to save your sorry ass. Why? Whose interests are served by getting you and Mack together that couldn’t be served by asking you both to lunch?”
Horn didn’t think it was complicated. He thought it was very simple. “There’s no plot. Tommy Hanratty’s the one spending the money, but I wouldn’t say he’s particularly clever. He doesn’t need to be. There’s only one thought in his mind—to wipe me out.” It wasn’t a metaphor: that was exactly what Hanratty wanted. To expunge him, to strike him from the record. “Your head’s full of wee sweetie mice.”
Beth stared at him open-mouthed for a full three seconds before the sob came. Horn remembered, belatedly, where he’d first heard the expression—from Patrick. He supposed Beth had heard it from the same source. He felt a twinge of contrition. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Mostly, he’d been defending himself. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
She pulled herself together almost physically, forcing down the grief that had choked her. She cleared her throat. “I’ve never heard anyone else say that.”
“Me neither. I suppose it’s an Irish thing.” Horn took a deep breath. “Listen, I know how you feel about me. I don’t blame you. I can apologize till the cows come home, but I can’t bring him back. I can’t make it not have happened. But I can go where you don’t have to look at me. Just let me out. Let me go, and forget that I was ever here. You’ll get what you want in the end. Sooner or later Hanratty’ll catch up with me.”
Now as she looked at him, for the first time Beth saw him as he was: not the monster of her nightmares, just a rather battered human being with strong arms and a stubborn expression, and fear behind his eyes that had dwelt there so long it seemed a part of him, something he would never be rid of. For a fleeting moment she almost found it in her to be sorry for him.
But she’d hated Nicky Horn for four years—more than four years, in fact. Even while Patrick was alive, she’d had reason to resent the friend who’d taken him places where she couldn’t follow. The hatred had fed her, sustained her. The sight of his bruises, and knowing about the ones that didn’t show, couldn’t alter that.
But she was confused. He didn’t seem to be lying about how he and McKendrick had met. But Beth didn’t believe in a coincidence that outrageous: that when the past finally caught up with him, the only man both near enough and tough enough to come between Anarchy Horn and his just deserts was her father. There are over 60 million people in the British Isles, the vast majority of whom had no connection to Patrick Hanratty. McKendrick did. What he didn’t have was a good reason for having been there. All she could think was that someone had lured him there—not Horn, who had nothing to gain from the meeting, nor Hanratty, who had everything to lose, but someone else. But think as she might, she couldn’t begin to guess who, or why, or what possible bait he could have used to tempt a rich man to drive sixty miles and gamble his own life to save a pariah.
“Stay here,” she said thickly. “I need to talk to Mack.”
She wasn’t going to open the back door. Horn gave in with a weary sigh. “He went upstairs to see to William. Who’s William?”
“My uncle.”
“I didn’t know anyone else lived here.”
“Now you do.”
Horn frowned. He’d assumed William was a child. A grown man wouldn’t need help getting up in the morning. So maybe that wasn’t why McKendrick had left the room. Between the bruises the color drained from his face as if a tap had been turned. “Is that what’s going on?” he choked, the fear flooding back. “Is that where McKendrick’s gone—to call Tommy Hanratty?”
Beth blinked once, then looked away in disdain. “Don’t be stupid.”
But it made sense. Too much sense, more than anything else that had happened this morning. Horn’s voice was stretched thin with shock. “That’s it, isn’t it? When he realized who I was, he guessed there was a price on my head. If he’d let events take their course he wouldn’t have seen any of it, but if he brought me here and let Hanratty know where to find me … Dear God!—and I’ve been so bloody grateful!”
He spun on his heel, back toward the door; but his new understanding