Bitter Burn novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Booth

Siobhan follows Finbar to a diner and sees a woman touch his face and take a flash drive, then Tyson taps her car window.

Finbar left the house at ten on Saturday morning with his briefcase.

He kissed my cheek at the door and said he had to close out the quarter at the office.

"On a Saturday?" I said.

"Your father likes the numbers before Monday."

He said it so easily that I almost believed it myself.

I let him get to the end of the block.

Then I took my keys, put on a ball cap, and followed him down Charles Street in my own car.

I had been trained to follow people since I was fifteen.

My father had made it a game at first, a game I won every time.

I kept three cars back and watched my husband's grey sedan turn east toward the water.

He did not go to the office.

He parked on a side street in Fells Point and walked half a block to a diner with a green awning.

I parked across the road and slid down in the seat.

Through the window I could see the corner booth, the same booth as in the photographs.

The woman was already sitting there.

She had the black bob and the grey blazer, and a paper cup of coffee she was not drinking.

Finbar slid in across from her.

He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, the way he did when he was tired.

I had never seen him do that in front of anyone but me.

She said something and he shook his head.

She said something else, and he reached into his briefcase and took out a small black flash drive.

He set it on the table between them, and she covered it with her hand.

My fingers were so tight on the steering wheel that the leather creaked.

I told myself it could be anything.

It could be a lawyer, or an old friend, or a woman who sold him insurance.

Then she reached across the table and laid her palm against his jaw.

She held it there, light and sure, and he leaned into it for half a second.

It was the exact place I put my hand when he knelt.

Something cold went through me, and under the cold something hot and ugly.

I had never been jealous in my life.

I had been the one people were afraid of losing.

I opened the car door.

I was going to cross that road, walk into that diner, and put the woman's face through her coffee.

My hand was on the frame when Finbar turned his head and looked out the window.

He did not see me.

He looked at the street.

I shut the door again, quietly.

I sat with my heart thudding against my ribs.

The woman stood and slid the drive into her inside pocket.

She said one more thing to him, short, and walked out through the glass door.

She did not look around.

She crossed to a grey Ford without a single glance, which meant she had done this many times.

I memorized the plate.

Then I did what I had been trained to do.

I took my phone and took a picture of her driving away.

I was shaking a little when I put the phone down.

If I told my father, Finbar was dead before dark.

If I did not, I was a liar to the man who raised me, and a fool to the man who knelt for me.

I could not go into the diner.

I could not go home and wait for him to lie to my face a second time.

I needed to think, and I needed to do it somewhere my father's men would not see me.

I started the engine.

Someone knocked on the glass beside my head.

I did not jump, because I had not jumped since I was twelve.

I turned my head slowly.

Tyson Mallory leaned down to my window, blond and broad in his black work jacket, with his crooked nose and his easy smile.

He had once held my hair back when I was sick.

He had once broken a man's arm for looking at me, and neither of those facts was a comfort.

I rolled the window down two inches.

"Morning, Siobhan," he said.

"You're a long way from the house on a Saturday."

"I'm having breakfast."

"Not hungry, though."

He glanced at the diner and then back at me, his eyes pleasant and flat.

"Your father sent me to keep you company until Sunday."

"He worries, Siobhan."

"He'd hate for you to do anything on your own."

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