Chapter 49
BAIT
Caitríona – One Hour Earlier
Noreen’s kitchen smells like toast, wet wool and the cinnamon Livia decided every pancake needs for sparkle.
She stands on a chair in her yellow wellies because wellies are for all occasions.
Her tongue is out in concentration as she tries to flip a pancake the size of her face.
Noreen guards the kettle like a general while I whisk the eggs.
Leo hovers at the back door, refusing tea, refusing a chair, refusing to be anything but a wall between us and the monsters outside.
“Last chance, soldier,” Noreen tells him, setting a mug within arm’s reach. “Tea makes bullets change their minds.”
Leo almost smiles. “Bulletproof is above my pay grade.”
“What’s bulletproof?” Livia asks.
Noreen and I exchange a wary glance, then I curl a lock of copper around my finger and kiss her freckled nose. “Nothing you ever have to worry about, a stór.”
She shrugs, sprinkling a heap of cinnamon over the pancakes. “When is Papà coming home?”
“Soon.” I glance at the clock on the wall and count the seconds. He’s only been gone for a little over an hour and already it feels like a lifetime.
“Let’s make a few more pancakes, Liv,” Noreen cuts in. “I’m sure your papà will be ravenous when he returns.” She cuts a look in my direction. “It sounded like he was up all night doing heavy lifting.”
Heat swarms my cheeks. Shite, were we that loud?
The goats bleat, and the radio murmurs low in the background. For half a heartbeat, I believe this easy moment might hold.
Then a sound rips the morning in half.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The window over the sink splinters into a million pieces. The mug beside Leo explodes into dust. He shoves us down before another shot hits, his body between us and the door, but the next one finds him. Leo grunts, staggers, and red blooms under his jacket.
“Down!” he barks, already drawing his weapon and firing back through the door frame.
Livia screams. I reach for her, my heart a battering ram against my chest, but Noreen yanks her off the chair before I can move. She folds her to the floor, shielding her with that rope-thick braid and a body that has never once lost an argument.
Outside, boots crunch on gravel. The back door bangs against the frame, and a man creeps inside, gun up, and face bare.
Sean.
Fucking, Sean?
For a heartbeat my brain refuses it, makes him a ghost, a bad dream with a cheap jacket. He was my keeper in Manhattan, a Quinlan lackey, a shadow at the edges. Then he smiles, and it’s all teeth.
“Morning, Cat.” The pistol looks very at home in his hand. “Since Tiernan’s dead, somebody has to do the honors.”
“What, why?”
Leo fires again, even as I’m certain he’ll bleed out. Sean moves like he trained for this, fast and wrong. He catches Leo across the temple with the butt of the gun and Matteo’s faithful guard drops, dazed, and more blood slickens his cheek.
“Sean,” I whisper, moving to cover Noreen and Livia beneath her. “Don’t. Please.”
His gaze flicks to my daughter then focuses in on the copper hair, blue-green eyes, and something ugly lights in him. The math is too easy. “Well now,” he breathes, delighted and sick in the same instant. “Will ya look at that?”
“No,” I snarl. “You touch her and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” He waves the gun toward me, casual, then moves for Livia.
I go for the knife on the counter because there’s nothing else left. I get my fingers around the handle and slash. He jerks back and the blade skates his forearm. He roars and fires.
The shot is a thunderclap inside bone. My shoulder snaps hot, burning, but not shattering, and I crash into the cabinet. The knife clatters away.
Livia screams again, her cries echoing across the chaotic space.
“Caitríona!” Noreen’s voice is a whip. She’s up and between us before I can drag air back into my lungs. She plants herself in front of me like a tree that refuses the storm. “You will not take that child,” she hisses, low and even, as if she’s scolding the goats.
Sean doesn’t hesitate.
The gun barks again. Noreen staggers once like she’s changed her mind about where the floor is, then crumples. The sound Livia makes is a sound I’ll never forget. It’s a desperate tangle of fear and rage, and something inside me tears clean in two.
I lunge, bleeding and useless, and Sean kicks me flat on the ground. Then the barrel of his gun kisses my cheek.
“Stay down,” he hisses. “Or I’ll make the next one count.”
Leo drags himself up, firing from the hip, but he’s slow and wounded, and Sean is lucky. A pan explodes and plaster rains down.
Livia sobs into my hip, fingers clawed in my sweater, and I know, like a map burned into me that Matteo is on his way back. Please, God, where are you? My phone buzzes across the table, screen lighting with his name in confirmation.
Matteo: Almost home.
I make a decision so fast it feels like it was made for me years ago. I let my knees buckle so I hit the floor, and I’m at Livia’s height. She whimpers.
Drawing close, I whisper, “It’s going to be okay, a stór, I promise. Papà is coming.”
Then I go still, promising myself Sean won’t hurt her. He wouldn’t. He needs her alive to get to Matteo. I let my eyes roll, and I spill into Noreen’s blood and hold my breath until my body believes me. I make my mouth slack, and I become a ruin.
Sean curses, breathing hard. He grabs Livia by the back of her sweatshirt. She kicks and bites and screams, “Mammy!” The sound rips me open and leaves me breathing through a gaping hole. But I force myself to remain still. An icy statue. Just like I’d pretended to be for the past four years.
A cold, emotionless assassin.
“Shut it, kid,” Sean snarls, jerking her toward the door. “We’re going for a ride, little ransom. Looks like your papà’s in love with a corpse. Let’s see what he’ll trade for the living.”
I want to scream. I want to kick. I want to rip the asshole’s spine from his throat. And I will. I vow in that moment that Sean Murphy will not live to see another dawn.
Peeking through slitted lids, I see Leo trying to rise again. Sean puts a bullet into his head, and it’s all I can do not to scream. “I told you to stay down.”
The door slams. Boots, gravel, and an engine firing again. The cottage holds its breath.
I don’t. I suck in air like I’ve been drowning and run to the window.
Pain screams through my shoulder. The black van peels out of the driveway.
The room doubles and doubles again. I clutch onto a chair for support.
Noreen is…still. I touch her cheek, press my lips to her hair, and taste straw and tea and the end of a chapter.
“Thank you,” I breathe, wrecked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Then I crawl to my phone. My hands shake so hard I almost drop it. I press Matteo’s name, and it connects on the first ring.
“Kitty Cat?” His voice is alive, relieved, the sound a man makes when he sees the house lights from the lane.
“They took her,” I choke out. No preface. No mercy. “Sean. He’s got Livia. Noreen—” The word won’t go through. I swallow glass. “Noreen’s gone. And Leo too. I’m hit. He—he said bait. He wants you.”
Everything on his end goes silent and roaring at once. A breath. A curse. The scrape of tires.
“Where.” It’s not a question so much as a command the world should obey.
“Road toward the main lane. Black van. He turned left, toward the quarry.”
“I’m five minutes out.” His voice is a blade and a prayer. “Lock the door. Press a towel on the wound. Keep breathing.”
“Matteo—”
“I will raze this entire island to the waterline before I let her vanish,” he hisses, quiet as a vow and twice as lethal. “No one hurts what’s mine and lives. I’ve got you. I’ve got her. Stay with me, Cat.”
But I can’t. Because there’s something I have to do first.
The line clicks. Outside, somewhere far too close, a siren starts. I press a dish towel to my shoulder until stars burst, then drag myself across Noreen’s warm, cooling kitchen, and lay my forehead on the stone for exactly one heartbeat.
Then I push myself off the floor. But I don’t lock the door. I yank it open and head toward the main lane.