“Stay with me,” I say, lower this time. “You hear me? Stay.”
The lead car turns sharply and the gates open ahead. Concrete walls. Security lights. The old stone façade still visible behind the newer glass wing. Men are waiting under the covered entrance before we stop, Dr. Fallon in dark scrubs, two nurses, a trauma trolley, one orderly I know by name from a knife fight eight years ago.
The SUV brakes hard. My door is open at once.
“Gunshot left upper chest,” I say as I climb out, still holding her. “Conscious on and off. She’s pregnant.”
Fallon’s face changes, all business, no surprise. “How many weeks?”
“I don’t know.”
He swears once under his breath and points. “Inside. Move.”
They take her from my arms, and she cries out again when they transfer her to the trolley. Her hand catches my shirt and slips free, leaving a streak of blood across my chest. I move with them through the doors, wet shoes on polished tile, nurses cutting her coat open while Fallon checks her pupils and barks orders for imaging, trauma, obstetrics, blood, ultrasound, security lock on the floor.
“Cillian,” she says, eyes barely open now.
“I’m here,” I answer, walking beside the trolley as long as they let me.
The corridor lights are too bright, and the smell of antiseptic hits the back of my throat while they push her toward the double doors at the end of trauma. Fallon turns, plants a hand on my chest, and stops me there.
“You wait.”
I look past him at her, blood on the sheet, her face pale, one arm hanging as a nurse lifts it back onto the bed, and the doors swing shut between us before I can speak.
The corridor goes quiet in a way that feels wrong after so much noise, and I stand there with blood drying on my hands while Fallon’s staff move around me like they’ve done this a hundred times and cannot afford to care who I am while they work. A nurse guides me toward a private waiting room off trauma, another brings towels and a basin, and I let them push me through the motions only when Conall steps in and says my name twice.
“Boss.”
I sit. Barely.
The room is small and built for wealthy panic, soft chairs, muted lamps, a locked cabinet of bottled water, framed prints chosen to offend no one. My shirt sticks to my side, my knuckles ache, and there is blood on my cuff that is hers and blood on the seam near my ribs that is mine. I strip off the jacket and hand it to Conall.
“Get rid of it.”
He takes it and sets a phone on the table in front of me. “Recorder file is backed up. Patrol team sent over the lobby pulls. We’ve got stills on the shooter and partial on the outer vehicle.”
I scrub both hands over my face and force my thoughts into order. Fear wants the whole room. It does not get it.
“Talk.”
Conall opens the tablet and starts laying it out piece by piece while Nikolas joins us from the hall with another folder and a coffee I do not touch. The shooter in the lobby came in under municipal cover with forged work papers that would pass at a glance. The dead man at the door had no prints in the system under the name on his license. One of the cars seen two blocks off the Byrne office had cloned plates, then was dumped near the river. The bike unit she warned about was spotted fifteen minutes later near the bridge works after our convoy route changed. Empty. Riders gone.
So she was right.
Not partly right. Not close enough. Right.
Conall slides the file she brought across the table, now sealed in a clear evidence sleeve, and I open it again with cleaner hands and a dirtier mind. Payment chains through shell charities. Marine repair subcontractor. Timing windows. Route notes. Two names I have seen in old port chatter and one I know from a warehouse fire in Galway that was called accidental by men paid to keep their mouths shut.
Keanesits in the middle of it like a stain that never came out.
I lean back and stare at the ceiling for one long breath, then lean forward again and tap the page with one finger. “This line. The bridge works timing.”
Nikolas checks his notes. “Confirmed lane narrowing from municipal permits, two temporary barriers, one blind bend from scaffold sheeting.”
“They were building a box.”
“Yes.”
