CHAPTER THIRTY
William
AOIFE’S HEAD IS against my shoulder. Her breathing has gone shallow, almost even, and for a second, I think she’s passed out. Then her fingers tighten on mine, and I know she’s just holding still because holding still is all she has left.
The convoy consists of three vehicles. Ours is in the middle. Two of Aidan’s men in the lead car, Conor’s crew bringing up the rear. The road is dark. No streetlights on these back roads through Meath. Just headlights cutting through fog and the occasional shape of a hedge whipping past the window.
Jason hasn’t spoken since we pulled out. He’s in the front passenger seat with his weapon across his thighs and his eyes on the road ahead. Every few seconds, his gaze flicks to the side mirror on his door.
My body is starting to catalogue what the adrenaline was hiding.
The ribs on my left side where something hit me during the fight.
The cut on my forehead has dried into a stiff line of crusted blood.
My knuckles are split and swelling from putting a man down behind the garden wall.
The ringing in my ears that comes and goes like a radio between stations.
Aoife shifts against me. I look down at her feet.
Bare. Cut. Dried blood between her toes.
She ran across gravel and broken glass to get to me because she thought I was dead, and the fury I felt when I saw her out there in the middle of it hasn’t faded.
It’s just gone quiet. Folded itself into the part of me that knows she did it because she chose me, and punishing her for that would be punishing her for the only good thing that’s happened since this started.
I tighten my hand around hers.
The driver takes a left onto a narrower road. Hedgerows close in on both sides. The lead car’s taillights glow red through the fog ahead of us.
“How far?” I ask Jason.
“Forty minutes. Maybe less.”
“And you’re sure Viktor doesn’t know about this place.”
“I’m sure.” He doesn’t turn around. “I bought it through three shell companies before I left the country. Cash. No paper trail connecting it to any Murphy.”
I want to ask him why. Why he kept a bolthole in Ireland when he was supposed to be gone for good? What he was planning. What he thought he’d need to come back to.
But I don’t. Because the answer is probably the same as the reason he drove straight from the airport tonight instead of calling. Jason doesn’t trust phones. Doesn’t trust distance. Doesn’t trust anything he can’t verify with his own eyes.
Neither do I. Not anymore.
The driver accelerates. The engine climbs, and the road blurs past, and I watch the speedometer needle push past a hundred and twenty.
“Ease off,” I tell him. “We don’t need to attract attention.”
He doesn’t ease off. If anything, the car goes faster.
Jason straightens in his seat. His hand moves to his weapon.
“What are you doing?” he says to the driver.
No response. The car surges forward. The lead vehicle’s taillights are getting smaller. We’re pulling away from the convoy.
“Hey.” Jason’s voice sharpens. “I said what are you doing? Slow the fuck down.”
The driver’s hands are locked on the wheel. His knuckles white. He doesn’t look at Jason. Doesn’t acknowledge the question.
Everything in me goes cold.
“Stop the car,” I say.
Nothing.
The speedometer is past one-thirty now. The hedgerows are a solid wall of black on either side, and the road is too narrow for this speed. One wrong turn and we’re through a fence and into a field.
Jason pulls his gun and puts it against the driver’s temple.
“Stop the fucking car.”
The driver floors it.
The engine screams. The car leaps forward so hard Aoife is thrown against me, and I brace my arm across her chest, pinning her to the seat.
Jason is shouting something, but I can’t hear it over the engine because the driver has the accelerator buried and we’re doing a hundred and fifty on a road built for sixty.
I reach for the door. If I can get it open, get Aoife out, even at this speed, it’s better than whatever’s coming.
Then I see it. In the rear window. A light. Moving fast. Faster than anything on the ground.
Trailing fire.
I grab Aoife. Both arms around her. Pull her down into the footwell and cover her body with mine. Her hair is against my mouth, and I’m holding her so tight I can feel her heartbeat through her ribs.
The missile hits the rear of the car.
The sound isn’t a sound. It’s pressure. A fist made of air that compresses my skull and my chest and my spine into a single point of white.
The back of the car lifts. I feel it happen, the entire rear axle coming off the road, and then the rotation starts.
Slow at first. Almost gentle. Like the car is deciding which way to fall.
It decides.
The roof hits the road. The windshield implodes.
Glass everywhere, in my hair, in my mouth, in the gap between my arms where Aoife’s face is pressed against my chest. The car slides on its roof for what feels like forever, metal shrieking against tarmac, sparks pouring through the shattered windows.
