Smoked

Give yourself every out you can find, and years from now, when you’re sitting in that fancy-as-fuck house of yours on top of a mountain and you’re all alone, I want you to think back on this moment and know that it was your choice to be miserable. Some of us have the choice made for us, and some of us are too fucking stubborn and stupid to change things before it’s too late.” She got out and slammed the car door behind her.
As I told her, I appreciated everything she said, but it wasn’t anywhere near as simple as she was making it out to be.
Siren and I were different people than Casper and Beau. We hadn’t fallen in love. We hadn’t made a decision to spend our lives together. It was the opposite. If the mission she and I were on had ended before she got shot, I would’ve walked away without a second thought. Siren would’ve been just another operative I worked a mission with. She wouldn’t be someone I dreamed about every fucking night. She wouldn’t be someone I missed every fucking minute of the day. Would she?

24
Siren
I stood in front of the antique shop that looked as though no one had set foot in it in fifty years or more, and double-checked the address. Part of me wished I had it wrong, but I was in the right place. According to Uncle Gene, Jimmy Mallory was in Kinsale, dealing with property he’d inherited when his father, James Mallory Jr., died suddenly a few weeks ago.
According to the records I was able to have pulled when I arrived in town, Junior had inherited it from James Mallory, Sr., the man who, on his deathbed, confessed to hiding the jewels in the Waterford Clock Tower.
I reached out, surprised to find the door unlocked.
“We’re closed,” someone hollered from the back when a bell affixed to the door rang.
“Jimmy?”
“Who are you?” asked the man, peeking his head around another doorway.
“Siobhan Gallagher.”
“Gallagher?” He walked closer to where I was standing, and I could see he was close to my age.
“Gene O’Brien said I could find you here. I understand your father and mine were good friends.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to ask a few questions about your grandfather.”
His shoulders slouched forward, and he rested his hand on a dusty table. “What about him?”
Before I could answer, a sneezing fit came over me. “Sorry,” I said when it finally stopped.
“Come in the back. It isn’t quite as bad.” He motioned with his hand.
“I was sorry to hear your father passed.”
“Thanks. Have a seat,” he pointed to a chair and then walked over and shut a door. Before he did, I saw an ancient-looking safe in what appeared to be a small storage room. “What do you want to know?”
“I understand your grandfather confessed to transporting the Irish Crown Jewels to the Waterford Clock Tower?”
Jimmy nodded with hooded eyes.
“The authorities searched the tower but found nothing.”
“So the story goes.”
“Are you suggesting they may have lied?” I asked.
“There are many clock towers in Ireland.”
“I’m going to ask you outright, Mr. Mallory. Do you know where the Irish Crown Jewels are?”
“No.” While his answer was emphatic, his body language and eye movement were clear indicators he was lying. “Is there anything else?”
“What do you intend to do with the shop?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve not decided yet.”
“Seems as though there may be many treasures to be found in it.”
“Doubtful, even under all the layers of dust.”
“You never know. Perhaps you’d even find the lost jewels.”
His nervous laugh and the way he blinked his eyes in rapid succession told me I was on the right track. In fact, I’d lay odds that the lost Irish treasure was being held in the safe he hadn’t wanted me to see.


25
Smoke
Meet me at Lyon Metropolis, urgent, said the text I received from Casper.
Here, I responded.
Be there in fifteen.
Shortly after, my cell phone rang with a call from Decker.
“Smoke,” he said. “I’m glad I reached you. One of Byrne’s underlings is on the move.”
“Headed to Kinsale?”
“Yep. Casper already told you?”
“She’s on her way here now. My guess is to inform me of the same thing.”
“I have a bad feeling.”
So did I, and I wasn’t about to stay in Lyon while Siren faced danger in my grandmother’s hometown, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.
There was no way around it, I had to fly to Charles de Gaulle first and, from there, to Dublin. Once there, it would take me three hours to drive to Kinsale. Even with the shortest connections, total travel time would be more than ten hours.
According to Casper, the agent Decker had informed me was on the move had a two-hour jump on me. While I waited to board the first plane, I called Deck back.
“Can you get a contact number for Siren?”
“Negative. Already tried.”
“Hughes?”
“Won’t give it up.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Best guess is Siren told him not to.”
A growling noise rumbled in my throat. When I got my hands on that woman, and I had every intention of doing so, the first thing I’d do is wring her neck. After that, I’d fuck her senseless.
While I was in flight, both Casper and Decker were gathering as much information as they could regarding Siren’s whereabouts now and where she’d been since she arrived in Kinsale.
When I landed in Paris, I had emails from both of them, containing essentially the same information. Five days ago, Siren had visited an antique shop owned by a man by the name of James Mallory, the grandson of a man who’d not only owned the business before passing it on to James’ father, but had confessed to hiding the Irish Crown Jewels on behalf of Sir Arthur Vicars, the man last known to be in possession of them.
Her pursuit of solving this mystery was slightly curious although nowhere near as baffling as why the current head of IMI had any interest in her doing so. It