from the clutter of papers spread out over the desk. Neither man looked happy, but then Conlan’s own mood wasn’t exactly all sunshine, either. He climbed over the usual piles of medical journals scattered on the floor to take the one remaining chair. He offered up the cold six-pack he’d brought in with him.
Rafferty twisted the top off a beer and passed it to Seamus before opening one for himself. “How’s the prisoner? Did she provide any useful information about who was after her?”
Conlan took a long pull off his own bottle before answering, hoping to wash the bad taste from his mouth. “No. She knows her luck has run out. I think she feels that nothing is going to change that, no matter what she says or does.”
Hell, he even agreed with her, but it still ticked him off. He’d done his best to keep his voice flat, emotionless, but now both Seamus and Rafferty were frowning at him.
His hand screeched to a halt halfway to his mouth with the beer bottle. “What?”
Rafferty downed half of his beer before answering. “She’s probably right about that, Conlan. I have no idea if she’s innocent, and I’m not sure if I even care.”
Then he gave Conlan a hard look. “What I do know is that Joss will have my ass if I let you get tangled up in Kat’s problems again.”
Conlan snorted and took a swig of his beer before responding.
“Gee, Rafferty, as much as I love the whole idea of watching Joss kick your backside, it won’t come to that. I can handle the situation. I might’ve fallen for that whole innocent act once, but I learned my lesson the hard way three years ago.”
Okay, so who was he trying to convince now? Himself, certainly, but he needed Rafferty to believe he could do his job. Otherwise he’d have to resign as head of security. He’d come to enjoy living on the estate, but he couldn’t stay if Rafferty got it into his head that Conlan wasn’t up to the job.
“I’ll get the story out of her one way or another after she’s had a chance to rest.” He drained his beer. “For now, I’ll go do some hunting online to see if I can figure out the connection between her case and Eddington.”
The vampire stared at him long and hard for several seconds before slowly nodding. “Tread carefully if you go poking around in Cyrus Eddington’s personal files. I don’t know what his connection is to Kat’s case or what happened three years ago, but that guy has powerful allies on the Council. I’d rather not run afoul of them if it can be avoided.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Rafferty started flipping through the stack of papers Seamus had set in front of him. “Have you called Ambrose yet?”
“No, that was next on my agenda after the beer.” He’d needed the jolt of alcohol before hammering that last nail into Kat’s fate, not that he’d admit that to Rafferty.
The vampire scrawled his signature at the bottom of a page. “Hold off on making that call until we get all this paperwork finished and filed. I want to make sure claiming the girls as my wards is registered and legal before we get him involved. I don’t anticipate any problems from Ambrose himself, but we clearly don’t know what other players might have a stake in this game.”
“Just let me know when.”
Conlan snagged another beer on his way out of the office. Rather than returning to Kat’s room, he hung a left turn and walked straight out the front door of the infirmary. He needed to put some space between himself and the rest of the world for a little while. Granted, it came as no surprise that Kat’s reappearance in his life had his emotions running high. But that didn’t account for the sudden urge to punch his boss for describing her situation as a game.
For Kat and her nieces, the stakes were too high for this to be anything but deadly serious. Not for one second did he doubt that both Seamus and Rafferty were doing their damnedest to make sure that Rose and Maggie ended up as permanent members of the O’Day Clan. However, that didn’t mean that someone else might not swoop in and make just as strong a case for their custody. Kat had lost all legal rights under Coalition law when she’d bolted from his custody three years ago. Her desires for her nieces’ future might