Chapter 7
Aidan
We wait for Jack to answer.
“Almost,” he says eventually.
Annabelle breathes out and turns away, moving to the window, arm crossed as she stares out over the city.
“I need you to bait her,” Jack states.
“No,” I say, turning to him, “Absolutely not.”
“Get out,” Annabelle’s cold voice cuts across the room. “Just get out.”
I raise the gun when Jack doesn’t move. “You heard her. Get out.”
“Move away from the window,” Jack says, suddenly, his gaze going from me to her.
She waits a beat and then turns to the side. She takes two steps, and the window explodes behind her, knocking her off her feet.
Glass rains over the room. Ethan is already on her, dragging her hard across the floor away from the shattered window.
Callan drops behind the sofa. I am moving before the pain in my side can catch up, gun up, crossing straight for Jack because if this is a setup, I will put him down now and deal with the rest after.
He grabs my wrist before I can press the barrel to his skull. “Not me.”
“Fuck you.”
He ducks just as another shot cracks in from outside and whizzes past where his head was a moment ago. That decides it. Not him. Not this second.
Annabelle makes a strangled noise somewhere behind me. I turn my head enough to see Ethan hauling her behind the sofa to Callan, his body over hers while he checks her face, her neck, her arms.
“Is she hit?” I snap.
“No,” Ethan fires back.
Thank fuck.
I move low towards the wall beside the window, ignoring the pull in my side. Broken glass crunches under my boots. I risk one glance through the ruin of the frame. I don’t see fuck all, but I don’t expect to. It’s more to see if the shooter aims at my head this time.
They don’t. They’re either gone or waiting for Annabelle and Jack.
“Maeve. She wants both of you dead,” I grit out. “Is she the one shooting?” I turn to Jack.
“Probably not. It’s too much like hard work to learn how to be a sniper,” he growls. “She’d break a fucking nail.”
“Oh, but strangling someone to death is acceptable physical activity?” Annabelle practically screams at him.
Jack turns his head towards her voice, expression hardening for the first time since he arrived. “She likes hands-on work when it matters to her. Shooting from a distance is for men she pays.”
“That’s meant to reassure us?” I bite out.
Another crack tears through the air.
We all duck lower on instinct as a fresh round punches into the wall above the dining table, spraying plaster across the floor.
“Fuck this,” I mutter. My pulse settles into something cold and useful. Pain burns along my side, but it is manageable. “We need her out of this room.”
“No shit,” Callan says from behind the sofa.
Annabelle is breathing too fast. I can hear it even over the ringing in my ears. Ethan has one arm braced across her middle, keeping her down while his head turns towards the corridor.
Jack stays crouched near the kitchen island, eyes on the blown-out window. “They have a line from the building opposite or the one adjacent. They know exactly where to aim.”
I look at him with pure hatred. “Keep talking, and I’ll decide the bullet is worth it.”
He meets my stare. “You need me alive if you want her alive.”
I fucking hate that he might be right.
“En-suite. There’s no window,” I say to Ethan. “Go.”
If he is pissed off, I’m giving him orders, he doesn’t comment on it.
He just moves. Ethan keeps low and half-carries Annabelle towards the bedroom corridor.
Callan covers them, weapon angled towards the ruined window, eyes flat and lethal.
I stay where I am for one second longer, tracking the opposite building through the fractured frame, waiting for movement.
Nothing.
That bothers me more.
Shooters who miss by accident keep firing wildly. Shooters who know what they are doing fire, assess, reposition, or leave.
“They’ve gone,” Jack says.
“You hope.”
“They missed. Twice.”
“Lucky for you. Move,” I bite out at Jack, jabbing the gun towards the corridor. “In front of me.”
He does it without argument, staying crouched as he heads after Ethan and Annabelle. I hate how little panic he shows. I hate even more that he called the window before the shot came. That means he knows Maeve’s patterns. That means too much of what he is saying could be true.
