CHAPTER 20 Declan
The vibration of the helicopter floorboards hums steadily against the soles of my boots.
We are flying completely dark, the navigation lights killed the second we cleared the Miami coastline. The ocean beneath us is an endless, black void, indistinguishable from the sky except for the faint, pale reflection of the moon on the water.
I look down.
Maeve is fast asleep. Her head is resting heavily against my right collarbone, her face turned slightly inward toward my chest. Her left hand is still pressed flat against the bloody trauma pad on my shoulder, though her grip has gone slack with exhaustion.
She shouldn't be able to sleep. She was nearly killed on a roof less than forty minutes ago. Her nervous system should be completely redlining, forcing her to stay awake and scan for threats.
But she isn't scanning. She is leaning her entire body weight against me, trusting the steady rhythm of my heart to anchor her while we fly over the Atlantic.
Okay.
That single word, whispered into the comms headset, is playing on a relentless loop in my mind.
She didn't fight me. When I told her she was abandoning the continent, abandoning any hope of clearing her name and returning to the life she built in Chicago, she didn't panic. She just looked at me, accepted the absolute finality of my obsession, and chose to stay.
My left hand moves instinctively, my fingers brushing a tangled strand of dark hair away from her cheek. I trace the line of her jaw, stopping just short of the dark, ugly bruises on her throat.
The anger that flares in my chest is a cold, familiar burn.
I let an operative put his hands on her.
I let a cartel hitman get close enough to leave marks on her skin.
It is a tactical failure that I will not allow to happen again.
The island we are flying to is completely isolated.
It is a fortress surrounded by deep water, accessible only by coordinate-locked aviation systems and private docks.
No one will touch her there.
"Dec," the pilot’s voice crackles through the headset, breaking the silence of the cabin. "We're approaching the transfer point. The seaplane is fueled and waiting on the water. We have a ten-minute window to make the switch before the localized radar sweep cycles back."
"Understood," I reply, my voice low to avoid waking Maeve. "Is the medical bay on the island prepped?"
"Yeah. Leo forwarded the supply list to the caretaker.
You've got sutures, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and enough painkillers to drop a horse.
" The pilot pauses, the sound of static filling the line for a second.
"You know Leo burned the primary servers, right?
The firm is gone, man. The LLCs, the dummy accounts, the physical infrastructure in Denver. It's all ash."
"I gave the order."
"I know you did. I'm just saying... you just vaporized a fifty-million-dollar security firm for an accountant you met three days ago."
"I met her ninety-four days ago," I correct him, my tone sharpening into a warning. "And the firm was expendable. The asset is not."
The pilot doesn't argue. He knows better. "Copy that. Beginning descent."
The helicopter banks sharply to the right, the nose dipping toward the black water.
The change in altitude shifts the pressure in the cabin. Maeve groans softly, her brow furrowing in her sleep. Her hand slips from the trauma pad on my shoulder.
I catch her wrist before her arm can fall, holding her hand gently against my chest. The movement pulls the torn muscle in my shoulder, a sharp, biting pain that radiates down to my elbow.
The bleeding has slowed, but the gauze is completely saturated.
I need stitches, and I need them before the adrenaline fully wears off and the muscle begins to stiffen.
The helicopter hovers low over the water, the downdraft whipping the surface of the ocean into a violent, white-capped frenzy.
Below us, a sleek, twin-engine seaplane is idling on the dark water, its pontoons rocking heavily in the waves created by our rotors.
"Wake up," I murmur, my hand sliding to the back of Maeve’s neck. I squeeze gently, applying just enough pressure to pull her out of the deep sleep.
She gasps, her eyes snapping open. She looks around the dim cabin, disoriented, her breathing shallow and fast.
"We are transferring to the plane," I tell her, unbuckling my harness with my right hand.
She blinks, looking out the window at the dark water and the idling aircraft below. "We're jumping?"
"We are stepping down onto the pontoon. The pilot will hold the bird steady." I grab the waterproof laptop case from the floorboards. "Put your headset on the seat. When the door opens, you move fast. Do not look down at the water. Look at the door of the plane."
She nods, pulling the heavy headset off and dropping it onto the canvas webbing.
The side door of the helicopter slides open. The roar of the rotors and the violent, salty wind rush into the cabin. The helicopter drops another five feet, hovering inches above the right pontoon of the seaplane.
"Go," I order, staying close behind her.
Maeve steps out onto the metal skid of the helicopter. The wind whips her dark hair wildly around her face. She doesn't hesitate. She steps across the narrow gap, her heavy tactical boots hitting the wet, slippery metal of the pontoon.
She grabs the handle of the plane’s side door, pulling it open, and scrambles inside.
I follow her, tossing the laptop case into the cabin before pulling myself through the narrow doorway.
The seaplane pilot doesn't wait for us to sit down. The second the door slams shut, the engines roar, the propellers biting into the heavy, humid air. The plane surges forward, bouncing violently across the waves before the nose lifts, pulling us up into the dark sky.
The interior of the plane is cramped, smelling strongly of aviation fuel and old leather. There are only four seats.
Maeve drops into one of the rear seats, buckling the heavy, four-point harness across her chest. She watches me as I take the seat opposite her.
The cabin light is off, but the moonlight streaming through the small windows illuminates the dark, wet stain spreading across my shoulder and down the side of my tactical pants.
"You're still bleeding," she says. Her voice is tight, the exhaustion temporarily pushed aside by the immediate physical reality of the wound.
"The pressure pad slipped during the transfer." I reach up with my right hand, pressing the saturated gauze back against the torn muscle.
"Let me see it."
She unbuckles her harness and moves across the narrow aisle, dropping into the seat directly beside me. The space is entirely too small for two people. Her knees brush against my thigh.
