I wanted to tell him I was sorry. For sending them away. For keeping secrets. For making them think, even briefly, that I didn’t want them with every fiber of my being.
I wanted to tell Ophelia that she was the bravest person I’d ever known. That her submission was a gift I didn’t deserve. That the sound of her saying “yes, sir” had rewired something fundamental in me.
I wanted to tell them both that these past two weeks had been the happiest of my life. That they’d shown me what I was capable of feeling. That even if this was the end, I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.
Except my mouth wouldn’t form the words. Everything grew dim and cold and far away. My vision narrowed to their faces—Oliver and Ophelia, together, their hands onmy chest like they could hold my life inside me through sheer force of will.
“Stay with us,” Oliver was saying. I could hear him now. “Kiernan, goddamn it, stay with us. Help is coming. You have to hold on.”
I tried to. I tried so hard, but the darkness was warm, and soft, and it didn’t hurt anymore.
The last thing I saw was them. The last thing I felt was their hands on my skin.
If I had to die, I thought, at least I got to die for something that mattered.
Then there was nothing at all.
21
OLIVER
The second shot cracked through the basement right after Kiernan hit the ground. The dark bloom was already spreading beneath James’ temple. He’d turned the gun on himself.
Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Voices shouted commands I couldn’t process. None of it mattered. Kiernan lay motionless on the cold stone, with blood pooling beneath him, and I couldn’t reach him.
“Oliver.” Rafe appeared in front of me, removed the gag, and cut my restraints. “Hold still.”
“Kiernan—”
“Callen’s with him.”
The plastic gave way, and I was up before Rafe could say another word. My legs buckled—too long in the chair, blood flow compromised—and I caught myself on the wall, then pushed off toward Kiernan.
Callen knelt beside him and pressed a wadded jacket on Kiernan’s upper left chest. In the candlelight, Kiernan’s face was white and still.
I dropped to my knees on his other side. “Is he?—”
“Breathing. Pulse is weak.” Callen’s voice was clipped, controlled, but I’d worked with him long enough to hear the fear underneath. “Ambulance is three minutes out. I need more pressure here. Can you?—”
My hands covered his, then slid beneath as he repositioned. The jacket was already drenched beneath my palms. His life, draining away beneath my hands.
I pressed harder. The wound pulsed against my palms—his heartbeat, faint but present. I matched my breathing to it without meaning to. As long as I could feel that rhythm, he was still here. As long as the blood kept flowing, his heart was still pumping.
The logic was backwards. I knew that. The blood needed to stay inside him, not seep into the fabric and pool on the floor. But my brain had stopped working in straight lines.
The jacket grew heavier in my grip, but I couldn’t let go. Letting go meant giving up, and giving up meant admitting that this might be the end—that Kiernan might bleed out on this basement floor while I knelt beside him and did nothing.
I’d held dying men before. In the field, in back alleys, in bombed-out buildings where the dust was still settling. This was different. This was Kiernan.
Behind me, Rafe cut Ophelia free. Her sharp intake of breath carried across the basement, followed by her footsteps. She appeared on Kiernan’s other side, found his hand with one of hers, and pressed her other one to mine to add more pressure.
“Don’t you dare leave us,” she whispered.
Gus went to check James’ body. A moment later, he crouched near us again. “He’s gone.”
I didn’t react. Nothing existed except Kiernan’s face. I willed his eyes to open, willed his chest to keep rising and falling beneath my palms. The candles flickered at the edges of my vision. Sirens wailed somewhere above us, distant and too slow.
The bullet had been meant for me.
