I Kidnapped the Mafia Heir, and He Never Tried to Escape novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Thursday Pickup
Roisin stuns the Murtagh heir outside his father's hospice to trade him for her brother, and when she calls his uncle, the man already knows her name.
On Thursday night I put fifty thousand volts into the heir of the Murtagh crime family.
He went down on the wet asphalt outside St. Brendan's hospice.
I had six days of surveillance and one text message behind me.
The text was from my brother, and I had read it so many times the screen was smudged.
"They have me, Ro. Murtaghs. Four hundred thousand by Sunday or they stop being polite."
That was it.
Nine days of silence, and then that.
Donal is twenty years old, and he drives for people he shouldn't while telling me it's a delivery job.
I find men who skip bail for a living.
Usually the man I drag back is wanted by a judge.
This one was wanted by me.
He was six foot three and wearing a charcoal wool coat that cost more than my van.
I got him up the cargo ramp with a hand truck and a lot of language.
I zip-tied his wrists and ankles, slammed the doors and sat in the driver's seat with my heart going.
"You swear well," said a calm voice behind me.
I turned around.
Malachy Murtagh was lying on the van floor with his cheek against a coil of rope, looking at me.
His eyes were grey and perfectly steady.
There was a scar through his right eyebrow and a nose that had been broken at least once.
"You're awake," I said.
"Since the ramp."
"You should be twitching."
"I did, for a bit. You looked busy."
I drove to Winthrop with the radio off and his eyes on the back of my neck.
My father's boathouse sits at the end of a gravel spit, cinder block with a tin roof and a boat winch bolted to the floor.
It was the only thing he left me besides a grudge.
I dragged Mal Murtagh inside, sat him on an overturned crate and cut his ankles loose.
Then I cuffed his wrists around the iron ring on the winch with my own steel cuffs.
I sliced the zip ties off and stood back with the stun gun held out.
"Hands where I can see them," I said.
"They're chained to the floor, Miss."
"Don't call me Miss."
"I don't know what else to call you."
"Nothing."
"That's hard to do for long."
I searched him, because that's the job.
A small black pistol came out of the holster at his ankle.
A knife came out of his left sleeve, slim as a fish bone.
His phone and wallet came out of the coat.
I ran my hands down his chest and ribs.
He held very still for me.
He smelled like cedar and cold air and a little like smoke.
"You missed one," he said.
"I did not."
"Check again."
I checked again.
I went down his waist, across the belt and along both hips, and my palms stopped a hand's width from the front of his trousers.
My face was hot and I hated it.
"Higher," he said, very softly.
"What?"
"You stopped. You can go lower, if you like. I'm not armed there."
"Everybody's armed there."
"Then you'd better be thorough."
I didn't touch him.
I took my hands back, and he smiled with half his mouth.
He did not look like a man who'd been kidnapped.
He looked like a man being shown to his table.
"Your phone," I said, to say something.
I held it up to his face and the screen unlocked.
He looked into it politely.
There was one contact near the top, labeled UNCLE P.
I put it on speaker and set it on the crate.
It rang twice.
"Roisin," said a warm voice, soft as a priest's.
"I wondered when you'd call."
My stomach dropped through the floor.
"I have your nephew," I said, and my voice only shook a little.
"I want my brother out of wherever you've got him, by Sunday, standing on his own feet."
"Donal's fine. Donal's having the time of his life."
"Put him on."
"Not tonight."
"Then you don't get your nephew back."
"My nephew," said Padraig Murtagh, and he sounded almost fond, "is no use to me whatsoever."
"What?"
"Keep him, sweetheart. Keep him as long as you like."
The line went dead.
I stood there looking at the phone.
I had never given Padraig Murtagh my name.
Not tonight, not this week, not to anyone.
Mal looked up at me from the winch ring, and he smiled.
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