Maura Doyle

"Do you have him?" Maura snapped tersely into her cellphone.

"Don't worry, I'm handling it," came Helena's clipped accent in response.

"That's not what I asked."

"There have been some unforeseen developments that are making things a little tricky, but it's all under control. I'll have him back with you by this evening," Helena rattled off over the top of Maura's attempts to interject. "I have to go now, I'll call you later with an update."

"Helena? Helena!" Maura could have screamed in frustration.

Clearly something had gone wrong with Connor and the lawyer did not want to tell her about it. But what would she do anyway, even if she knew? Helena was the best at what she did and she was tenacious; whatever issue she'd encountered, she wouldn't rest until she'd figured it out. Still, it was difficult to relinquish control and put her faith in these people; although that got a little less difficult every day. Maura wasn't sure quite how to feel about that. She didn't exactly trust Helena, but she was coming to rely on her. She didn't believe the woman would 'have her back,' as Jane would say, but she was excellent at her job, and Maura trusted her to do it to the best of her ability. That would have to be enough.

Helena wasn't the only one on whom she was coming to rely. She'd been staying with her grandfather for a little over a week, and truly it was shocking how quickly he'd gone from being thoroughly put out, crabby, and more than a little insulting, to giving Maura unsolicited advice and an approving little smirk as she strategized with her people and tried to come up with new ways to outsmart Ferguson and get her witnesses to talk. If they were in any other situation, she might even be pleased at how much he'd grudgingly warmed to her. Though she'd tried not to care about the old man's approval, the truth was that she could never stand it when she knew people didn't like her; she'd always had an unconscious drive to win people's approval, perhaps compounded by how unpopular she'd been throughout most of her childhood. Other children had never been won over by interesting facts or her many achievements. They didn't like to play games with her because she took them too seriously and always won, and she'd never figured out how to let others win every once in awhile so they'd like her more. She'd always set her eyes on the prize, figured out the problem, and then executed the most efficient strategy for success. Patrick Senior seemed to find that trait appealing. She might not be a charismatic leader like his son, but she was a damn effective one, and he seemed to appreciate her ability to become dispassionate and detached.

They were settled in the living room, when it happened. Patrick was watching a Sox game on the tv as Maura used the backdoor Helena had set up into the BPD database to try and find out what was happening with Connor. June had gone out to the store to pick up some beef for the stew she planned to make for dinner. They sat in companionable silence, punctuated by Patrick's colourful remarks on the education and parentage of the umpire when he made a bad call. A couple of her men stood guard at the window. Steve was upstairs on the phone, checking in with various contacts. It was a quiet, humid afternoon.

The explosion ripped through the silence with a force that left Maura stunned and reeling. Her ears rang and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion through a fog, like she was a million miles away. Then she was suddenly aware that the fog was smoke, and that it was billowing out of what had a moment before been Patrick and June's kitchen, but was now unrecognizable. The smoke burned her lungs as she gasped for breath, desperately trying to make sense of what was going on around her. She saw her grandfather and made her way towards him. The heat from the flames in the kitchen was suddenly overwhelming. She heard Steve shouting from what seemed like far away, but when she looked up he was right next to her.

"We have to get out of here!" she managed to yell.

"No! Stay down!" he shouted in response as a hailstorm of bullets smashed through the window and cut up the sofa where she'd been sitting moments before.

She quickly pulled Patrick out of his wheelchair and down to the ground next to her, covering him as best she could. Returning gunfire rang out from the street as her men responded to the surprise attack; the squeal of car tires, more shots, and then Steve was pulling her up and hustling her towards the back door.

"Wait! Where's Patrick!" she shouted, looking back to see Danny hoisting her grandfather over his shoulder in a very undignified manner that made Patrick yell in fury. The younger man ignored him as he crouched in a low run and made a beeline for the backdoor.

They piled into the car as gunfire continued to sound from the front of the house. Danny threw Patrick into the back with Maura before jumping into the driver's seat and gunning the engine.

"Where's June?" Patrick shouted helplessly.

"I'll find her. You go!" Steve yelled in response, slamming the door as Danny pealed away.

Turning in her seat to look through the back window as the car sped away, Maura saw Patrick and June's house engulfed in flames.

Patrick and June insisted on returning to the house as soon as they were reunited. Steve tried to reason with them, to convince them it wasn't safe; Ferguson had made that abundantly clear. But they were determined not to be chased from their home. Patrick was furious that such a brazen attack had been made on one of the oldest members of the Doyle clan.

"No respect, these young ones now!" he fumed as June nodded, her expression dark. "No bloody respect for the old ways."

"I agree with Patrick," Maura addressed Steve. "I'm done running. Ferguson is never going to stop coming for me. He'll just keep chasing me from one place to another until I have nowhere else to go. I'm not doing it any more. I'm not running."

"Then he'll kill you," Steve said simply.

But he didn't stop her. They returned to the house that night to find it charred and dripping from where the firefighters had put out the blaze. The worst of the damage seemed to have been confined to the front of the house, but the smoke damage had been pervasive, and it was clearly uninhabitable.

"I'm so sorry, June," Maura whispered to the older woman.

She just tightened her jaw and fixed Maura with a look. "Don't you be sorry. You make him sorry."

It was a request she couldn't deny, and one she found she didn't want to.

"I will," she promised.

