Needing 13 - Johnny Kavanagh

BRITNEY HAS INDEED HIT ONE MORE TIME

TARA

"We still don't know who's behind sending those pictures," Conrad confessed with a frustrated sigh as we sped down the road toward BCS. His grip on the steering wheel was tight, knuckles white against the black leather, a telltale sign of his growing tension. "Malachy is tearing through all of fucking Ireland, flipping over every fucking stone, looking for the culprit. He's got Ciaran and Niamh in London digging through every lead they can find, but I swear, Tara, in all the years I've known him, I've never seen him this wound up—nervous, even. He's coming undone over this."

"Someone's threatening to expose Aiden. Just the other day, I got pictures of Joey, Aoife, and the ultrasound—stuffed in an envelope."

"And who do you reckon it could be? My da and John have been going through the case, combing through witness lists and defendants to see if anyone might know about Aiden, but they've come up with nothing. And then there's the people you three have done business with, the people you've hooked up with, the enemies you've made over the years..." His voice trailed off, his frustration palpable. "The list is fucking endless, and we've no time."

I bit my lip, staring out the window as the landscape blurred by. We had exactly a month and a half to figure out who was behind the pictures. Every single one of them had been marked with the 30th of May—the day before Jonathan's birthday. Normally, we wouldn't have taken this kind of threat seriously. We'd have paid for their silence, buried the problem under a mountain of cash. But this was different. Whoever this was knew Malachy and me. They were threatening to spill the truth to all my friends, my siblings—the truth about Aiden. The message, though unsaid, was clear: if I didn't confess before then, they'd do it for me the day before my boyfriend's birthday.

"What about Mark Allen?" Conrad asked, his brow furrowed as he considered the possibilities. "He's not on the list."

I shook my head, my voice steady as I replied, "I doubt it. He was off his head when he met Malachy and me. He's got a wife and a kid, and he's more terrified of them finding out about his past than he is about mine."

"Still, couldn't he have dug up something? Maybe trying to get some leverage over you, something along the lines of 'if I go down, you're coming with me'?"

I turned to face him, my gaze hard. "Conrad, I've got that slimy little bollocks under control every hour of the day. I know what time he wakes up, when he leaves for work, where he works, where he lives, where his kid goes to school, where his wife works, what he eats, his blood type, his allergies, his fucking medical history, and the grades he's gotten since junior infants." I raised an eyebrow, daring him to argue. "He hasn't a clue who Aiden is."

Conrad exhaled sharply, his tension growing as we approached the gates of BCS. He parked a few feet from where my brother and our friends were leaning against a wall, waiting for me. Turning to me, his face was etched with concern. "I'm worried, Tara," he admitted, his voice softening. "You're my best friend. You're Darragh's best friend. You're my girlfriend's sister. I'm worried because for the first time in nineteen years, someone's rattling you and Malachy—and that's never happened before."

"What do we always say? When we've been in shite situations like this, what do we always say?"

He blinked, caught off guard by the question. "I dunno."

"If you can't throw money at the problem..."

"You kill it," Conrad finished, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "If you can't throw money at the problem, you kill it."

"Since we can't pay off whoever's behind this because we don't know who they are, we've put a price on their head."

"And what if we run out of time?" he pressed. "This is dangerous, Tara. You could end up dead. Both of you"