Cillian’s eyes cut back to me. “How do you know the formation?”
I hold his gaze. “Patrick used the same layout in Galway on a freight dispute, and he reused parts of it on a failed port scare last winter. He changes faces, not habits.”
He stares at me for a long second, then he says very quietly, “You don’t get to stand here and talk to me like we’re discussing weather.”
My throat tightens. “I know what I get and what I don’t. Please, just change the route.”
The front doors open again with a rush of damp air, and three men in municipal jackets walk in arguing over paperwork, loud, normal, exactly the kind of cover I’ve spent two months learning to fear on sight. My eyes move to them and I immediately realize something’s wrong.
Too early. Either they moved the window, or this was the backup team.
One of them peels off too cleanly.
No paperwork in his left hand. Right shoulder set wrongly under the jacket. Head turning, not to reception, to Cillian.
“Down!” I shout.
Everything breaks at once.
The man’s hand comes up from inside the municipal jacket with a compact pistol already leveled, and the first shot cracks through the lobby glass before anyone finishes reacting. Cillian turns toward the sound, fast but not fast enough, and I move into him on instinct, both hands shoving hard at his chest.
The second shot hits me high under the collarbone and spins me sideways.
I don’t feel pain first. I feel impact, heat, then the floor rushing up at the edge of my vision while guards draw and scream and glass bursts somewhere behind me. Cillian catches my arm before I fully go down, then another shot slams into the desk and the lobby fills with gunfire, people shouting, bodies dropping behind furniture.
His hand is on me, then under me, dragging me behind the reception wall while someone yells his name and Conall is firing in tight, controlled bursts toward the doors.
My mouth opens and nothing comes out but air.
Warmth spreads fast under my coat.
Cillian is in my face now, one hand pressing hard over the wound, the other gripping my jaw to keep me with him, and his voice is the only thing I can hear clearly. “Saoirse! Stay with me, please!”
“My baby,” I whisper, even as the world blurs. “Save my baby.”
19
CILLIAN
Her hand catches at my sleeve, slick and weak, and I lean closer to hear her over the gunfire and shouting.
“My baby,” she whispers, lips shaking. “Save my baby.”
For a second I don’t understand the words, even though I hear every one of them. My palm is pressed hard to the blood spreading under her coat, Conall is yelling for the cars, the lobby is full of glass and bodies and noise, and all I can see is her mouth forming that word again in my head.
Baby.
I stare at her, then at the blood on my hand, then back at her face, and something tears open inside my chest so fast, it leaves me lightheaded.
“Saoirse,” I say, and my voice comes out rough. “Stay with me. Stay with me.”
Conall drops beside us and grabs my shoulder. “Shooter’s down, second man ran, lobby secured. We need to move now.”
I slide one arm under her back and the other under her knees, and she cries out when I lift her, a broken sound that hits me harder than the shots did. Her head falls against my chest and her fingers clutch weakly at my coat.
“Easy,” I tell her, and I am already moving. “I’ve got you.”
The guards clear a path through shattered glass and dropped folders, and the receptionist is crouched behind the desk sobbing into both hands while one of my men drags a bleeding municipal jacket toward the wall. I step over a broken stanchion, keep pressure on Saoirse’s wound with my forearm, and push through the doors into the wet evening air.
