Chapter 22
A DISTRACTION
Caitríona
North. Just keep moving north, Cat.
I cut across town with my hood up and my heartbeat trying to sprint out of my throat. The air tastes like exhaust and approaching rain. Creeping sunlight glints off windshields and stings my eyes. I don’t look back. Looking back only makes you slow.
My phone buzzes once in my pocket.
Unknown: Tiernan is here. He’s coming for you.
Panic spikes, sharp and blinding. Tiernan? Donal, I expected, but not my dead fiancé’s father. I gulp in a breath and the training clamps down like a lid.
Breathe. Inventory. Execute.
I ghost past a bodega with pyramids of oranges out front, the scent bright and wrong in contrast with the ice in my veins.
My fingers find the edge of the tattoo under my jacket to that orange blossom inked over my heart, the letters Livia small and sure.
I press there once, a promise, and I keep moving.
I don’t reply to the message as much as my fingers itch to. A trail is a trail, even if it’s meant to save you.
Columbus Avenue gives way to Amsterdam. Sirens ring out somewhere to the east, then a church bell somewhere west. I take the side street lined with scaffolding and scaffolding nets, the city’s favorite, because nets work both ways when you know where to step.
A kid on a scooter whistles past me, and a woman drags a terrier that refuses to go in the same direction as anything.
Halfway down the block, I feel it. Icy cold blooms between my shoulder blades and screams someone is at my back.
Don’t turn around.
A van door thunks closed. Footsteps quicken. The old me would have smiled. The new me checks angles and distances, calculates how long it will take to make the corner, and whether the deli awning will hold weight.
“McKenna.” Irish, but not Sean or Donal. The voice carries like a bad habit.
I keep walking.
“Stop.”
I don’t.
Someone yanks on the back of my hood.
The momentum becomes a weapon, and I let the pull spin me and ride it. Then I drop the duffel and drive the muzzle of my gun up under the man’s ribs. He’s big, bigger than Donal. He wears a thick jacket and has a scar over one brow with eyes the color of beer bottle glass. He smells like menthol.
“Bad idea,” I growl.
He grins around a split lip like I’ve made his day. His free hand snaps for my wrist, too fast, and the gun skitters across grimy concrete, vanishing under a parked car.
“Tiernan says hello.” Then he swings.
I take the first hit on my forearm, and it lights up the corners of my vision. I answer with a heel to the knee. He grunts, but it’s not enough to stop him. He’s a brawler with good balance, the kind that doesn’t fall until someone steals his air.
Fine.
I feint for his eyes, then slip left under the scaffolding. We bang metal. A woman yelps and scurries away with her poodle shouting at us in Spanish. I grab for a length of rebar tied with twine and wrench it free. The knot gives with a soft, treacherous sigh.
“Come on then,” he taunts, his eyes sparking with delight.
I oblige. The bar cracks his forearm. He hisses out a curse, and I pivot for his temple next.
He ducks, then shoulder-checks me into the green plywood.
Splinters bite into my skin. I swing again but he catches it this time, twists, and the bar wrenches my wrist until it sings.
I let it go, step inside his reach like I’m about to kiss him and bring my knee up hard.
He turns at the last second, and I catch his hip instead of his groin. Damn it. He punishes me for the attempt with a palm to my throat that slams me into the wall. White spots bloom, and the world goes off-center.
“Not so soft now, are you?” the asshole murmurs, enjoying himself.
I claw for his eyes. He traps my wrist against the plywood and leans his weight. Breath becomes a bargaining chip I’m quickly losing. My lungs scramble for air. Instinct sends my hand to my chest, my fingers finding the blossom’s edge through cloth.
You will not give up. Oddly, this time the voice in my head sounds like Matteo’s.
I twist, drop my weight and his grip slips a hair. I roll, raking my boot heel down his shin until he swears in a word I don’t even know. Air slices back into my throat, the pain tasting like electricity.
He comes harder. His fists to my ribs, then his elbow to my jaw.
The second hit blurs the world and the third folds me.
I catch the fourth in the crook of my arm and manage to snake my legs, scissor, and take him to one knee.
He’s strong as hell. He’s also patient, and patient men are dangerous.
He finds my hair under the hood and yanks my head back, trying to bounce my skull off the plywood.
The sky narrows to a tiny slit, the scaffolding net swaying in and out like my desperate lungs. My gun is under the car. My knife is stuck in my boot. I reach for it, but he reads my move, pinning my arm with his knee.
