Fiachra reloads the pistol without speaking.
This is it.
The final play.
26
KEIRA
As part of our negotiations with Padraig, Moretti is coming, but he doesn't know Ruairí and I are a united front.
The sky above Dún Laoghaire is a chemical wash—gray-on-gray, dense as lead, the kind of weather that makes you feel like even your bones have been smudged out by the lack of contrast.
The cathedral where he will be is three stories of Protestant stone and salt-warped glass, doesn't so much rise as it does endure—blacked out by centuries, hulking and low-slung, built to outlast memory if not faith.
The flagstones in the courtyard are still slick from last night's rain.
Every step up to the front doors is an audition for slipping, but I keep my pace flat and even, letting the heels of my boots slap a warning before me like the tap of a judge's gavel.
My coat—charcoal, high-necked, double-breasted—reaches all the way to the ground, flaring at the hips, cut with enough care to make the children underneath disappear, at least until you know how to look.
The weight is reassuring, an armor I pay for with heat and breath.
I keep my hands in the pockets until I reach the door.
Then I flex myfingers—twice, to chase the sting of old scars—before pulling them free in the open.
Lena keeps a step behind and half a step to the left.
She wears the same navy parka as always, hood up, drawstrings biting into the curve of her jaw, every motion reduced to its minimum signature.
Her left hand rides high, clutching something beneath the jacket, her right hand always exposed, loose, ready.
The only other hint of preparation is the way she scans every window, every possible vantage, her eyes flicking with the predatory micro-movements of a night hunter.
I do not speak to her.
We know our lines.
No cars in the lot.
No tail.
No Crowley men visible, though I can feel them—somewhere in the grid, waiting for the clock to start.
The main doors are unlocked.
Not even an usher or a guard.
I push through and take the aisle, the air inside instantly colder, sharper, the salt in it turned electric by the lack of heat and the leftover ghosts in the mortar.
The windows have been wiped so clean, I can see the little whorls of someone's thumbprints at the corners.
The pews have been swept, the stone floor free of any of the usual urban detritus.
But the real work is in the sound—every footstep, every breath, every click of my tongue is a gunshot in the vacuum.
It's not a church.