They got the breakdown of the afternoon's events from the neighbours. Maura's people had manage to fend off any further attack, and the car that sped away had taken heavy gunfire. Some said it looked like the driver had been hit. One of Maura's men had taken a bullet to the arm, but otherwise they'd emerged unscathed. Her people had scattered when the cops showed up, alerted to the gunfire by homicide's shot alert software. In fact, most of the neighbourhood had battened down the hatches in anticipation of BPD's arrival; since the officer's death weeks before, most officers were jumpy and heavy-handed, and no one wanted to be involved in an exchange with the police if they could help it. They'd knocked on doors and looked for witnesses. No one reported having seen anything. But that evening as Maura sat with her grandfather in a neighbour's house, a steady stream of well-wishers came by to give information, offer food and whiskey to commiserate, and with promises to help fix up the house.

Whatever Maura had thought of the old neighbourhood before today, it was clear that the folks who had lived here for generations had strong ties and loyalties. Patrick was still known and respected, and most people were appalled at such an attack on an old and respected member of their community. It seemed there were plenty of people still friendly to the Doyles, if only they had the power to really do anything.

Late that night, Maura sat nursing a glass of scotch on the porch of the neighbour's house, when Patrick came looking for her.

"Got a death wish, have you? Sitting out here in the open?"

"I don't think there's much danger of them coming back tonight. Ferguson's made his point. Besides, if he really wanted me dead, I would be. He's just trying to scare me."

"You think so?" the old man scoffed.

"I'm starting to think that's what he's been trying to do all along. He came after me in order to get to Paddy, but he didn't want to kill me; I'm the chief medical examiner with Boston Police, not to mention the head of The Isles Foundation. Between the Isles and the Doyles, I'm probably the most well-connected person in Boston. But then when he realized some men were loyal to me, and that he'd drawn the attention of the police and the FBI, he tried to scare me into submission. Now he's getting desperate, trying to run me out of town."

"And if that doesn't work? How long dyou think, before he actually kills you?"

She met his gaze, her expression cool. "I'm not running any more," she said firmly

"So what are you going to do, then? 'Cause things don't seem to be working out so well for you just now."

"I'll figure something out."

"Bullshit." She looked up at him sharply as he continued, "You know what you need to do."

"Well clearly you have some opinions." she snapped. "So tell me, Patrick, what should I be doing right now?"

"I already told you: change the state of play."

"I don't know what that means!" she cried out in frustration.

"Of course you do! Think, Maura. You're a smart woman." He sighed, seeming to summon all his patience, which at his age was very little. "You play chess, don't you?"

She nodded.

"So what do you do when you've lost all your strongest pieces, and all you're left with are pawns?"

"Make one of them a queen," she answered without hesitation, and then stopped short as his meaning became clear. "I can't," she shook her head emphatically.

"You don't have a choice," he snapped back tersely. "You have a responsibility to the people who are protecting you, to at least do them the same courtesy. And I for one am not going to sit around waiting to be blown up or shot up or set on fire by some disloyal punk, all because you don't have the balls to step up!"

He was smart. He knew exactly what to say to get to her. But even if she was willing-which she certainly wasn't- there was no way people would accept it. It was one thing for a few select people loyal to Paddy Doyle to risk their necks to protect his daughter; it was quite another to ask them to accept her as his successor. She had no experience running a 'business' of this kind, and she had some fairly obvious ties to the Boston police department.

"No one would accept it," she shook her head.

"They would take some convincing," Patrick agreed. "But there are people who would vouch for you. Those who have been protecting you so far; their opinions still carry weight in this community. And if my son names you, people will accept it- whether they like it is another matter."

"It will just push them towards Ferguson. They're loyal to Paddy, not to me."

"It's more complicated than that," Patrick dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand, gearing up for a history lesson. "You won't know all this because you weren't part of this world then, but when Paddy killed Tommy O'Roarke to avenge his son's death and to protect you, he started a major shake-up in the Irish families. O'Roarke's people scattered, but the Donnegal Family saw it as a challenge and they came after him with all they had. Paddy would've been finished if the other families had sided with the Donnegals, but right around that time, Micky O'Donnel and half his crew were busted by the feds, and Danny Boy Flannigan fell down a flight of stairs and bashed his brains out. It was a mess; lots of new faces, people fighting to be the ones to step into the void. And Paddy got a lot of respect for the message he sent with O'Roarke; for protecting his family."

"That's how he gained so much power so quickly," Maura nods, the pieces clicking into place. She'd never quite understood how her father had gone from being an old-time enforcer to the head of a clan seemingly overnight.

"Then Paddy got busted, and the vacuum opened up again," her grandfather continued. "Ferguson made his move when Paddy was in prison and there was no clear successor. You can't run a business like this when you're inside; Paddy should never have tried. He just didn't have anyone he could trust who was willing to step up."

"What about Steve?"

"He's loyal, but he doesn't have the head for a business like this. He doesn't have the vision. He's no leader."

"And you think I am?"

"I think we don't have a lot of other options."

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

"I don't know the first thing about how to run a... business like this."

"It's not about what you know- it's about who you know. And like you said, you're probably the most well-connected person in Boston."

Maura looked horrified. "I won't bring the Isles family name into this! There are people who rely on my family- so many charities, so much good work that would be jeopardized if my families business were to be connected with criminal elements."

"Don't get squeamish on me now, lady. The good Isles name was connected with 'criminal elements' the moment people found out who your father is. Never mind the fact that your Paddy gave you to your adoptive mother because of their existing relationship. The Doyles and the Isles go back to before you were even born."

He was right, but she'd already seen firsthand how much of Hope's good work had been threatened because of Paddy's dirty money. She couldn't let the same thing happen to the Isles. There had to be a way to keep these different parts of her life separate.

"Even if I accept all that, Paddy will never agree to it," she shook her head finally. "He gave me up to keep me out of this life. He's not going to just shrug and make me head of the Doyle clan after all the work he did to protect me from it."

"Well that's the first hurdle, isn't it?" Patrick gave her a knowing smile. "I think it's time you go visit your father."