15. Ruairí
RUAIRí
T he port contractors take up two-thirds of the boardroom.
It's not meant for bodies, this space—it's meant for documents, for spreadsheets and diagrams and the backwash from cheap percolator coffee.
The contractors are all ex-military, every last one, so when I walk in they stand and go still, like they've been waiting since last week.
Fiachra sits at my left, arms folded, eyes on the door, playing at being bored but ready to kill if I so much as nod.
The first hour is routine—review of shipping manifests, inspection logs, discrepancy between the digital manifests and the actual barcode tallies.
The contractors try to talk in code, but they're bad at it.
I don't interrupt, just let the conversation circle and spiral, a bath drain of jargon and plausible deniability.
Every ten minutes, someone—always the youngest—glances up at the mirrored glass and wonders if it's one-way.
I don't tell them it's a moot point.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, the haptic signature of an in-house call.
I ignore it.
Fiachra sees me do it and raises one brow, just a hair.
I'm tempted to grin, but the next vibration is different—two short, one long, the urgent pattern that gets through even if you're in the middle of church, confession, or a council session.
I slide the phone up, don't bother to hide it.
The message is a single line, all caps?—
TARGET LOST.
POSSIBLE brEACH.
I don't need to read it twice.
I stand, the chair scraping a chord across the tiles, and the contractors all go silent.
The oldest, a barrel-chested man with nicotine stains where his mustache used to be, starts to protest, but I cut him off with a hand.
"Five minutes," I say.
"Smoke break."
Fiachra is up a half-second later, already pulling on the blazer he'd draped over his chair.
We exit in tandem, stride matching.
The hallway outside the boardroom is a vacuum, every molecule of air replaced with the flavor of unfinished business and the faint electrical hum of bad news.
He doesn't ask.
He just waits.
"She's gone," I say.
He clicks his tongue.
"Which exit?"
I flip to the secondary report, already in my inbox.
"West gate. Lena was on detail, she took a bad hit but survived."
Fiachra's eyes go flat, the way they do when he's about to snap someone's collarbone.
We cross the main corridor, past the vestibule with its shriveled potted plants and the blank-eyed stares of the antique portraits, to the secure comms room.
We step inside, and the shift captain is waiting.
She's young, good at her job, and not at all interested in small talk.
"Time of deviation?" I ask.
The captain doesn't hesitate.
"09:32. Lena's GPS tracker cuts east off the planned route, just past Kilbride. Thirty-seven seconds later, all comms drop. Visual feeds from the car's dashcam and local traffic cams are scrambled—tight pulse interference, military-grade."
Fiachra paces near the map board, fingers trailing the county lines.
"Ambush?"
She nods.
"Road was clear at 09:30. By 09:33, there's a van boxing them from behind and a black SUV ahead. Rural bypass. No through traffic for miles."
I rest both hands on the table.
The surface is cold, steel through paper.
"And Lena?"
"She was found just after eleven. Crawled out of a drainage culvert on the north side of the field."
A pause.
"She played dead. Took a blow to the ribs, a head wound. They left her."
"Left her?" Fiachra says, sharp.
"Thought she was down for good," the captain replies.
"Blood trail led to the ditch. She held breath, slowed pulse. Smart move."
Fiachra mutters something that sounds like a prayer for vengeance.
"What'd she say?" I ask.
"Van was tagged ‘Murphy's Flour'—bogus. Driver never spoke. Two hostiles. One used a stun agent on the girl. Cloth and chemical. Took her unconscious. Lena tried to fight—got one of them in the thigh with a boot blade. Didn't stop them."
I shut my eyes for half a second.
"She see plates?"
"Scrubbed. Classic wash-and-burn. We found the van dumped near Castlewarden. No prints. No blood. No cameras. Keys still in the dash. Engine cold. Whoever they are, they're practiced."
I stare at the surveillance grid, all squares lit up now, feeds clear and useless.
"Chatter?" I ask .
"Dead silent," the captain replies.
"No syndicate calls, no flagged networks pinging for movement. If this is connected to the Connollys, they're being careful."
"They're always careful," Fiachra mutters.
The captain continues, tone precise.
"We pulled every vendor log for the past month. No ‘Murphy's Flour' deliveries. Not even a shell listing. The logo was a mock-up. The van was clean, but older. Retired from public fleet two years ago. Bought at auction in Meath. Buyer listed as a woman who died in 2019."
Fake IDs.
Paper ghosts.
The kind of work you only see from men who expect no consequences.
I flex my hand once against the steel.
"And Keira?"
"Last conscious ping from her phone was 08:43. Basic check-in text. After that—offline. SIM removed or destroyed."