I back towards the corridor, keeping my gun trained on the window until the wall finally cuts off the line of fire. Then I turn and move fast, pain pulling hot across my side with every step. Blood sticks the dressing to my skin again. I don’t give a fuck.
The bedroom door is open. Ethan has Annabelle on the bathroom floor, crouched in front of her, hands on her face, checking for cuts I already know are there because I can see the glitter of glass in her hair from here.
Callan is at the bedroom entrance, gun raised, body turned towards the living room.
Jack stops two feet behind him, and I shove the barrel into his back.
“Inside,” I snap.
He goes in.
Annabelle looks up at me, white as paper, blue eyes huge.
“I’m fine,” she says too quickly.
“You’re fucking not.” I kneel in front of her before Ethan can answer for me and catch her chin. “Look at me.”
Her breathing is still too fast.
“Did anything hit you?”
“Just glass.”
“Anywhere else?”
She swallows. “No.”
Ethan brushes shards from her top with brutal care. “I’ve checked her arms and neck. Just cuts.”
“Good.” I rise again because standing still will make me start thinking about how close that was.
Jack shuts the bathroom door halfway, then stops when all three of us level guns or eyes at him.
“Open,” I say.
He opens it again.
“Don’t fucking touch anything. This is Annabelle’s room.”
His mouth hardens. “You need to get her out of the penthouse.”
“No shit,” Ethan says. “The window is missing on a twentieth-floor apartment.”
“That’s what they will be expecting,” I say, shaking my head. “We stay.”
Jack looks at me as if I have lost my fucking mind. “You stay, and they adjust.”
“They already took the shot,” I say. “From outside. They wanted panic. Movement. A convoy. A scramble in the car park. I’m not giving them that.”
Callan glances back at me from the bedroom doorway. “He’s got a point.”
Ethan’s head lifts sharply. “You’re agreeing with this?”
“I’m agreeing that walking her through a building with a broken perimeter and a live shooter outside is not my favourite option.”
Annabelle pushes Ethan’s hands away from her face with trembling fingers. “Can everyone stop discussing me like a parcel for five seconds?” She pushes herself upright. “I don’t care where we stay,” she says, voice shaking with fury more than fear. “I care about not being shot again.”
“We can manage that here,” I say.
Jack gives a low, humourless exhale. “For five minutes, maybe.”
I turn on him so fast the pain tears hot through my side. “You really want to test me while standing in her bedroom?”
His eyes drop briefly to the blood soaking through my dressing again. “You’re slowing down.”
“I’ll still kill you first.”
Callan speaks from the doorway without looking back. “Can we save the arguing. They weren’t firing at Annabelle. She was in the way of Jack. The first shot was wide of where she was standing to get her to move. She was already moving, anyway. Jack was in her direct path behind her.”
“And you know this how?” I snap.
His gaze lands on mine. “I see things.”
He does. Annoyingly well. That is something that no one in this room can deny.
I stare at him for one hard second. He is right.
Ethan stares at him. “That’s your explanation?”
“It’s enough,” Callan says. “The angle was wrong for her centre mass. Right for his.”
Jack’s expression stays flat. “They want me dead before I can hand over what I have.”
Annabelle huffs out a breath. “So, I’m nearly dead because you walked into my life and brought your psychotic wife with you.”
“Ex-wife,” Jack says. I swing the gun back to him.
“Try that again and see what happens.” He goes quiet.
I look at the three of them, at Annabelle’s pale face, at the glitter of blood and glass on her skin, at Ethan one second from snapping, at Callan still fixed on the doorway, and I make the only call that makes sense to me.
“We don’t leave,” I say. “It’s better than crossing open ground with a shooter waiting for us to panic.”
Ethan rises slowly. “And when they come through the lift door?”
“Then they die.”
Jack gives me a look that says he thinks I am being a reckless cunt. He is not entirely wrong. “If Maeve sent a sniper, she has a second layer.”
