I want to reach out to him so badly that my arms ache. The pain in his voice cuts through me like shards of glass and nothing I can do will ease it. “I think so,” I say softly. “I’m sorry, Cian. But I can promise you that I will help you find him and I will help you kill him.”
A wounded noise rises from Cian and his hand slams over his mouth. Silence falls. An eerie silence now that the rain has stopped. Something about it makes my back jump and my spine crawl, and as much as I want to reach out to Cian and soothe him, something else catches my attention.
We don’t have much time.
“How the fuck do we fight cyber criminals?”
“Well, I have a lead. I lied about France because I didn’t know if I could trust you, but seeing your reaction, I know I can. How do you feel about a trip to Spain?”
He slowly turns to me with faint tears clinging to the corners of his eyes. “You have a lead?”
I nod, sinking my teeth into my cheek and crouching down to the crate. Underneath, I un-tape several of the weapons I hid there. “I do.”
“Fine,” Cian says tightly. “You want to work together? I’ll do it. Until that fucking cunt’s head is on a pike for what he did.”
“Good, because we gotta go.”
“What?” Cian’s eyes widen as I stand up and toss him a handgun. He catches it deftly.
“Don’t you hear it?”
Cian frowns and glances toward the window. “Hear what?”
“Silence. The bar across the street? Not a peep.”
6
CIAN
She’s right. Somewhere in the process of our discussion, the lively bar across the street fell quiet and I didn’t even realize it. Glancing down at my phone, it’s still early. There’s no reason for a place to close now.
Our eyes meet, and Saoirse jerks her head toward the back of the apartment just as an explosion of gunfire hails from the balcony. Bullets rain through the glass doors, shattering them to smithereens. The crate Faina’s laptop is sitting on explodes into a cluster of wooden planks and splinters, and the chair barely survives.
Faina snatches up the laptop and sprints toward the back of the apartment with me hot on our heels. How they found us is a mystery, but after what happened in the taxi, I’m not entirely surprised. Faina leads me through a hole carved in the wall of the kitchen which connects to the loft of the apartment next to us, but the bullets follow. They knock holes in the roof and small, pinpoint streaks of light track our position as we run as fast as we can.
Feet pounding, heart thundering and guns at the ready, we make it to a set of stairs that we fly down two at a time. Faina struggles to get the laptop into a rucksack she snatches from the floor, nearly tripping on the lower landing. I grab her arm to steady her as I pass and together, we make it down the rest of the staircase and out into the alley behind the building. My feet skid on the cobblestones, scanning for an exit, but Faina clearly already has an escape route planned.
We race to the mouth of the alley, take a left, and sprint across the street into the next alley with the sounds of gunfire and thudding boots chasing us like ghosts. I spin around on my heel and fire a few potshots toward the mouth of the alley to buy us a few extra seconds until Faina grabs me by the collar. I choke briefly and stumble after her as she leads me through an open door into the blazing hot kitchen of a restaurant.
Angry chefs yell at us in Italian, and one even throws a spatula I have to duck while we weave through counters and trolleys and out into the main restaurant floor. Several staff and guests stare at us, open-mouthed, until the assassins pursuing us light up the kitchen with their guns. Around us, chaos breaks out as every guest abandons their meal to flee for the door and escape before they become the next victim.
Faina leaps up onto one of the tables and hops down the other side as gracefully as a swan. I try to follow, but I use my left leg to get myself onto the table and disaster strikes.
The physical issues with my injured leg aren’t exact. I have good days and bad days depending on sleep, the weather, and whether the muscles in my leg want to play ball after the trauma they’ve been through. Today is a bad day.
I’m halfway up onto the table when weakness throbs through my leg and I lose my balance. I glimpse Faina glancing back at me then her eyes widening in horror as I overbalance and topple to the floor. Hundreds of people stampede past me, leather shoes and fancy heels narrowly missing my head as not one person stops to help. I’m collateral in their desperation to escape. Bracing on the ground, I try to stand, but where the first handful of people had the decency to go around me, suddenly, I’m a stepping stone for everyone too impatient to wait. A high-heeled shoe stabs into my back and sends me back to the ground, then the weight of several other people stamping in my ribs as they step on me rather than over.
Get up, Cian!
I try and I’m down again. Someone’s passing foot clips my jaw, and it takes all my strength just to hold onto my gun as a boot stamps down on my forearm. Pain flares throughout my entire body but it drowns in alarm when several gunshots fire above my head. People scream, the crowd surges, and then suddenly, hands are dragging me up by the back of my shirt.
“Cian!” Worry warps Faina’s face and her gaze locks down on my weakened leg. Somehow, that pisses me off more than anything, so I shove her away.
“I’m fine, let’s go!”
She hesitates for a split second until something explodes in the kitchen and she flinches.
“I said let’s go!”
