Which means someone told him. The mole is still out there. Still feeding information. Still close enough to know that the people who were supposed to die in that explosion are breathing and hiding and twelve hours from being found.
Close enough to know about the safe houses.
And the only people who know about the safe houses are family.
The thought hits me like a fist to the chest. Not an outsider. Not a rival. Not some bought-off soldier at the bottom of the chain. Someone at the table. Someone with the name Murphy or close enough to sit beside one.
One of ours.
I pocket the phone and follow Aoife down the hallway, my legs still shaking, my body still wrecked, my head clearer than it's been in months.
The war isn't coming.
It's already inside the house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Aoife
WILLIAM'S PHONE GOES off at half past six in the morning.
I'm already half-awake when it buzzes. The bedroom ceiling is gray with early light. I hear the shift of his weight from the other room, a pause, then silence while he reads whatever it says.
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
He opens it, but stays in the frame. No shirt. The hallway light catches the lines of his shoulders, chest, the flat plane of his stomach, and I make a conscious effort not to stare. Three days ago, he could barely hold himself upright. Now he's standing there like that, and I'm not prepared for it.
His eyes are clear. That's what gets me. For three days, they were glazed or wild or somewhere unreachable, and now he's just looking at me. Directly. Like he actually sees me sitting here in his t-shirt with my hair a mess and the sleep barely off my face.
I reach up to run a hand through my hair and make myself stop.
"How'd you sleep?"
I look at his face instead of his chest. It takes some effort. "Fine. You?"
"Better than the last few nights." The corner of his mouth pulls.
Something happens in my chest. I can't help it. Three days ago, I was holding a bucket under his chin, and now he's standing in my doorway with clear eyes and that half-smirk, and it lands somewhere completely inconvenient. He's fully present in a way he hasn't been since I met him. No fog, no chemical edge, no distance. Just him, looking at me, almost amused, and I am not remotely prepared for what that does.
He holds up the phone. "Aidan sent through a new location. We need to move."
"How long will we be there?"
"Few days." He pockets the phone. "I'm going for a shower. Give me twenty minutes."
He pulls the door closed.
I flop back against the pillow and put my arm over my face.
Twenty minutes. I am not going to spend twenty minutes thinking about William Murphy in the shower.
I spend approximately four seconds thinking about NOT thinking about it before I give up and get up instead.
I pull on the sweatpants from the chair and keep his t-shirt on. It's that or nothing. I make the bed because I need something to do with my hands, and because the alternative islying there thinking about my father in a hospital bed and Reilan in whatever safe house Aidan put him in, and all the things I can't fix from here.
The bed takes less than two minutes. I'm smoothing down the last corner when I hear the shower cut off.
