My Fiancé Wants Me Back Too Bad The Only Thing Coming Back Is Your Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

At a Bureau safehouse Hallie learns her father is the man Declan has spent four years on; she lies to her father's call, sets her terms, and asks if Declan slept with Susie. He says: ask a different question.

The safehouse was a rented ranch house outside Portland with a bare kitchen and a coffee maker that someone had left running.

It was almost five in the morning.

I stood at the sink and scrubbed Susie's blood from under my fingernails until the water ran clear and my skin was raw.

Nobody told me to stop.

A man in a rumpled suit sat at the table with his reading glasses pushed up on his head, watching me with tired eyes.

"Ms. Corrigan," he said. "I'm Ray Linscott. I'm Agent Shaw's supervisor."

"Agent Shaw," I said. "That's what we're calling him now."

"It's what the file calls him."

Declan stood by the back door with his arms folded.

He hadn't sat down since we came in.

He hadn't looked at me in the car, either, for the whole hour.

"Sit," Linscott said, and slid a mug across the table.

I sat.

"I'll say it fast, because you're going to want to stop me. Four years ago Agent Shaw was working his way into a trucking firm that moves stolen guns under honest freight. Eleven months in, the owner made him."

"Made him what?"

"Worked out he was a cop," Declan said, from the door. "He had my photograph by then. I was out of Boston in an hour."

"You didn't call me."

"I couldn't."

"You couldn't pick up a phone for four years."

"The man who owns that firm," he said, "is Brendan Corrigan."

I laughed.

It came out of me before I could help it, short and ugly.

"My father drives a Buick and goes to Mass on Sundays," I said. "He cries at the Christmas pageant at my library."

"He does," Linscott agreed. "He also moves guns across three states and had a man at the Fall River docks killed two years ago. We can't prove that last one. Yet."

Nobody in that kitchen was smiling.

I looked at Declan.

He looked back at me, finally, with nothing in his face.

"That's the work I went away for," he said. "I knew whose daughter you were when I met you. I didn't know what he was until the file landed, after I'd put the ring on."

"And you went anyway."

"If I hadn't, they'd have sent someone who didn't know you."

"That's supposed to make it better?"

"It's supposed to be true."

My phone buzzed on the table.

DAD, the screen said.

Linscott went quiet and held up one finger.

He set a small recorder beside the mug.

"You don't have to answer it," he said. "But if you do, he's going to ask where you are."

I picked it up.

"Hallie, sweetheart." My father's voice was warm and rough with sleep. "Tommy called me. He said there was some trouble up the coast and he couldn't find you. Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine, Dad."

"Did you find him? The man the investigator said he'd found?"

Across the table, Linscott did not breathe.

Declan's eyes were on my face.

"No," I said. "It was somebody else. I'm sorry, I wasted your money."

"Never. Never, honey. Where are you? I'll send Tommy to drive you home."

"I'm at a motel in Bangor," I said. "I'm going to sleep. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

I put the phone down.

My hand wasn't steady.

I had lied to my father for the first time in my life, easily, in one breath.

"You didn't tell him where you are," Declan said.

"Susie's dead." My voice came out thin. "I don't know what you just told me. I don't know any of it. But I'm not telling Tommy Dunne where I am."

Linscott took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Ms. Corrigan, here is your situation. Tommy Dunne has your face and your plate. You are your father's only child, and the one person who could say Agent Shaw's name in a room. The safest place for you is where we can see you."

"You want me to stay here."

"I want you to go home to Dorchester, go to work, and go to Sunday dinner. And I want Agent Shaw in your building."

"No," Declan said.

"It's not your call."

"I'll do it," I said.

They both looked at me.

"I'll do it," I said again, "because I want to hear him say it. My father. I want to hear it from him, not from you."

"Fine," Declan said. His voice was flat. "Then these are my terms."

"Your terms."

"You do what I tell you, when I tell you. You don't go anywhere alone. In front of anybody, I'm Agent Shaw, and you're Ms. Corrigan."

"And I get something back," I said.

His jaw moved.

"What?"

"One true answer a day. Anything I ask. No lies, no 'I can't.'"

"No."

"Yes," Linscott said mildly. "She's the one with the father. Give her the answer."

Declan stared at the wall for a long moment.

"One a day," he said.

I wrapped both hands around the mug.

The coffee was awful and I was grateful for the heat.

I had so many questions that for a second I couldn't pick one.

Then I picked the worst.

"Did you sleep with her?"

His face didn't change, except around the eyes.

"Ask a different question," he said.

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