CHAPTER 9 NORA #2
Declan's hand went across my chest, pinning me against the seat belt. "Down."
This time I obeyed.
A camera flash burst white through the windshield. Another. Finn cut the wheel and mounted the curb. Aidan had his gun out, angled low, the evidence case trapped under one boot. Behind us, tires screamed. The second Stone car shot past our rear bumper and slammed sideways between us and the van.
"Camera, not muzzle," Finn barked.
"Two in the van," Aidan said. "Driver and side door."
Declan's body covered mine from shoulder to hip. His coat smelled like rain, wool, and the metallic edge of the gun under it. My cheek pressed against his chest for one dizzy second. His heart was pounding. Hard. Fast. Human.
The van's side door banged shut. The vehicle reversed too late. The second Stone car pinned it against a parked truck with a crunch of metal that made my teeth hurt.
"Stay down," Declan said into my hair.
"I can breathe better upright."
"You'll breathe better alive."
Outside, men shouted. A gun safety clicked near my ear, then clicked back when Finn yelled, "They're runners. Press badges, fake. One phone up."
Declan lifted a fraction to look out. His hand remained braced beside my head. "Vale wanted a picture."
"Of me?"
"Of proof we moved you. Maybe proof you were with the drive."
My stomach turned. "He called, then sent cameras?"
"He sent eyes before he called. The call forced us to move fast."
"And I told him to come ask me himself."
Declan looked down at me. The SUV's cabin had tilted into a strange pocket of quiet, though the street outside was full of voices and rain and damaged metal. His face hovered close enough that I could see a tiny scar through his eyebrow.
"Don't take blame that belongs to him," he said.
"You do that a lot?"
"Take blame?"
"Tell people where to put theirs."
His gaze moved over my face, slower than the danger around us allowed. "Only when they keep picking up things that cut them."
The air changed between us. My hand had caught his coat without permission. I saw my fingers fisted in the wet fabric and made myself let go.
"Clear," Finn called. "Phones bagged. Local cops are two minutes if someone called it in."
Declan sat back at once, leaving cold where his body had been. "Move. Alternate route."
The SUV dropped off the curb and shot forward. My pulse would not come down. The phone was still in my hand. Gabriel's call had ended during the turn, or he had hung up to start issuing orders. Either way, the screen was black.
"He's going to be angrier now," I said.
"Yes."
"At me too?"
Declan looked out the window. "He can try."
The words landed low in my stomach. I turned my face toward the rain so he would not see what they did to me.
By the time we reached the Stone townhouse, the city had blurred into wet stone and black iron.
The house rose behind discreet lights and a gate that opened before Finn touched the brake.
Men waited under the portico with umbrellas they forgot to raise.
The front door opened before Declan could reach my side.
Isabella came down the steps in a cream sweater, barefoot despite the cold, one hand curved protectively near her stomach. Gabriel was behind her, severe in black, his face carved into a stillness that scared the men around him. Cormac stood to his right with a phone and murder in his calm eyes.
I got out before Declan could help me.
"Nora," Isabella said.
Then my sister was in my arms.
She smelled like soap, warm fabric, and the peppermint tea she drank when she was trying not to fall apart.
Her body shook against mine. I held her carefully because of the baby, then stopped being careful because she was my sister and I needed someone who had known me before our name became a target.
"He knew," I said into her shoulder. "Dad knew it wasn't you."
"I know." Isabella gripped the back of my coat. "I know, Bella."
The old nickname broke me worse than Dad's voice had. I cried then, ugly and breathless. My face pressed into my sister's shoulder while rain slid down my hair.
A handkerchief appeared near my cheek. Clean white cloth, not Declan's. Gabriel held it out without a word.
I stared at it.
"Take it," Isabella murmured. "He's trying."
"He looks like he's considering felony charges against his own enforcer."
"Also true."
Gabriel's mouth moved. It may have been the ghost of humor. It vanished when his gaze dropped to the bandage on my arm.
"Inside," he said.
The study looked exactly like the kind of room where rich men decided how much truth other people could survive. Dark wood. Low lamps. Files stacked with discipline. A map of medical routes spread across Gabriel's desk before we even entered, as if Cormac had conjured it from the air.
Siobhan Quinn waited near the fireplace with a medical bag. She had tired eyes and the expression of a woman ready to argue with every man in the room. I liked her immediately.
