with a shop on the first floor and living quarters upstairs, just down the street, then he spun around and headed for his car.
He’d seen the younger of his nieces. Now it was time to see Maggie.
* * *
The county jail was located behind the Copper Lake Police Department. Back in the day, most of the cells had been in the basement with only small, barred windows high on the outside walls. The only thing a prisoner could see, depending on his position, was the sky or the feet of people walking by. The glass, inlaid with wire between the layers, had been thick, making conversation tough though not impossible. Being loud and disruptive was one of the Holigan family qualities.
Sean parked his car, shut off the engine and stared at the squat brick building ahead. He could think of about a hundred things he’d rather be doing—even wrangling the youngest Holigan had to be easier than this—and he seriously considered putting it off for an hour or two or five. He hadn’t talked himself into action either way when abruptly the driver’s door was jerked open.
Sean flinched, leaned away, drew one leg onto the door frame for a quick kick, but a flash of images stopped him: eyes he’d once known as well as his own, an ear-to-ear grin, a gold badge, a holstered weapon. That was all he had the chance to notice before strong hands pulled him from the car and into a bone-jarring hug.
“I’ll be damned,” Ty Gadney said, letting him go, then giving his shoulder a punch that made him fall back against the car. “Granddad always said you’d be back someday, and here you are. Hell, Sean. You could keep in touch with the people who tolerated your smart mouth at least once every fifteen years.”
Ty, all grown up, shaved head, a detective, just like he’d always wanted to be. How many nights had Sean shared his room, dimly lit, the box fan in the window drawing in the damp night smells, talking about what they were going to do someday?
Sean had to force his voice to work. “How is Mr. Obadiah?”
From behind Ty came the answer in a distinctly sultry, sweet Southern woman’s voice. “Feisty and sassy as ever.” She stepped into view, pretty, womanly, and maternal and sexy all at once.
Ty’s grin widened as he slid his arm around her waist. “My old buddy Sean. My fiancée, Nev Wilson.”
She offered her hand, and Sean took it after a moment. She held on longer than he expected. “So you’re Daisy and Dahlia’s uncle. Heartbreakers, all of you.”
Saying that he’d only learned of his nieces’ existence yesterday, that he’d caught his first glimpse of Daisy this morning, didn’t seem the way to ingratiate himself with Nev, so he pulled his hand back. “Don’t blame them. You can’t choose your family.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” she said.
There was a story behind that fervent agreement, but he wasn’t here to learn anyone’s story but Maggie’s.
Letting his hold on Nev slide free, Ty circled to the front of the car, hands on hips, an admiring look on his face. “So you got The Car. Babe, from the time he was thirteen, this was all he ever talked about—this car. A 1970 Chevelle SS 454. Oh, man, she’s a beauty.”
When Nev made a dismissive sound, he gave her a chastising look. “Don’t be making fun of my appreciation for a fine vehicle. You practically cried when your car burned up at the Heart of Copper Lake, and it had nothing on this one.”
“That car was my baby.”
“This car is his baby.” Like a cloud passing over the sun, Ty went serious. “You here to see Maggie?”
“If she’ll see me.”
“Of course she’ll see you. Why wouldn’t she?”
Sean could think of fourteen years’ worth of reasons.
“Hold on, and I’ll go in with you.”
Taking Nev’s hand, Ty walked with her to a big old Mercury a few spaces away, half a block long and two lanes wide, hell on gas but with enough room for a party inside, all done up in baby-blue. Sean had worked on that car plenty of times when he was living with the Gadneys—and plenty of times when he wasn’t. It was the only way he’d had to repay Mr. Obadiah for giving him a place to stay when he needed it.
Another thing he would have to do: go see Mr. Obadiah, knowing that he’d let him down, too. This trip was going to be all kinds of fun.
After kissing his fiancée and helping her into the car, Ty stood back and watched as she drove away. Sean watched, too—his old friend, not Nev—then quietly said, “She’s a beauty, too.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Ty grinned. “I’m a lucky man.” He slapped Sean on the back and turned him toward the jail entrance. “So what have you been doing all these years, and where have you been doing it?”
What have you been doing? Patrick used to ask Declan and Ian, among other relatives, when they showed up after an absence. Time was the answer so often that it became a family joke.
One fifteen-month stint in prison had taken all the humor from it for Sean.
“Working on cars.” Being able to give a respectable answer sent a kind of relief through him. “Mostly for people who buy cars like mine and don’t have the time or the skills to restore them.” Honest work, even if his boss wasn’t.
“I’m not surprised. You’ve always had the magic touch. And where?”
Sean walked through the glass door Ty held open. “Norfolk.” Just inside, he stopped. An air-conditioning vent in the ceiling nearby blew cold air onto the back of his neck—the reason a shiver was doing its damnedest to break loose. Not nerves. “Tell me, Ty. How much trouble is Maggie in?”
As Ty’s face went somber again, Sean could see traces of his grandfather in him. “A lot. This is the third time she’s been caught making meth at home with the kids. You know she’s got kids?”
Sean nodded.
“She loves Dahlia and Daisy as much as she can, but...she’s an addict, Sean, and a bad one. She’s got to get straight before she kills herself, for the kids’ sake if nothing else.”
His gut knotting, Sean stared at the wall behind the check-in desk. He figured pretty much his entire generation of Holigans had experimented with at least marijuana, but he didn’t know of any who’d gotten addicted. Like their father and grandfather and their fathers before them, most Holigans preferred a good Irish whiskey to feed the soul, enliven an evening and dull the pain.
“You ready?”
Though he wanted to run away like a scared kid, he nodded and followed Ty to the desk. Within ten minutes, he was in a communal visiting room filled with round fiberglass tables with four stools of matching orange attached. They reminded him of playground seating, somewhere between child-and comfortable adult-size, with no back support to lean against. They were bolted to the floor so they couldn’t be used as a weapon and seemed pretty indestructible. A box of ragged toys occupied one corner, and signs warning against physical contact of any sort hung on the institutional-green walls.
It was depressing as hell.
He