"It requires sutures," I tell her, keeping my hand over the pad. "There is a medical bay at the destination. It can wait."
"It can't wait, Declan. You're leaving a puddle on the floor." She reaches out, her fingers wrapping around my wrist. She doesn't pull my hand away; she just applies a steady, stubborn pressure. "Move your hand."
I look at her. The dark bruises on her neck. The dried white chemical foam still clinging to the edges of her tactical jacket. She has been shot at, chased down a stairwell, and dragged across the ocean in the middle of the night.
She should be catatonic. Instead, she is fighting me for control of my own bleeding shoulder.
I drop my hand.
She carefully peels the ruined trauma pad away from my skin. The wound is ugly. The 9mm round carved a deep, jagged trench through the top layer of muscle, missing the bone by less than an inch. The edges of the skin are raw and inflamed.
Maeve inhales sharply, her eyes widening as she processes the severity of the damage.
"This isn't a graze," she whispers, her voice trembling slightly. "This is a hole."
"It is a superficial tissue tear."
"Stop talking like a textbook." She turns around, grabbing the small first-aid kit I brought from the helicopter. She rips it open, pulling out a fresh roll of gauze and a bottle of sterile saline. "If you lose too much blood, you're going to pass out. And I don't know how to fly a plane."
"The pilot is flying the plane."
"You know what I mean."
She pours the saline over the fresh gauze and presses it firmly against the wound.
I hiss, a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. The salt bites into the torn muscle, a sudden, blinding flash of pain that makes my vision white out for a fraction of a second. My right hand shoots out, gripping her thigh hard enough to leave bruises.
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," she murmurs, her other hand coming up to rest flat against my chest, right over my heart. "Just breathe. I have to clean the edges so the tape sticks."
I don't breathe. I focus entirely on the pressure of her hand against my chest. Her palm is warm. Her fingers are trembling slightly, but her grip is steady.
She works quickly, her brow furrowed in concentration. She wipes away the fresh blood, applies a thick layer of sterile padding, and wraps a long strip of medical tape tightly around my shoulder and under my armpit, securing the bandage in place.
"There," she says, her voice breathless. She leans back slightly, inspecting her work. "It's not pretty, but it should hold until we land."
"Thank you."
She doesn't move back to her seat. She stays right where she is, her knees pressed against my thigh, her hand still resting flat against my chest.
The adrenaline of the transfer is fading, leaving behind the heavy, suffocating intimacy of the small cabin. The roar of the plane engines isolates us completely from the rest of the world.
She looks up at my face. The moonlight catches the dark, chaotic intelligence in her eyes.
"You burned your company," she says quietly.
I freeze.
I didn't think she heard the conversation with the helicopter pilot over the noise of the rotors. I underestimated her ability to process data under duress.
"Yes," I answer, seeing no tactical advantage in lying.
"Fifty million dollars. A physical infrastructure. A reputation." She traces the edge of my collarbone with her thumb, a slow, deliberate movement that sends a violent shiver down my spine. "You destroyed all of it."
"It was compromised. The cartel knew the operational parameters."
"Don't do that," she interrupts, her voice hardening slightly. "Don't hide behind the logistics. You didn't burn it because it was compromised. You burned it because they used it to track me."
I look down at her. She is demanding honesty. She is demanding that I acknowledge the absolute, terrifying depth of what I am willing to do to keep her.
"I burned it because it was a liability," I say, my voice dropping to a low, rough rumble. "And I will burn anything else that threatens to take you away from me."
Maeve stares at me. Her lips part slightly, her breath catching in her bruised throat.
She doesn't look horrified. She looks fascinated.
"You really are a monster," she whispers.
"I never claimed to be anything else."
I reach up, my right hand tangling in the messy knot of her hair. I pull her forward, closing the distance between us. I don't kiss her gently. I kiss her with all the dark, possessive violence that I have been carefully suppressing since I first saw her face on a surveillance feed.
She gasps against my mouth, her hands sliding up my chest to grip my shoulders. She doesn't pull away. She kisses me back with the same desperate, hungry intensity, her tongue sliding against mine, tasting like salt and adrenaline.
She shifts her weight, swinging her leg over my lap, straddling my thighs in the narrow airplane seat.
The sudden friction of her body pressing down against my center is a shock of pure, unadulterated heat. I groan, a harsh, guttural sound that gets swallowed by her mouth. My hands slide down her back, gripping her hips, pulling her tighter against me.
"Declan," she breathes, breaking the kiss just enough to gasp for air. Her forehead rests against mine, her eyes closed, her chest heaving against my bare skin.
"I have you," I murmur, my thumbs pressing into the heavy fabric of her tactical pants.
We stay like that for the rest of the flight. Tangled together in the dark, the roar of the engines drowning out the silence.
I don't sleep. I watch her breathe. I watch the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest.
Two hours later, the pitch of the engines changes. The plane begins a steep descent.
I look out the small window.
Below us, rising out of the black, endless expanse of the ocean, is a massive, dark shape. There are no city lights. There are no roads. There is only a single, illuminated runway cutting through a dense, tropical jungle.
"Wake up," I murmur, my hand stroking her back.
Maeve stirs, lifting her head. She looks out the window, her eyes widening as the island comes into view.
"Where are we?" she asks, her voice thick with sleep.
"We are off the map," I reply, my grip on her hips tightening possessively.
The plane hits the runway with a heavy jolt, the tires screeching against the asphalt. We taxi toward a massive, dark hangar hidden beneath the canopy of the trees.
The engines cut off. The sudden silence is deafening.
I look at the woman sitting in my lap. She is bruised, exhausted, and completely cut off from the rest of the world.
And she is finally, entirely, mine.