Chapter 6 - DECLAN
Declan Kavanaugh walked into the Boston FBI office at 9:12 the next morning.
Alive.
Voluntarily.
Renick nearly punched him.
Agents stopped that.
Belle watched through the glass.
Declan looked like Renick after a bad decade.
Same eyes.
Less control.
He had been living under federal protection for six years.
Renick did not know.
Neither did most of Boston.
Declan had become a cooperating witness against their father’s old network.
The family called him a coward.
Their father called him dead.
Maeve had found him.
Thomas helped her.
That was the meeting in the photograph.
Maeve suspected someone inside Renick’s organization was selling information to a rival syndicate.
She did not trust Renick to hear it without turning the house upside down.
Belle looked at him.
Renick looked away.
Fair.
Declan said Maeve copied ledgers showing payments.
Judges.
Police.
Contractors.
And one Kavanaugh insider.
“Who?” Renick asked.
Declan stared at him.
“Sully Byrne’s father.”
Sully went white.
“My father is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then say his name.”
“Patrick Byrne.”
Sully lunged.
Agents restrained him.
Renick did not.
He looked stunned.
Patrick Byrne had raised him after his own father became sick.
Sully had grown up beside him.
The betrayal reached backward through childhood.
Declan continued.
Patrick was not working alone.
He had a partner still alive.
Maeve intended to expose both.
Then her brakes failed.
Thomas learned about the sabotage.
He copied the proof.
Three weeks later, Thomas died in the warehouse fire.
Belle’s hands went cold.
“Who was the partner?”
Declan looked toward the one-way glass.
“At the time, we only had initials.”
“What initials?”
“SB.”
Every face turned toward Sully Byrne.
Sully laughed once.
Hard.
“No.”
Declan said nothing.
Sully looked at Renick.
“You know me.”
Renick answered quietly.
“I thought I knew everybody.”
That hurt more.
Then an agent entered carrying one of Thomas’s flash drives.
“We decrypted the first file.”
Renick stood.
The agent looked at Belle.
“It contains a video recorded the night her husband died.”
Belle forgot Sully.
Forgot Declan.
Forgot the room.
May you like
“Show me.”
