Chapter 7
Seven
C iaran awoke, the small cabin silent save for the even sounds of Loralei breathing next to him. It was wrong. There was such a thing as too quiet.
Outside, there was no sound. No birds called, no branches rustled. Everything was still.
On the nightstand, his phone blinked at him, the little green light alerting him to a message. Carefully and silently, he retrieved the device and scanned the text.
It was a warning from Matt, but it had come too late. Whoever was coming for them was already there.
Still lying back against the pillows, not wanting to be up, moving around, and making himself an even bigger target, Ciaran spoke softly.
“Loralei, it’s time to wake up,” he uttered.
“No,” she mumbled in response and snuggled deeper into the pillows.
“I don’t think you have a choice, love. They’re here,” he warned.
Her eyes opened, suddenly alert and wide awake. “How do you know? Did you hear something?”
“No. That’s the problem. The whole house is quiet…power has been cut. Truck is probably disabled. I would have done that first if it were me,” he replied, still keeping his tone barely above a whisper.
“What do we do?” she asked.
He hated to see her fear, hated to see the uncertainty in her eyes as she pondered their uncertain fate. It would be the last time, he swore, that she would have to feel that way.
Ciaran reached over the edge of the bed. The first article of clothing he found was her sweater, followed by his pants. He hauled them both up. “Put that on, but no large movements…move slowly, deliberately. Try to make as little noise as possible,” he whispered.
“Do you think they can see us?” she asked.
“I don’t know…but I wouldn’t bet against it.”
While Loralei donned her sweater, he slipped into his discarded jeans. Denim was hardly body armor, but he found himself reluctant to face off in a fight to the death with his dick hanging out.
There was no doubt for him that it would be a fight to the death. These weren’t the kind of people who understood mercy on either end of it. Leaving them alive was inviting them to come back.
He’d stashed his guns just beneath the bed while Loralei had slept. Now, closing his hand around the hilt of one, he checked the clip and then flipped the safety to the off position. All the while, he listened. There was a slight scuffling sound on the porch, something that, had he been asleep, he might never have heard.
“When I tell you,” he whispered, “I want you to hit the floor and crawl to that fucking kitchen. The island is the only cover we have.”
“Do you really think they’re not going to just shoot through these walls?”
“These walls are twelve-inch-thick logs. They’ll stop a bullet or, at the very least, make it ineffective. So just concentrate on getting to the kitchen where there’s no direct path from any window in here.”
“What about you?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear, tears shining in their depths.
“I’m going to end this in a less-than-law-abiding manner. Somehow, I don’t think your brother will mind,” he said as he grabbed one of the other guns he had at the ready. He pressed it into her hand.
“Ciaran, I don’t want to lose you now,” she said, even as she automatically checked the clip and flipped the safety off before looking up at him again. “If you screw up again, I want to have a chance to kill you myself.”
He would have laughed. By God, he wanted to. “You’ll get your shot, mavourneen ,” he vowed.
“I’m counting on it,” she said evenly.
He held up three fingers and began to count off. By the time he hit two, a tiny green dot from a laser site was dancing around the room, trying to find a target.
At one, Loralei did as he’d asked. She crawled toward the kitchen even as the first shot shattered the glass at the back half of the cabin. Ciaran moved quickly, getting into position against that wall, ready and waiting for whoever came through that window first.
When the first volley of gunfire ended, the bed was shredded. Bits of fabric and the innards of the mattress flitted about the room like a macabre snowfall.
What came next left him reeling. It wasn’t a person who came through the window. Instead, they tossed in a small green canister.
“Fuck,” he whispered and immediately turned his head away while covering his ears.
Even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his fists muffling the sound, the stun grenade was brutally effective at leaving his senses utterly worthless. All but blind and deaf from the concussive force and the flash, his stomach was rolling from the accompanying dizziness. Since he couldn’t see shit in front of him, the gun was all but useless.
Somehow, he got to his feet, but he was still staggering when the first man came through the remnants of the broken-out window. The first blow landed, the punch sending him back against the wall. Immediately, he dropped to a crouch and his fist shot out, landing a crippling blow to the other man’s balls. It was a cheap shot, but effective, and he couldn’t afford to fight fair. They weren’t.
“ Xyocec !” the man cursed as he lifted his weapon to fire.
Ciaran never gave him the chance. With his limited vision, the only shot he had was to stay in close contact with the other man and fight by feel.
They grappled for control of the gun, of each other. Ultimately, Ciaran managed to get the assailant in a hold he couldn’t break. Snapping someone’s neck wasn’t the simple thing it appeared to be in movies. Muscles tensed and resisted. The fight for survival and the adrenaline it produced had left them more evenly matched than he liked. Ciaran had the skill, but the other man was stronger, bigger.
Using his legs for more leverage, he tightened his hold around the man’s neck and applied more force with his opposite hand. With continued pressure and an unrelenting need to protect Loralei and get them both out alive, Ciaran didn’t stop until he heard that unmistakable sound. Whether the man was dead or alive, he wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Working to get to his feet again, he paused, still on his knees, when he felt the barrel against his temple. The flash of the grenade had decimated his peripheral vision and left him open. The second Russian had slipped in while they fought. Ciaran realized then that it had been the man’s intent all along. The other one had been sacrificed like a pawn.
“You are smarter than I gave you credit for, Irish.”
“Not bloody smart enough,” Ciaran snapped.
The Russian shrugged. “It cannot be helped. You are like the Americans say…a Boy Scout. You play by the rules. And men like me, we make the rules. We always win.”
“How the fuck would you know?” Ciaran shot back. “You never shut up long enough to find out!”
The Russian laughed. “It is a shame to put a bullet in your head. You have a way with words.”
Ciaran didn’t ask him not to. It was clear to both of them that the plan was already locked. “Just fucking get on with it then.”
Loralei felt as if she were underwater. The sounds were muffled. She could barely make out the words through the ringing in her ears, and even when she could, they hardly made sense. Her stomach churned, and the urge to throw up was insistent.
Somehow, with some strength of will she hadn’t known she possessed, she managed to get to her feet. Her eyes burned as she tried to take in the scene before her. The flash of light had been so intense that even know, minutes later, she was still seeing spots and halos.
Only a few feet from her, she could see two figures. There was no discerning who was who for her. Her vision was too distorted to tell them apart, except for one thing.
“High or low?” she demanded.
The Russian’s voice carried, the deep tones penetrating the fog left by the grenade. “You’ve been very difficult to track down, little shop girl.”
“Ciaran,” she said. “High or low?”
“High,” Ciaran finally answered.
Loralei balanced her hands on the counter and squeezed the trigger. The first shot went wide. She knew it instantly. Shifting slightly and planting her feet for stability, she fired again. The dim figure of the man who had been standing jerked backward, and a word that was clearly a curse, even if she didn’t understand it, escaped him.
Within seconds, she heard another shot, this time fired by someone else. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to assume that Ciaran had finished him off. She wasn’t sorry either.
Loralei sank to the floor and immediately threw up. The dizziness, the unimaginable pain in her head from the flash and concussion of the grenade, was just too much. Added to the fact that she’d just shot a man, and the man she was hopelessly in love with had just killed two men, vomiting and crying seemed like a perfectly legitimate response.
In the distance, the wail of sirens cut through the ringing. “Matt,” she whispered.
“He’s coming,” Ciaran answered. “And you won’t have to hide anymore.”
She didn’t answer, just closed her eyes, pressed her face against the cool wooden boards of the floor, and prayed for the waves of nausea to pass.