CHAPTER 8 DECLAN
Nora's fingers closed around my wrist, and the world narrowed to the heat of her hand.
Rina Voss stood ten feet away with blood at the corner of her mouth and a red scarf twisted against her throat.
A letter opener lay on the floor where I had kicked it.
Grant Selby had one hand pressed to the counter, pale and sweating under his expensive haircut.
June Porter was crying without sound behind the records desk.
I could have crossed the room in two strides and broken the laugh out of Rina's mouth, but Nora held me in place with five shaking fingers.
"Don't," she said.
Her voice was small from shock. It still landed harder than an order.
I stared at her hand on me, at the thin slice through her coat sleeve, at the skin underneath that Rina had missed by luck and my timing.
My blood moved hot and ugly. It wanted motion.
It wanted punishment. It wanted Rina's head turned sideways against the wall.
Nora's grip tightened. "Declan. Please."
That did it. The please scraped something raw behind my ribs and left me standing there with every violent part of me caged behind her palm. I turned my wrist slowly under her hand until my fingers could cover hers.
"All right," I said.
Her eyes jumped to mine. Dark, wet, furious with fear she refused to spend.
She had just opened a dead man's box and found her sister's name forged on the paper that helped kill her father.
She had recognized a woman from a hospital memory.
She had been cut at with a blade, and still she was worried about what my hands might do. Terrible girl.
"Aidan," I said, keeping my voice even because Nora needed the room steady.
"Rina on the chair. Zip tie her hands in front.
Search her again. Hair, scarf, sleeves, shoes.
Eamon, Selby sits by the far wall. Phone, wallet, bag, belt.
June goes behind you, away from both of them. Nobody touches the box without gloves."
Aidan moved first. Eamon followed with his gun low and his face blank. The room accepted Stone order the way rooms did when men understood survival. Rina's smile faded when Aidan caught her elbow and pushed her into the metal chair near the copier.
"Careful," she said. "I have counsel."
"You have a pulse," Aidan said. "Careful is for people we want to keep comfortable."
Grant made a sound in his throat. "This is unlawful restraint."
"You're welcome to complain to someone outside," I said. "When I decide outside is available."
Nora's hand left my wrist. The loss hit too fast. I kept my arm still, because reaching for her again would have been for me, and nothing in this room was allowed to be for me while she stood there with a torn sleeve.
The flash drive sat on the counter between the patient-transfer packet and the photographs.
Play this for Nora Brooks and Declan Reeve.
Thomas Brooks's handwriting had age in the slant and stubbornness in the pressure.
He had written my name before dying, before Isabella walked into Gabriel's bar, before Nora knew my hands would ever come between her body and a blade.
A dead man had reached into my life and placed his daughter there.
My phone rang. Gabriel. Of course.
Nora saw the screen before I answered. "Put it on speaker."
"You don't have to take this fight."
"Yes," she said. "I do."
I answered and put the phone on the counter. "Boss."
Gabriel's voice came through low and cold. "Tell me she's breathing."
Nora leaned closer before I could answer. "I'm breathing."
A pause. Then Isabella's voice broke through, sharp with panic. "Nora?"
"Bella, I'm okay. Rina Voss is here. She signed Dad's transfer. She used your name."
Silence hit the line. I heard one small sound from Isabella, a breath hurt too badly to become a word. Gabriel said something away from the phone, too quiet to catch, then came back like steel drawn slowly.
"Declan."
One word. My name had been a warning from Gabriel before. This time it was worse. This time it carried Nora's torn sleeve, my bent order, and every reason he had told me to put her in a safehouse first.
"She was never getting the box from outside," I said. "The pass phrase had to come from her."
"I gave you an order."
"I know."
Nora's chin lifted. "He gave me a choice. I chose the box."
"Mrs. Brooks," Gabriel said, and the formal address turned the office colder, "your choices need to keep you alive."
"Then stop letting men decide I survive best when I know the least."
June Porter made a tiny stunned noise behind Eamon. Grant stared at Nora like he had just realized grief could speak back. Rina's eyes narrowed.
On the phone, Isabella whispered, "Nora."
"I'm not being reckless," Nora said, softer now. The change in her voice struck me harder than the defiance. "Dad left this for me. And for Declan."
"For Declan?" Cormac's voice joined the line, closer to the phone than Gabriel's.
I picked up the index card by the edge and read it aloud. "Play this for Nora Brooks and Declan Reeve."
