Chapter 6: Rainey's Mutt

Nolan drove me to the dock himself, and we left my father shouting at the doctor.

The cook was lying on a tarp behind a fish shed with two Askew men standing over him.

He was alive, barely.

One eye had swollen shut and his hands were wrapped in somebody's jacket.

I knelt next to him on the wet planks.

"Who did this?" I asked.

"The driver's brother," he said. "He asked me what I told you. I said nothing."

"You told Nolan."

"I told him what was in the pot," he said, and almost smiled with his split lip. "Not what was in my head."

"Who gave you the order?"

"A note," he said. "In the master's handwriting. Put this in her cup every morning till the wedding."

"Till the wedding," I said.

"He wants you calm," the cook said. "Calm and quiet. That's all."

Nolan crouched on my other side.

"Hospital," he told his men. "My own doctor. Nobody from the Dunleavy house goes near him."

The men lifted the cook onto a stretcher.

I stood and found my hands were steady, and I did not like how steady they were.

"Your father does not want a daughter," Nolan said. "He wants a bride who doesn't ask questions."

"Then he picked the wrong daughter," I said.

"You said that to me like it was a threat."

"It's a prediction."

His phone rang.

He listened for a moment and hung up.

"My father is having lunch at the Askew club," he said. "He wants to meet my fiancée. Today. In public."

"Then let's go."

"He'll be vile."

"I run a dock," I said. "I've been called worse by better."

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