Declan taps the map. “Old quarry house.”
Nikolas is already on comms. “I’ll move road teams and lock the back lanes.”
I turn to Gavin. “You’re riding with us.”
He narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“So if Patrick runs, I can show him what his best man looks like when he fails.”
By the time we come back up, the courtyard is controlled. Bodies are under tarps, medics work two of ours near the gate, and the chapel doors are shut again. Saoirse waits under the side entrance in my mother’s coat, Maeve beside her, a shooter at the steps. She should be inside. She knows better and waits anyway.
“We have a location,” I tell her.
“Red Briar,” she says at once.
I stop. “How?”
“Gavin used to call quarry runs that. He liked naming places.”
I hate how much of him she still has to remember.
“We move now,” I say. “You stay here with Mam and Maeve. Nikolas is doubling the perimeter.”
Her eyes search mine. “You think Patrick is there.”
“I think he was there an hour ago.”
“And if he runs?”
“Then I chase.”
She steps closer and grips my forearm under the coat sleeve. “Bring him to me if you can.”
It is not a plea. It is a decision.
I look at her belly beneath the coat, then at her face. “If I bring him back breathing, the last call is yours.”
Maeve goes still, but she says nothing.
We run the coast road in two black SUVs and a bike scout, no lights and no noise, only speed and comms. Conall drives, I ride front with a rifle across my knees, and Gavin is cuffed in back between Murphy and Sten. Every bump strips a little more bravado off him.
Nikolas updates through the earpiece while his team swings inland to cut the back roads. “Drone feed is patchy in the wind. Heat at Red Briar main house is light, maybe five. Machine shed has one vehicle warm and another cooling.”
“Any external eyes?”
“Possible watcher on the east berm.”
“Assume man.”
Red Briar sits in an old quarry cut, a site office expanded into a hideout, flat roof, dark floodlights, lower windows lit. Too lit for a place under pressure and too quiet for a clean pullout. Patrick left a welcome.
Our flank pair drops the watcher with suppressed shots before he can call in. No alarm from the house. Either they did not hear it or they want us closer.
We breach the rear utility door on Conall’s count. One man rises from a chair near the boiler and dies before his pistol clears the table. Conall takes another in the corridor as he reaches for a radio. We push toward the front office and hit the first trap, wire across the hall tied to a rack loaded with gear and fuel tins. It crashes hard and loud, buying the men in front a few seconds.
Patrick still thinks in delays.
I vault the rack and cut left into the office. Empty chairs. Maps torn down. Cash box open. Two plates still warm. Back door swinging.