The line went still. Cormac recovered first. "Do not play it on any East River machine. Use Aidan's field laptop, air-gapped. Record chain of custody on video. I want the box, packet, photos, and drive under camera from this moment until they reach us."
"Already moving," I said.
"Declan," Gabriel said. There was the reckoning.
My gaze stayed on Nora. The cut in her sleeve had stopped looking harmless. The longer I stared, the more I saw how close the blade had come. "I will answer for it. After I get her out."
"You will answer before that if she bleeds."
"She won't."
Nora glanced at me, and color rose in her cheeks despite the shock. It was anger, mostly. Something hotter lived under it. I had no right to care which it was.
"Stop talking like I'm furniture with a pulse," she said.
My mouth almost moved. Bad moment to smile. Worse moment to like her more.
Gabriel exhaled through his nose. "Play the drive. Then you bring Nora to the townhouse. Direct. Two-car shield. Rina and Selby travel separately to The Black Harp. Cormac will meet you here. Maeve is already calling East River's board to make sure no camera feed disappears."
"Understood."
"And Declan?"
"Yes."
"If Rina moves again, she does not reach a second step."
Rina's face drained of color.
Nora heard it too. Her hand brushed the counter near mine, close enough for the warmth of her skin to change my breathing.
"She reaches the Harp alive," Nora said.
Gabriel went quiet again. I could picture his face in the townhouse study, Isabella beside him with one hand at her stomach, Cormac already opening files, Maeve turning hospital-board friendships into knives.
"For now," Gabriel said.
The call stayed open while Aidan set a black field laptop on the records counter.
He pulled a small evidence camera from his bag and clipped it to the top shelf behind us.
The red light came on. Eamon placed Grant's phone, Rina's phone, two wallets, one slim cosmetics case, a black key fob, and a folded authorization packet in separate plastic sleeves.
Nora stood too still.
I moved closer, stopping with space between us. "Let me see your arm."
"She missed."
"Let me see it anyway."
Her eyes searched my face. The fight in them wavered, then settled into something that made my chest hurt. She held out her arm.
I touched only the torn sleeve first. "May I?"
The question changed her breathing. Mine too.
"Yes."
Care had no business feeling dangerous. I peeled the fabric back and found a thin red line along the outside of her forearm. Barely broken skin. Close enough that my vision went white at the edges. My hand wanted to shake. I made it gentle instead.
"A graze," I said.
"That is what I said."
"You said she missed."
"Is this the part where you tell me I was wrong?"
"This is the part where I wrap it before Gabriel hears the word blood and sends half of Queens into witness protection."
A startled laugh caught in her throat. It broke fast, but I heard it. The sound went through me like heat under a door.
I pulled a clean handkerchief from inside my coat and tied it around her forearm. Her skin was warm under my fingers. Her pulse beat quick against the side of my thumb, angry and alive. I tied the knot with no bite, firm enough to stay.
"You carry handkerchiefs?" she asked.
"I carry many things."
"That sounded threatening."
"Usually is."
Another flicker at her mouth. Then her gaze dropped to the flash drive, and the room took her back. I let go before my hand forgot why it was there.
Aidan finished his setup. "Drive is clean. It will mount. One video file, two folders. Video first?"
Nora nodded. "Video first."
I moved to her side rather than in front of her. If Thomas Brooks had named us both, she would hear him with me beside her, not behind my shoulder.
Aidan clicked the file, and Thomas Brooks appeared on the screen in a hospital bed.
Nora went silent beside me. Her whole body pulled toward the image, so sharply I almost reached for her.
Thomas looked thinner than the photo Isabella kept in Gabriel's study.
Gray at the temples. Skin drawn tight. Eyes clear, though.
Brooks eyes. Nora's eyes when she stopped being afraid and started being difficult.
"Nora," he said from the laptop speakers.
The word hit her. Her knees flexed once. I stepped close enough that my arm could catch her if she dropped, and she knew it. She stayed upright.
Thomas coughed and turned his face away.
When he looked back, anger had cut through the sickness.
"If you're watching this, I didn't get time to say it right.
So listen to me now, baby girl. Isabella did not sign my transfer.
She did not answer a phone call. She did not give consent.
They used her name because she was listed first. You tell your sister that. You make her believe it."
Nora pressed both hands to the counter. Her bandaged arm trembled.