Bitter Burn novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Pier Nine

On Sunday evening I told Finbar we were going out.

"Wear the collar," I said.

"Nothing else under your coat but your trousers and a shirt."

His eyes came up, startled, because I never changed the rules of a Friday on a Sunday.

"Is this a scene?" he said.

"It's a test of trust."

"If you need to use the word, use it."

"You don't speak unless I ask," I said.

"When I say your name, you do exactly what I tell you next, without thinking."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he lowered his gaze and said, "Yes, Siobhan."

I almost broke right there.

Before we left I took the .38 out of the closet safe and put it in my coat.

He climbed into my car with his glasses in his pocket and his head bowed.

Tyson's black truck pulled out from the curb a block behind us.

I had called my aunt Bridie from the pharmacy phone on Saturday night.

She owned a boathouse on Curtis Bay and she had not spoken to my father in nine years.

All I said was, "I need a skiff under Pier Nine at midnight, and no questions."

Her answer was, "I'll bring blankets."

Pier Nine was a concrete finger stuck out into the harbor, empty on Sundays, with a single sodium lamp at the landward end.

The rest of it was black.

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