Nervous hunches down, gun up, hands shaking enough to make the muzzle dance.
I lie as still as possible, pulse thumping in my ears.
The next few minutes will decide everything.
Footsteps outside, heavy, deliberate.
Then a voice, muffled, hard to place.
Scarface relaxes—slightly—and turns the latch, opening the door just enough to see.
The world explodes.
There is a sound I will never forget—the pop and hiss of a canister, then the shriek as gas fills the container.
Scarface yells, slamming the door, but not before a fist-sized chunk of something shatters the bulb and plunges us into a strobing half-dark.
The gym rat jumps up, firing two rounds into the wall, then drops as a shadow rushes in.
It's chaos—boots on steel, hands grabbing, a flash of blood as someone's face connects with the shovel.
The gym rat screams, a wordless animal sound, and then falls silent.
Scarface is fighting, but he's lost the advantage.
In the swirl of bodies, I catch sight of Nervous, flat on his back, blood pooling under his head.
It lasts twenty seconds, maybe less.
The last thing I see before I black out again is Ruairí, his eyes lit with the kind of hunger that terrifies even his own men.
His mouth is a thin line.
His hands are red.
"Keira," he says.
His voice is shredded, like he's been screaming for hours.
The world goes dark once again.
17
KEIRA
Iwake with a start and a gulp of air.
The container is deceptively small.
Or maybe it's just that the bodies take up so much more space when they're no longer invested in personal boundaries.
Six of them, arranged by chance and physics—one folded at the waist like a discarded doll, two draped over each other in an embrace that means nothing, the rest scattered along the edges.
Blood everywhere, seeping into the grooves of the corrugated floor, glistening in the tracks where boots or knees or faces have been dragged.
Ruairí stands in the center of it, hair matted to his forehead, shirt torn open and dark with blood that isn't his.
He surveys the carnage like a man taking inventory at the end of a bad fiscal quarter—detached, but not unfeeling.
