Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
CLOVER
“ H ere ya are, love. All packed up.”
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, clutching Damien’s shirt as I stared at the hallway that led to the back door, waiting for him to return.
Turning to face Kate, who was coming down the stairs behind me, I forced a smile as she handed me a military-looking backpack stuffed to the brim. Damien had told me to pack up our things, which I had assumed meant our new toothbrushes and travel-sized toiletries, but Kate must have taken it upon herself to throw in half the pantry as well.
The sight of that backpack reminded me of the one I’d left in Howth. Of my mother’s books. Of my mother, period.
She would have done the same thing.
“Kate, this is too much,” I said, accepting the heavy bag with a grateful smile.
“I run a bakery. I’ve got plenty of food. And we’ve got runnin’ water, so you two need the bottled stuff more than we do.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Kate cleared her throat. It was dark in the stairwell, but I could hear the emotion in her voice as she struggled to find her next words. “I wish ya could stay.”
“Me too.” I nodded as I slung the bag over my shoulder. “Maybe we can come back, once things calm down.”
“Ya mean once we’re all speakin’ Russian?” Jack added from her place behind the bakery counter. She was using a handheld mirror to look out the large front windows. “Shite. It’s almost at the end of the harbor.”
I heard the back door open, but before Jack could even draw her gun, Damien emerged from the hallway. My heart stopped, just like it did every time I looked at him. His bare chest was smeared with blood, but the bandages I’d applied to his bullet wounds after our … activities the night before were still nice and clean.
Just one more thing I had to thank Kate for.
I felt her bristle at my side. As Damien approached, she dropped her head and stared at her wringing hands.
“It’s comin’ back,” Jack said, watching the drone in the mirror. “Ya better go. Now.”
With a nod, Damien turned his full attention to me, and I held up his open shirt with trembling hands.
Once he slid his arms into it, I let go and gave Kate a grateful, grief-stricken hug. “I can’t thank you enough. For everything. We’ll see ya again, yeah?”
Kate didn’t even pretend like that was true. She simply squeezed me tighter and whispered in my ear, “Take care of him,” her voice as broken as the dishes she’d cleaned up.
As soon as I released her, Damien stepped into the stairwell and wrapped his good arm around her tiny shoulders. He couldn’t pretend like this wasn’t goodbye either. The two of them simply hugged in silence until Kate burst into tears and ran back up the stairs.
“It’s the shirt,” Jack said, her eyes still glued to the mirror. “Go on now. It’s movin’ fast. Just take this road behind us north, and you’ll run right into the train station. I hear the rail union’s gonna keeping trains runnin’ to help evacuate folks from occupied cities, so … ya might be in luck.”
Darting over to Jack, I gave her a full-body squeeze, which she reciprocated by patting me awkwardly on the arm. Damien followed with some military fist bump/back slap combo that she seemed much more comfortable with, and before I could thank her for letting us stay, I was whisked into the hallway and out the back door.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Damien had left the back door of the pub unlocked, and inside, it already looked like a crime scene. Broken glass and furniture littered the floor. Tables and chairs were scattered and knocked over. The place reeked of spilled alcohol from the night before. And when we walked past the stairwell, I glanced over at it and screamed.
“Shite,” Damien hissed, escorting me past the man lying face up on the stairs with a bleeding hole between his eyes. “Shoulda warned ya about that.”
I could hear the propellers now. The high-pitched whir of a motor at top speed. It sounded like it was almost on top of us, like it was flying as fast as it could.
It heard me.
Oh God, it heard me.
Placing me in the center of the pub, Damien gripped my biceps and bent down to my height so that he could look me in the eyes. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s gonna be okay. Just … stand here and don’t fuckin’ run.”
“I thought we were supposed to run,” I whispered back, my voice shaking as he released me.
“Change of plans.”
I looked around the pub, but he was already gone. It was just me, standing like an eejit as that mechanical buzzing bore down on me with a speed that made my knees and my bladder threaten to go weak.
I looked around again, Damien’s name caught in my throat, but when I turned back to the window, I found a sleek black machine hovering directly in front of it. Like the head of a predator after hearing a twig snap, it rotated toward me and shone its cold, condemning light directly in my face.
Day turned to night. The broken chairs on the floor multiplied, growing into a pile of rubble. And the still, foggy air began to swirl around me, lashing me like the sea breeze over the cliffs of Howth.
“This is a message from President Abramov.”
Everything was gone.
“Your city has been captured by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
There was blood. So much blood.
“This is your only chance to surrender. You have ten seconds to raise your hands above your head and follow this device to the nearest encampment.”
Hands. I’d found Sheila’s hand just a few meters away.
“Refusal to do so will be considered an act of—”
The blinding white light and the drone itself suddenly disappeared, and in its place—just like that night on the cliff—I saw him . Only he wasn’t emerging from a lake, beckoning me to jump. He was standing right in front of me, in real life, jaw clenched and nostrils flared like a demon.
He squeezed his eyes shut as the countdown began, and his entire body began to shake.
Looking down, I realized that he was holding the drone so that it pointed toward the floor. All four propellers spun like saw blades between us.
I took a step back.
With a strained growl, Damien’s face contorted into one of pure agony before the sound of cracking plastic shot through the room like a bullet. Two propellers stopped spinning and fell away, dangling from useless wires as the countdown continued.
In another burst of force, Damien broke the remaining two propellers off, and the sparks that showered over me felt like a celebration. Like a spray of champagne on New Year’s Eve.
I wasn’t alone anymore. I wasn’t going to die. And as long as Damien was with me, I knew that fact would remain true.
Twisting his body, Damien tossed the dismembered drone out the broken window and across the street, where, just before it hit the water, a robotic voice said, “Two.”
When he glanced back at me, Damien’s shoulders were heaving, his gray eyes were hard as stone, but his lips were parted in relief.
Grabbing me by the back of the neck, he pulled my body against his and squeezed. His heart pounded against my cheek as his powerful arms held me captive. He held me longer than he should have, but not long enough.
It was never long enough.
“They’re comin’,” he said solemnly, taking the heavy bag off my shoulder and slinging it over his. “Ya ready?”
My chest tightened in panic as he extended his hand, but the moment my palm sealed over his, the moment I felt that surge of warmth and riot of tingles shoot up my arm, my lungs expanded. I sucked in a breath, and together, we ran.