I checked the mirror again. The Hummer was still in the distance. If it had been any other car, I wouldn’t even have picked it as a tail except for those squealing wheels. Still, it was unlikely that the third Hummer I’d seen in a weekwasn’tone of our enemies. “Set it up,” I told O’Hara. “Just in case.”
“Cops didn’t like it much last time,” O’Hara said as he texted through a message to his men, and then he grinned. “Wouldn’t be much fun in their lives without us, though, would there?”
But when we got to the outskirts of Beacon Hill, the Hummer turned off and disappeared. The other Donovan cars were still in formation behind me, and I slowed down a little, unease crawling up my backbone. What the fuck did our enemy have planned?
We reached the house with no further sightings. I asked O’Hara to keep the gauntlet setup active until the O’Learys reached home, and then I hustled Aidan inside. He tripped over the hem of the robe once, but I caught him and kept him moving until we were safe inside the door.
Tara Donovan, who must have been waiting and watching, ran downstairs and into the front room where we were. She gave a hesitant smile. “How did it all go? I’m so sorry Conor wouldn’t let me go, but I hope it went well? Congratulations, Father—oh, is that the right thing to say?”
Aidan and I looked at each other, breaking into wide grins, and then we turned back to Ms. Donovan. “Not a priest,” we said together.
She shook her head a little with confusion, her smile puzzled. “But—”
“I didn’t take my vows,” Aidan said, and then added, “Long story.”
She raised her eyebrows as she studied his wide smile. “But a happy ending, I think?”
“You got that right,” I said, putting my arm around Aidan’s shoulders and drawing him close to kiss his temple.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Isee.”
The front door opened again and I pushed Aidan behind me automatically, pulling out a gun. “We did have a little trouble on the way home,” I told Ms. Donovan as she stiffened.
But it was only Fitzgerald, escorting John and Nancy O’Leary with him. Nancy made a beeline for Aidan, looking almost as happy as he did himself, and threw her arms around him. “Sweetheart, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said into her hair.
“You’re sure?” she asked, her eyes damp. “This isn’t because of anything I said, I hope—”
“No, Mom,” Aidan said, a little exasperated, and made some room between them. “I mean…maybe a little. You said something that made me stop and think, and—no, it doesn’t really matter what you said,” he said quickly as she tried to ask. “What matters is that I figured it all out in time. Right?”
She took a deep breath and nodded hard. “Right.” She hugged him again and this time she put out her hand and pulled me into it as well. I was trying to keep my gun out of sight behind my back, but John still caught sight of it. I couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ve asked the chef to arrange a light lunch,” Ms. Donovan said. “If anyone’s hungry? I’ll go now and ask her to set up in the formal dining room. We can eat a little earlier.” She disappeared, tactfully allowing us to have time to ourselves.
Aidan’s mother finally let us go and stood back, beaming.
“Well, Aidan,” John said mildly. “You’ve made your choice, then?”
“I have.” Aidan’s chin came up and I loved him all the more fiercely for the confidence and finality in his voice. “So I should get out of this,” he said, looking down at his robes with a wrinkled nose. He took my hand. “Come on. I’ll get changed before lunch.” I gave John and Nancy a respectful nod on the way out, but Aidan was tugging me by the hand, just about running out of the room.
He was too impatient to wait for the elevator, and had to hold up the robe as we ascended the first flight of stairs. “Do you think we have time to make out a little?” he asked me with a grin when we reached the second floor.
It took a moment for my brain to register what he’d said. “Let’s get up there faster,” I said when it processed, and I raced him up to the third floor.
When we got there, though, I caught him back before he could continue up the next flight of stairs. “Wait, baby.”
“What for?” he demanded, laughing, but then he heard it, too: shouts and the sound of gunfire coming from outside. Instinctively, I grabbed Aidan and hustled him into the room opposite the third-floor kitchen—a music room, complete with a baby grand piano and a library of vinyl records. I went to the window and looked out to the street below. What I saw made my stomach turn over.
“What’s going on?” Aidan asked, coming up behind me. His eyes went wide as he took it in, his hand flying to his mouth, but it was far too late for us to do anything but watch.
Speeding towards the house was what looked like an armored truck, the kind of vehicle I’d expect to see in combat zones, not here on the streets of Beacon Hill. A second later its V-shaped cleaving bumper impacted the front of the house. The entire building shuddered beneath our feet and we tumbled over. I rolled on top of Aidan to protect him and could only hope that the house would not immediately collapse in on itself. It creaked and groaned, but held together. The window of the room shook in its seals but did not shatter. Still, I expected rifle shots to start up any second, pecking away at the bullet resistant glass.
“My parents,” Aidan mumbled from underneath me.
I got up, pulling him with me, trying to figure out the best avenue of escape. I put my head to the window carefully to check the scene below and saw a troop of men, dressed in army fatigues like the Innisfree guards, pouring out of the back of the truck and climbing into Hillview over the shattered wall, ducking to avoid the bullets coming from the Donovans across the street.
At the rear of them, limping quickly and low, keeping the truck between himself and the Donovan gunfire, I saw a familiar figure.