We flip again. Sideways this time. My shoulder hits the door frame, and the impact sends a bolt of pain so bright I lose my vision for a second. Aoife’s body slams against mine, and I hold on to her. I hold on because if I let go, she goes through the window, and she’s gone.
The car comes to rest on its side. Driver’s side down. Passenger side up.
For a moment, nothing. Just the tick of cooling metal and the high-pitched whine in my ears and my own breathing, fast and ragged and wrong.
Then heat.
I smell the fuel before I see the flames. Petrol. Leaking from the ruptured tank. And then the orange glow, creeping along the undercarriage toward the engine block.
“Aoife.” My voice comes out wrecked. “Aoife, look at me.”
She doesn’t move. Her body is limp against mine in the footwell, her head turned to the side. Blood in her hair. On her face. Coming from somewhere I can’t see.
I place my fingers on her neck. Find her pulse. It’s there. Fast. Thready. But there.
“Jason!” I shout.
A groan from the front. Jason is crumpled against the dash, his door above him, the window gone. He moves. Slow. One hand comes up and grabs the edge of his seat, and he pulls himself upright.
Blood is running from his hairline, and his left arm is hanging at the wrong angle, but he’s conscious. He looks back at me through the gap between the seats.
“Get her out,” I tell him. “Through the front. Go.”
The flames haven’t reached the cabin yet, but I can see the glow underneath the car. The fuel line or the exhaust. Something back near the tank where the missile hit. It’s a matter of time.
Jason turns toward the windshield. The whole thing is gone. Just a ragged frame of metal and the road beyond it, lit orange by the fire climbing underneath us. He crawls through, broken glass grinding under his knees, and reaches back with his good arm.
I lift Aoife toward him. My ribs scream. My shoulder is on fire. But I get her through the gap between the seats, and Jason grabs her under the arms and drags her out across the crumpled hood and onto the grass.
I follow. Hauling myself over the center console and through the windshield frame. My shirt catches on something metal and tears, and I feel the sharp bite of steel across my side, but I don’t stop. Can’t stop. The smoke is thickening, and if I stay in this car, I will burn.
I hit the ground. Jason already has Aoife ten meters up the verge, half carrying, half dragging her with his one good arm.
I get to my feet, and the world tilts, but I make it to them and get her other side, and we move.
Away from the road. Away from the wreck.
Through wet grass that soaks my shoes and into the open field beyond the hedgerow.
We’re maybe thirty meters out when the car goes.
Not a slow burn. A detonation. The fuel tank catches, and the whole thing goes up in a column of orange and black that punches into the sky.
The heat wave rolls over us even at this distance, and I pull Aoife down into the grass and cover her.
Debris rains down around us. A side mirror.
A chunk of the door panel. Something I don’t identify that thuds into the earth two feet from my head.
I stay over her until the debris stops.
Then I roll off onto my back. The sky above me is orange and black. My left knee doesn’t want to bend. My ribs are a solid wall of pain on the left side. The cut on my side is bleeding freely, soaking my shirt, warm and steady.
Jason is sitting in the grass a few metres away. His left arm hangs uselessly. Dislocated or broken, I can’t tell. He’s upright but barely, his breathing hard and shallow.
I turn my head. Aoife is right there beside me, on her back in the grass. Eyes closed. The blood on her face is fresh, mixing with the older blood from her temple wound. Her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
I get onto my side. Put my hand on her face. “Aoife. Wake up.”
Nothing.
“Aoife.” Harder now. My thumb on her cheekbone. “Open your eyes. Right now.”
Her eyelids flutter. Her pupils are wrong. One bigger than the other. Concussion. Bad one.
“Hey.” I put my forehead against hers. “Stay with me. You hear me? Stay with me.”
Her lips move. No sound comes out. Then her hand finds my wrist and grips, and she’s looking at me, trying to focus, and the relief that floods through me is so violent it almost has me sagging.
Headlights on the road.
Not from behind. Not the convoy. From ahead. Coming toward us. One set. Then two. Then five. Then more, pulling off the road onto the grass, forming a semicircle around the burning car.
Men climb out. Armed. Moving in formation. Spreading out to cover the field in a line that blocks every direction.
And then the last vehicle stops—a black SUV. The door opens, and a man steps out.
Viktor Tarasov.