Chapter 31 #2
Another burst rips across the path. Stone spits from the wall near my shoulder.
“Pick one.”
His expression goes murderous.
Declan fires twice more from behind the tree and shouts, “I am running out of patience and bullets here.”
Aidan glances down the wall, then back at me. He gets it. “The gate’s our only angle.” Cormac swears under his breath.
“Three,” I say.
“No.”
“Two.”
“Dervla—”
“One.”
I move before he can stop me.
I bolt low along the library wall, half bent, gun tucked tight, boots hammering the narrow strip of grass and mud.
Gunfire erupts behind me at once as the others open up hard enough to drag the van team’s attention.
Bullets bite into stone over my head. One smacks the wall so close that grit stings my face.
I keep going.
The gate appears out of the dark. Old iron. Chain. Padlock.
“Of course,” I mutter.
I slam into the wall beside it, suck in a breath, level the gun and shoot the lock. The crack rings against stone. Metal snaps. I kick the gate with my boot, and it swings open just enough for me to squeeze through.
Behind me, Cormac roars something furious, but I’m already through.
The gate slams off the wall behind me as I shove it wider and sprint into the rear quad. The ground changes under my boots from mud to slick stone. The back of the library rises to my left. Ahead, the service road cuts between buildings and disappears into the shadow.
Troy is twenty yards in front of me.
My whole body lights up.
He looks back, sees me, and his expression changes for the first time tonight. Not panic. Annoyance. Like I have failed to follow the script he wrote in his own head.
“Fuck you,” I spit, and fire.
The shot goes wide, sparks off the stone near his shoulder, and he cuts right down a narrow passage between the library annexe and the old records building. Tight. Dark. Stupid place to follow somebody.
I do it anyway.
I hit the passage at speed, one hand skimming the wall to keep balance. The space is barely wide enough for two people abreast. Drainpipes. Bins. Damp stone. My breath scrapes in and out of me. His footfalls echo ahead. He is close. So close.
Then he vanishes.
I skid hard, nearly going on my arse, and flatten myself to the wall just as a shot cracks out from the darkness ahead.
I drop on instinct.
The bullet smashes into the stone where my head was a second ago and ricochets down the passage. Pain slams through my knees as I hit the ground. My palm skids on wet grit. I roll behind a bin hard enough to bruise my hip and fire back blindly towards where the shot came from.
No footsteps. No movement. Just the blood pounding in my ears and the distant chaos from the van team behind the library.
He is here. Close.
I drag in one breath and look fast.
The passage opens into a tiny service court at the far end. One door to the records building. One to the annexe. External stairs up to a fire exit. Shadows packed into every corner. Plenty of places for a bastard to wait with a gun.
I shift position, staying low, using the bins and wall for cover. If Troy wanted me dead outright, he had a cleaner shot when I entered the passage. That means he wants me moving. Wants me committed. Wants me to make mistakes.
Bad news for him. I’m already in a murderous mood. I stay still and listen.
A soft scrape comes from above.
I twist and fire towards the external stairs at the same second Troy steps out from underneath them, using the metal frame and shadow to break up his shape. My shot slams into the stair rail. His takes a chunk out of the bin beside my head.
“Fuck.”
“You’re almost out,” Troy’s voice echoes around me. “You have two, maybe three shots left.”
Fuck.
“You’ve been counting.”
“Old habit.” He steps into view. “You are right where I want you.”
He raises his gun, but before I can move, a shot pings out and slams into the middle of his forehead.
“Do not do that again,” Cormac says, coming up behind me.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” I ask, breathless with nerves. That was close.
Too close.
Cormac gives me a look that says if I push him right now, he might throw me over his shoulder and lock me in a cellar.
Then gunfire cracks from the far side of the library, and the moment dies.
“Conversation later,” Aidan snaps, appearing at the mouth of the passage with Declan right behind him. “Move.”
I look once at Troy’s body sprawled under the metal stairs. Half his head is gone. His expensive coat is ruined. His one good hand lies open beside him like he dropped whatever script he thought he was writing for the rest of us.
For one ugly second, I just stare.
That’s it.
No grand speech. No final cleverness. No reveal about how he had it all planned.
Just blood on concrete and a dead psychopath in a service court.
“Dervla.” Cormac’s voice hits hard. “Now.”
I blink and move. “He’s dead.”
“No shit,” Declan says. “The van team is still very much alive.”
We head for the passage mouth at a run. Aidan catches my wrist for half a second, checking I’m actually with them, then lets go and sends me ahead of him.
We hit the rear quad just as another burst of automatic fire chews into the stone near the gate I came through.
“Still there?” I ask.
“Two outside, at least one in the van,” Declan says. “Maybe more.”
The sirens are suddenly loud in the dark.
“The Gardaí,” Declan snaps.
“We need to get back to the house.”
“How?” Cormac asks.
“Wait,” Aidan says, holding up his hand. “Not the Gardaí. The cavalry.”
“Oh, you are fucking joking,” I snap when I see the CTU badge on the side of the van. “I’m going to kill Séamus.”
“At least you’re alive to do it,” Declan points out.
“Thanks to Cormac,” Aidan grits out. “You were seconds away…”
“I know. He baited me, and I fell for it. Trust me, lesson learned.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Cormac says.
“Who is going to deal with that?” Declan says.
“Me,” I say, holding up my hand. “Hopefully, I’ll be dealing with the same idiots who tried to arrest us.”
I shove through the gate before any of them can stop me and stride straight into the wash of headlights.
Black vans. Tactical gear. Armed officers pouring out with brutal efficiency. Red and blue light skates over wet stone, old walls, shattered glass. One of the CTU men nearest the front lifts a hand the second he sees me advancing with a gun in my hand and blood on my face.
“Drop the weapon.”
“Oh, get fucked,” I snap back, then lower the gun anyway because I’m not in the mood to get shot by the state after surviving Troy Kavanagh.
A figure steps out from behind the lead van in a dark coat with entirely too much confidence.
Séamus.
“You called in a tactical unit?” I demand.
He looks at the dead men by the road, the van, the ruined path, then back at me. “I did try to tell you by phone. You ignored my call.”
Behind me, Aidan, Cormac and Declan fan out, still armed, still wired, still ready to turn this into a second firefight if anybody twitches wrong. The CTU officers notice. I notice them noticing.
One of them says into a radio, “Principals secure.”
Principals.
I nearly laugh.
I drag a hand through my hair and look past the vans towards the road where Troy’s men are either dead, bleeding, or being hauled out at gunpoint by officers in black helmets.
One is face-down on the tarmac with a boot between his shoulder blades.
Another is kneeling with his hands on his head, blood down his collar.
Troy is dead.
It’s not the end of it. There will always be more coming to test me, but it’s satisfying anyway to know that this particular arsehole is gone, and we can move on with our lives.
“Let’s go home,” I say to my guys. “I am over this now. We have our lives to live, and it’s not waiting for Troy to make his move anymore.”
“Agreed,” Declan says, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Whatever comes next, we can handle, but tonight, let’s just get take-away and sit in front of the TV for a while.”
I grin up at him. “Sounds like a fucking plan.”
I shoot Séamus a smile, and he nods once. We head back across campus towards home, where everything can wait for a night before we have to deal with it. Tonight is for us.
Tonight, and the rest of our lives.