“Probably,” I say. “But so do we.”
Ethan’s stare stays on me for another beat, hard enough to split skin.
Then he nods once. “Fine. We lock it down.”
Jack looks like he wants to move. I point the gun at his chest.
“Don’t.”
“I’m closing the curtains,” he says, hands up as he moves across the room to draw the curtains shut across the window
I watch every inch of him while he does it.
The curtain hisses along the rail. The ruined glass still litters the floor, glittering under the strip lights. My finger stays tight on the trigger. If he makes one wrong move, I put him down and deal with the consequences after.
He steps back from the window and turns slowly. “Better.”
“Against the wall,” I say.
He does not argue. He moves to the far side of the bedroom and stops with his hands visible. Ethan is still beside Annabelle. Callan holds the doorway.
“I’m not staying in the bathroom all night,” Annabelle says, pushing past Ethan to enter the bedroom. “They aren’t even after me, according to Callan.”
“True, of one shooting. Doesn’t mean Maeve won’t change her mind.”
“Jack needs to get out of here,” I say, giving him a level glare. “He brought this shit to our door.”
“Agreed,” Ethan says. “Fuck off.”
Jack looks at Ethan, then at me. “If I leave through the obvious routes, I hand them exactly what they want.”
“Good,” I say. “Die somewhere else.”
Annabelle lets out a ragged breath. “Can someone please tell me if there’s an actual plan in this room, or are we all just threatening each other until sunrise?”
“I have a plan,” Jack says.
Three guns almost rise at the same time.
He notices. “And that reaction is why I waited.”
“Speak very carefully,” Ethan says.
Jack keeps his hands where I can see them.
“Maeve won’t send the same team in blind.
Not if she thinks I’m still alive and still here.
She’ll want confirmation first. That means eyes on the building, probably someone in the car park, maybe someone at the service entrance.
If I walk out, they move. If I stay, they wait. ”
Callan’s voice is quiet from the doorway. “You’re saying to use you as bait.”
“I’m saying that’s what I’m for.”
I do not take my eyes off him. “You’re not leaving alone.”
“I know.”
Ethan glances at me. “No.”
I turn my head. “No what?”
“No to you going with him.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You’re bleeding through your dressing.”
I look down. The bastard is right. A dark patch has spread wider across the bandage. It still is not enough to stop me. “I’ll live.”
“I know. That isn’t the point.”
“It is if someone has to go.”
“You can’t go,” Annabelle says quietly. “I can’t lose you.”
The words hit harder than the bullet ever did.
For one second, I just look at her.
I drag in a breath and force my voice flat. “I’m not dying.”
“That isn’t a promise you can make,” Annabelle snaps.
“No,” Ethan says. “It isn’t.”
I cut him a filthy look. “Helpful.”
“I’m not helping you be a fucking hero while you’re half bleeding out,” he says.
“I’m not half bleeding out.”
His mouth hardens.
“You need someone here who can move fast, think clearly, and protect Annabelle. I’m already compromised. Better spent on Jack, don’t you think?”
Callan finally steps away from the doorway and shuts the bedroom door partway before moving back into position beside it. “We need to decide before they do.”
Annabelle wipes at her face with the heel of her hand. “What exactly is this plan?”
Jack answers her, but he looks at me. “I leave visibly. Not through the lift. Service route or stairwell. Make it look rushed enough to interest them. If they are watching, they will track me. Two follow at a distance. One of you stays.”
“One isn’t enough,” I say.
“It is if it’s me,” Ethan says.
Grimly, I have to agree. He will protect her with the urgency of ten men. We all would. But I know I’m out. As much as it kills me to have to leave, I’m no good to her if I stay.
“Fine,” I say, looking into Annabelle’s eyes, forcing myself not to look away.
I do anyway. “Me and Callan on Jack. Ethan on Annabelle.”
Annabelle’s face crumples for a second before she gets it back under control.
It still guts me.