"Arm," she said.
"Hello to you too."
"Hello. Arm."
Declan stood near the door, still wet from the rain, one shoulder angled toward the hall. Gabriel had not spoken to him yet. That silence sat between them like a weapon on a table.
Siobhan untied Declan's handkerchief with careful fingers. "Clean graze. You were lucky."
"People keep saying that like it helps."
"It helps me decide whether I need stitches. You don't." She cleaned the cut. It stung so sharply my eyes watered again, unfair after everything else.
Isabella sat beside me on the leather sofa and held my free hand. Her thumb moved over my knuckles the same way Dad used to when we were small and pretending shots at the clinic did not hurt.
Gabriel stood behind his desk. "Declan."
One word. Every man in the room felt it.
Declan stepped forward. "Boss."
"You were given an instruction."
"I made a ground call."
"You took Nora Brooks into a live retrieval against my order. She was cut. Vale saw movement and staged a street block. Rina Voss is alive because Nora asked you to spare her. Tell me which part of that sounds controlled."
Declan's face did not change. "The part where we have Thomas Brooks's video, a route log, Rina alive, Selby alive, Vale's voice recorded, and two fake press phones from the street block."
Gabriel's eyes went flat. "Careful."
I stood before I could talk myself into staying seated.
Declan's head turned slightly. "Nora."
"Don't."
"This is between him and me."
"My father's box. My arm. My life. Try again."
The room went quiet. Isabella's hand hovered near mine, ready to pull me back or hold me up. I was not sure which one I needed.
Gabriel looked at me for a long second. Up close, he seemed more tired than he had on the phone. There were shadows under his eyes that the lamplight did not hide. Still, the power in him filled the room without effort.
"Declan is mine to discipline," he said.
"Then discipline him for disobeying you after you admit he was right."
Cormac made a soft sound near the desk. It might have been approval. It might have been concern for my survival.
Gabriel's gaze sharpened. "Right choices can still carry a cost."
"Then put the cost where it belongs. Patrick Vale threatened me. Rina forged my father's transfer. Someone used your medical route to move him. Declan didn't do those things. He let me hear them."
My voice shook at the end. I hated that. Declan heard it, and something moved through his face before he buried it.
Gabriel's attention shifted between us. When he spoke again, the anger had cooled into something more dangerous. "You trust him."
I felt Declan go still.
The question should have been easy to dodge.
It wasn't. Stone Medical Transport had been in my father's route.
Declan's past sat inside Thomas's video.
He had secrets with Gabriel, years I did not know, blood under every polished floor in this house.
Yet he had asked before touching my arm.
He had played the video with me there. He had put Vale's threat in the open because I demanded it.
"I trust what he has done tonight," I said.
Declan looked at me then. Only for a second. My cut arm pulsed under the new bandage.
Gabriel nodded once, almost to himself. "That may have to be enough for now."
Cormac turned his phone so the screen faced us. "Rina and Selby have reached The Black Harp. Separate rooms. Separate guards. Rina is asking for Nora. Selby is asking for anyone with a bar license and fewer moral objections."
"Rina doesn't get Nora," Declan said.
"Rina doesn't decide what I get," I replied.
Gabriel raised one hand. The room stopped. "Rina can ask. Nora will sleep here tonight, behind my doors, with Siobhan's bandage on her arm and two men on the hall. At dawn, we decide who speaks to whom."
"At dawn?" I repeated. "Vale is moving now."
"So are we."
Cormac's phone buzzed again. His face changed before he answered. That small shift put ice into my stomach.
"Doyle," he said. He listened for three seconds. "Send it to my secure line. Now."
Declan stepped closer to the desk. "What?"
Cormac looked at Gabriel first. Then at me. "One of the fake press phones received a scheduled message after the street block failed."
Gabriel's voice went soft. "Read it."
Cormac's phone pinged. He opened the message. His jaw tightened.
"Saint Brigid east loading bay. Two a.m. Bring Reeve, the drive, and the Brooks girl, or Daniel Harkin stops breathing on camera."
The study disappeared under the sound of my own heartbeat.
Declan moved first, stepping between me and the phone as if words could shoot.
I looked past his shoulder at the screen in Cormac's hand. Below the message was a photo of an old man tied to a chair beneath a green hospital exit sign. His face was bruised, gray, and alive.
Daniel Harkin was not dead after all.