With a tight nod of acknowledgment, I go to Lena next.
She's in the living room, sitting at the table with her palms up like she's expecting a set of cuffs.
She starts without preamble.
"Two vehicles. The van tailed us for eighteen minutes. The SUV came from the trees—blocked the front."
"You clock them before impact?"
She nods.
"I did. Too late to warn her without tipping them. I tried to get her out."
I don't interrupt.
"Four men total. Two emerged from the van. One hit her with the cloth—chloroform, probably. The other covered me."
"You got one."
"Knife to the thigh. Slowed him, not enough. The big one slammed me into the gravel, broke a rib or two. I dropped, went limp. Played dead. They left me.”
"I stayed still until I heard the van drive off, then crawled into the ditch, used the culvert to get distance. Found a farmhouse. Called in at eleven-oh-seven."
My jaw ticks once.
"You see faces?"
"Gloved. Masked. Military movement, not street."
She pauses.
"Professional. Quick. No chatter."
"You think they knew who she was?"
"Yes," she says simply.
"They knew exactly what they were taking."
I file it away.
"You did what you could."
Lena looks me in the eye.
"It wasn't enough."
My reply is quiet.
"Then we make sure next time, it is."
Fiachra waits in the hallway, leaning against the jamb.
He doesn't look at me when I join him.
"Council?" he says, the word a dare.
I shake my head.
"Not yet. We run it close."
He grins, liking this more than he lets on.
I head to the surveillance room, where my man Tomas has three screens running, each playing back the same thirty-second slice from a different angle.
He sits hunched, chewing the skin off his thumb, sweat pooling in the crease of his neck.
He doesn't look up when I enter.
"South quay, petrol station," he says, voice flat.
"First sighting since the bypass."
I step behind him.
The room smells of cold sweat and overclocked processors.
On screen—a van, battered, the plates so caked in road grit they might as well be blacked out.
It glides to a stop at the farthest pump.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then the driver's door cracks, and a figure unfolds—tall, coat zipped to the chin, a beanie pulled low.
The walk is deliberate, head down, hands in pockets.
They round the front, squat to check the tire, glance up once at the CCTV.
It's not Keira.
It's not even a woman .
But in the moment the van's back window catches the overhead light, I see a shadow.
A figure, small, slumped, head lolling to the side.
It's only for a heartbeat—then the footage stutters, artifacts ripple across the feed, and the next frame is a blank whiteout.
Tomas rewinds, plays it again slowly.
The hair is wrong for anyone but her.
The way the shoulders slope.
Even unconscious, she manages to look defiant.
I watch it six times.
At the end, I let my hands rest on Tomas's shoulders, gentle.
He says, "The van left east, toward the port. No other cameras pick it up.”
"Get me a list of every storage yard and private dock between here and Sandymount. Cross with the Connolly shell companies."
He nods, already working the search.
I leave him to it.
I cross to the back wall, where the lockers stand in a line, each marked with a number instead of a name.
I punch in the code; swing open the door.
The inside is orderly—top shelf, a duffel. Bottom, a rolled tarp, two boxes of latex gloves, a can of orange spray paint.
I take the duffel, unzip it on the steel bench. Inside—claw hammer, zip ties, gas canister.
I add a box cutter and a folded utility vest, then zip the bag tight.
Every motion is deliberate, the way my father showed me when I was ten and he taught me to crack open a lock without waking the neighbors.
As I hoist the duffel, Killian slips in.
He's already in field kit, hair slicked back, eyes sharp but with that glassy, sleepless sheen I've seen before the worst nights.
"We've got movement?" he asks.
I nod.
He takes the bag from my hand, slings it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing.
"Tomas said to gas the car. "
"Thirty seconds," I say.
He's gone before I finish.
I stand alone, listening to the hum of the servers, the soft whine of the cooling fans.
My hands are steady, but there's a pulse in my head, a rising pressure behind my eyes.
I look at the clock, then away.
On the way out, I pass Fiachra in the stairwell.
"Found her?" he says, and there's hope and fear in equal measure.
"We have a fix," I tell him.
He follows, silent.
Outside, the wind is sharp enough to strip the paint off a car.
The sky is that particular blue-gray you only see before a snowstorm, heavy and predatory.
The team is already at the curb—Killian at the wheel, Tomas in the back, his laptop open and running on the dash.
I slide in, and no one says a word.
As the engine starts, I say, "They took my wife."
No one corrects me.
I look at them, one by one, and see what I need to see—the readiness, the anticipation, the fear.
"We're not stopping," I say, "until I bring her home myself."
For the first time all day, I let myself feel the hunger.
I roll it around in my mouth, taste the copper and iron of it.
We are coming.