Chapter 30
Saoirse
I came to slowly, groggily taking stock of my stiff neck and arms, burning with an ache that didn’t go away when I shifted.
Mostly because I couldn’t shift. The ropes across my chest dug in when I inhaled too deeply.
My shoulders throbbed from the zipties securing my arms behind me, and the post at my back felt harder than stone.
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Hadn’t thought I would. But exhaustion must have caught up with me when I wasn’t looking, like it always did after too many hours on-call. This time, though, there was no phone or message service. Only rough restraints and a dirt floor.
Somewhere behind me, Isla shifted, making a low, pained sound that twisted in my chest. I turned my head slightly and caught the faint sound of voices outside the tent.
Two men arguing. Not loud, but sharp. One voice short and annoyed, the kind of tone that said he thought this entire situation was beneath him.
The other flatter, more clipped. Calm in a way that made my skin crawl.
I strained to listen. The words didn’t quite make it through the canvas. The cadence and rhythm were enough to stir something sour in my gut. I didn’t know what I was afraid of yet. Only that I was.
The flap of the tent tore open without warning. Harsh morning light slashed through the gloom, catching dust in the air and stabbing at my eyes. I flinched, instinctively turning my face away even before two sets of heavy, unhurried footsteps followed.
Boots crunched on the packed dirt. A flashlight beam swept across the space, grazing Isla first and then slanting toward my side of the pole. It hit me full in the face.
I blinked hard, vision swimming. The light dipped lower, scanning the ropes across my chest, then lifted again.
“Well, that explains the noise last night.” The vaguely bored voice was smooth and polished.
I didn’t have to see him to know. But I looked anyway.
Victor Sandhurst stood inside the tent, dressed in a perfectly fitted waxed canvas jacket, like he thought this was some sort of wilderness photoshoot.
Not a fleck of dirt on him. His expression, as he looked at me, wasn’t angry or surprised.
It was faintly amused. Like finding me tied up in his secret hunting camp was a mild inconvenience.
“Well, well.” Victor drew the words out like a toast. “Saoirse MacGregor. Didn’t expect to find someone of your pedigree all the way out here.”
The knot in my stomach cinched tight.
Of course he recognized me. Of course. That smooth, smug smile was the same one I remembered from the few tedious charity functions my mother had forced me to attend in my early twenties.
The kind where the champagne was flat, the conversation dull, and the men twice my age leered at me like I was a canapé.
I met his gaze and didn’t blink. Let him see the disgust. The defiance. The utter lack of fear I refused to let show, even if I was hanging on by threads.
The other man—older, broader, with the deep tan of someone who actually spent time outdoors—turned slightly toward him. “You know her?”
Victor didn’t take his eyes off me. “Daughter of Marian Rothwell-Pennington MacGregor.” He reeled off the information as if reciting from a social register.
“The Rothwell-Penningtons are quite the name in certain circles. Old money. Old manners. Shame she’s chosen to waste all that on mud and stray dogs. ”
My hands flexed uselessly behind my back, the zipties biting harder.
I wanted to lunge at him. Scratch that perfect facade until it bled. But all I could do was stare and breathe and promise myself that if I got out of this, I’d make damn sure Victor Sandhurst never smiled like that again.
Victor began to circle, slow and measured, the way a man might inspect a prize horse. Hands clasped behind his back, face the picture of thoughtful disdain.
“Your mother always did have such high hopes for you,” he mused. “Marrying well. Hosting tasteful luncheons. Keeping the right sort of company.”
He paused at my side, just out of reach, though I had no reach to give. His gaze swept lazily across my face like I was an inconvenience, not a person.
“I can only imagine what she’d say if she saw you now. Filthy. Tied up. Meddling where you don’t belong.” His voice dropped, the silk peeling back to steel. “It would be a terrible scandal, don’t you think? The daughter of Marian MacGregor found trespassing in the wrong forest. So far from home.”
My jaw clenched. I didn’t respond. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Behind him, the other man shifted his weight. “She’s a liability.”
Victor didn’t look away from me as he nodded once. “Precisely.”
Then, with that same easy chill, he added, “And liabilities… have a way of disappearing in these woods.”
The words hung there, suspended in the musty air of the tent. Calmly stated, as though I were already half-forgotten.
A decision, not a debate.
My blood went cold. Not with panic. Panic would’ve been a mercy. This was something heavier. Thicker. A crawling, suffocating clarity that settled into my lungs and refused to let go.
They didn’t intend to let us walk away from this.
Not me. Not Isla.
I didn’t need to hear the words spelled out to understand what had happened.
Without raising his pitch or lifting a hand, Victor had issued the order in that smooth, aristocratic voice.
The same voice I’d heard at charity auctions and ribbon-cuttings.
The same one that once tried to coax my mother into joining yet another of his insufferable foundations.
Now he was weighing my life like a line item on a balance sheet.
I turned my head, as much as the ropes would allow, and caught Isla’s profile. Her eyes were wide. Too wide. Not with surprise. With recognition.
She understood too.
No one was coming back to ask more questions. No one was waiting to ransom us. We weren’t hostages. We were problems. And problems in operations like this didn’t get solved. They got erased.
My chest ached with how badly I wanted to reach for her. To put some kind of barrier between her and the fear crawling up her throat. But all I had was breath and the frantic drum of a prayer I hadn’t even realized I was repeating.
Come on, Finn. Please.
I lifted my chin. The movement scraped the back of my head against the pole, but I didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. I stared straight at him, locking my gaze with the man who’d signed my death warrant with the same tone he probably used to order wine.
“You won’t get away with this.” My voice came out raw but steady.
Victor smiled. Politely. As if I’d made a na?ve but charming observation at a dinner party. “We’ll see.”
He didn’t look at Isla or back at me before he turned on his heel, the guard following him out with a heavy shuffle of boots. The tent flap zipped shut behind them, the sound crisp and final.
And then the silence came crashing back in. Dense and suffocating, broken only by our breathing and the fading echo of their words.
We weren’t prisoners anymore. We were prey.
The quiet settled like dust, clinging to everything. My arms ached. My throat burned. I’d long since stopped feeling my fingers.
Behind me, Isla shifted—barely. I heard the rasp of her jacket against the rope, the small hitch in her breath. She didn’t speak.
So I did. “He’s coming.” My whisper cracked on the declaration, soft as a bruise. “Finn’s coming.”
For a moment, she said nothing.
When it came, her voice was smaller than I’d ever heard it. “You’re sure?”
I closed my eyes. Let my head fall back against the pole. I knew beyond a doubt he’d come. But he was only one man, bringing a knife to a fight against a whole lot of guns, and I could only pray he wouldn’t become yet another victim of privileged men’s egos.