.

I couldn’t see anything, it was too dark. But the voice was clear as day.

I knew that voice.

The voice was mine, but from many, many years ago.

“Daddy, please...”

Soft crying turned to sobs of despair.

“Where are you, Daddy? Please, answer me, I’m scared.”

I didn’t have to see anything to know where I was at. I was in my childhood home, a place so familiar to me and yet, different. It was distorted. Darker. The hallway from my bedroom to the living room stretched out for what felt like miles. And rather than an air of loving welcome, there was a heavier, more oppressive, ominous feeling saturating the air around me.

I walked through the familiar rooms of my youth, looking for my younger self, crying as she walked to the end of the hallway. But I couldn’t find her. That’s when I realized the crying was coming from me.

I walked down the hall, even though I knew what I’d find at the end. Of course, I knew. Voices, the same voices from that night that seemed to be from a lifetime ago, echoed through the house. Their accents thick and recognizable. They’d been to our home before. My father knew these men. He’d worked with them. They were his friends.

But if they were his friends, why had they been yelling at each other? Why the sound of a blast ripping through the house? Why were they running away? I watched as they disappeared through the front door and out into the night. Only one of them turned around, and he looked me in the eye, his expression grim and menacing. Placing his fingertips to his lips, he hushed me in a way that felt entirely threatening before turning and running away once more.

Mr. O’Brien had been his name. Dolan O’Brien is what my father had called him.

His was the last face I saw before I rounded the corner and found my father on the ground, laying in a pool of his own blood.

“Oh, my sweet Ava,” he choked out, his voice raspy and weak.

I was young, but I wasn’t dumb. I knew what had happened and what it all meant. I screamed and ran to him, looking for the phone, looking for anything I could use to call for help. But it was too late.

My father’s body tensed as his eyes turned glassy and fixed on a point far away. I knew he was gone.

***

I woke up in a pool of sweat, gasping for air. My body dripped with perspiration, even though the air was cool and I was naked. I pushed off the blanket and stumbled out of bed, trying to banish the thick cobwebs in my mind as I struggled to figure out where I was at. I knew I wasn’t in my bed, and my mind immediately started to panic.

Taking a few deep, calming breaths, I stared out at the city landscape, the sun coming up over the skyscrapers. Coming back to myself and shaking off my disorientation, the previous night came flooding back into my mind, and I felt my face flushing with the memories. I turned and saw that Ian still lay in the bed, completely undisturbed and oblivious to my presence as he snored softly. He was mostly covered by a sheet, but one splendid leg was uncovered, allowing me a peek at his firm and toned ass.

Spending the night with him hadn’t been the smartest move, but it allowed me to see him in a different light. Not to mention he had given me the most amazing night I’d had in quite some time.

And of course, there was the fact that he was gorgeous and charming as well.

But I couldn’t allow myself to get too close. It was something I reminded myself of often and something I knew I was having trouble adhering to. I shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself. My clothes were lying in a pile on the floor, which I scooped up as I quietly made my way into the bathroom, careful not to wake Ian.

I looked in the mirror and saw that I was a hot mess, with my hair standing on end and my makeup smeared all over my face. I washed my face, but he had no hair ties that I could snatch. My pins had all been carelessly tossed on the floor downstairs.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran a hand through my curls, wetted them down a bit, and got dressed. At least I looked somewhat more presentable, I hoped. I was hoping to avoid looking like someone taking a walk of shame down the streets of Chicago. But as I stared at my reflection again, all I could think was, yeah, one could hope.

I tip-toed out of the bathroom doing my best to avoid waking him. I slipped down the stairs, careful to not make any noise, and grabbed my bag. I held my shoes in my hands and waited until I was in the elevator to put them back on. As I pressed the button for the ground floor, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d managed to escape without him waking up. No awkward goodbyes, no explaining myself, and least of all, no temptation to go for another round.

He was damn irresistible after all. It very well could have happened.

I glanced at my phone as soon as I was out of the building. Several missed calls from work. Of course. As I hailed a cab, I listened, knowing full well that I’d have to hurry down to the station as quickly as possible.

As was typical of my life.

***

“How’s it going with the Irish?” Chief Wheeler popped his head into my office. “Any luck?”

“Yeah, I have a good grasp on the new leadership of the syndicate I think,” I replied. “I know what we’re up against at least.”

“Good. Glad to hear you’re making some progress,” he said. “We really need to take these bastards down a few pegs.”

We still weren’t any closer to knowing who’d killed Sean Malone, though we had an idea. We also weren’t any closer to knowing who killed the two police officers. Assuming they were dead, which was something I’d cautioned others about assuming. But at that point, given the amount of blood at the scene and lack of anyone seeing them since the pools of blood had been discovered, we had no real choice but to operate under the assumption that they were, in fact, dead.

Which wasn’t helping morale at the station, not one little bit.

That was why Chief Wheeler had been breathing down my neck and had been on top of things. He desperately wanted me to catch whoever was in charge of the Irish. In his head, we’d get our answers and hopefully recover the bodies of our fallen officers. Even if it wasn’t the Irish–which I was pretty sure it was, though perhaps a newbie in their group looking to make his bones–it could bring down a lot of powerful crime families in its wake. At the end of it all, it would hopefully uncover what had happened that night.

“When do you think we can bring him in for questioning?”

“Who?” I asked, lost in thought. “Oh, you mean Flynn O’Brien? Umm, well–honestly, I’m not sure we have enough to bring him in yet. There’s a lot of loose ends out there still that need to be run down. But hopefully soon?”

“Alright, Agent Finley, I trust you’ll come to me when we’re ready to question the prick.”

I cringed as Wheeler left my office. I hated lying to him, and I knew it could cost me my job. Hell, it could cost me a lot more than that if I fucked this all up. As I stared down at the file on Flynn that laid on the desk before me, I flipped through everything we knew. Which admittedly, wasn’t much. I’d learned more about him last night than we had in the file. Of course, that wasn’t the type of information we’d been hoping to build a case against him on.

Officially, we didn’t have enough information to serve him with a warrant. Not yet.

But soon.

I looked down at my phone, which was silenced, to see a missed text.

I enjoyed last night, sweetheart. Sorry I missed you leaving this morning. Hope everything is okay between us. ‘Til next time…

No, sweetie, I sighed. Everything is not okay between us.

And I’m afraid it never will be.