“Tiernan will be pleased.” He draws a box cutter from his sleeve like a gift. “He said to bring you in breathing, but he didn’t say how tidy.”
He leans in, blade scraping across my throat.
A sound cuts the street, a sharp, ear-splitting crack.
The goon jerks forward and red blossoms below his shoulder.
He blinks down at the wound like he hasn’t decided if it belongs to him.
A second shot folds him sideways. His weight crashes across my legs, and I barely suppress a cry.
Bone and meat are heavy in a way that nothing else is.
He tries to say a word that starts with my name and ends in nothing.
I shove him off, then half roll and half crawl away. The world comes back in pieces: the smell of hot metal, a horn, someone shouting that they’re calling 911, and then my own wheeze. Boots pound toward me, and a familiar shadow cuts the light.
“Cat.” Matteo. I recognize the voice without looking up and the part of me that knows better still answers to the way he says it.
He’s a dark figure under the scaffolding, coat open, gun down now but not away, and wild eyes like a storm coming. Matteo just stands there for a long moment, scrutinizing every inch of me, a torrent of emotion surging beneath the glossy surface.
I shove up. The alley tilts, and I force it level. He doesn’t touch me, thank God. If he touches me, I will forget that everyone who knows my last name wants me either punished or dead.
“You all right?” he finally whispers, eyes still scanning me for blood.
His gaze snags on my throat where the box cutter sliced skin.
It’s just a shallow line, more sting than danger, but still, his jaw works.
“Who did that to you?” His glare turns absolutely lethal as he kicks at the man’s corpse. “This asshole?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m fine anyway.” My voice is a lie that barely passes for truth. I swallow the rest, hitch the duffel onto my shoulder, and toe the box cutter into a storm drain.
He flicks his eyes to the dead man again, then the street. Sirens are nearer now, too near. He steps in to block me from the sidewalk’s view, not touching, just making me small behind his frame.
“Any sign of Tiernan?” I ask, voice low and I hate the slight tremble in it.
“Not yet but he’s probably close.” A muscle jumps in his cheek. “You shouldn’t have gone back for the phone.”
“I don’t take orders from Rossis,” I hiss, because it’s easier than the thank you threatening to erupt. If he hadn’t come… I squeeze my eyes closed and shove back the grisly thoughts.
Something like a laugh cuts through his teeth and dies quickly. He glances at my hands, the tremor I can’t quite contain, and then looks away. Mercy is dangerous, and he hides it like a weapon.
I drag breath through my throat and press the heel of my palm against the blossom under my jacket, just once.
A private promise to myself, to my baby girl.
He doesn’t notice the gesture because he’s watching the shadows, the mouths of nearby alleys, and the movements of strangers inching closer.
Good. Let him keep seeing the threats, not the memory carved into my skin.
“We have to move,” he grits out. “Cameras saw this. Cops will be here first, then someone worse.”
“Someone worse is already here.” I tilt my chin toward the dead man. “Tiernan has friends in the city.”
“I’ll never let Tiernan have you,” he growls. And for a beat, I want to believe him. We just stand there staring at each other for an endless moment, frozen in time.
“Let’s go,” he finally murmurs. He lifts the hem of my hood a fraction and winces as his fingers carefully brush my hairline. They come away red and sticky. Heat snaps through me at the touch, memory and adrenaline igniting a flicker of something I can’t afford.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
He drops the fabric immediately. “We move northwest. We can cut through the campus, but first I’ll peel off and draw them away.”
“We?” I hiss. “I don’t need an escort.”
“No, but you need a distraction.” His eyes flick back to mine, something unreadable in that bejeweled gaze. “Let me be what I’m good at.”
A siren howls around the corner. The woman with the poodle is already on her phone and three kids hover, hungry for the drama. The city is waking to this little war.
I nod once. Not because I trust him but because I’m shite out of options.
Matteo steps back into the mouth of the block, already the kind of man the city parts around. “Two minutes, then we meet at the next street over. If I’m not there, you keep going.” His gaze tightens on my face. “Don’t be brave for me, Kitty Cat.” The flicker of a smirk.
I don’t answer. I can’t. I bend, reach under the sedan, and retrieve my gun by the grip. My hand is finally steady now.
“Matteo,” I blurt, before I can stop myself.
He turns.
“Thank you.”
His Adam’s apple bobs down the column of his throat and he gives me the smallest nod, like gratitude is a language he doesn’t deserve to speak. Then he’s gone.