CHAPTER 15 NORA #2
Her breath broke before she spoke. "Nora. Tell me you're okay."
I looked at the blood on Declan's knuckles, at Aidan's split lip, at my father's cracked photo in my lap. "I'm okay enough."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only honest one I have."
A sound moved on her end, Gabriel's voice in the background, low and controlled. Isabella covered the phone and snapped something at him that made Declan glance at me. Even through everything, my chest ached with sudden love for her.
"Are you going to The Black Harp?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Gabriel says you should come here."
"Gabriel married into this family after we did."
Aidan coughed into his fist. Declan's eyes flicked to the window, but his shoulder brushed mine once, deliberate and warm.
Isabella went quiet. "Dad wrote Rina's name?"
"Yes."
"Then you look for what he left. You don't play brave for men with guns. You look and you come back to me."
My eyes burned. "I will."
"Put Declan on."
I handed him the phone. Declan took it with a wary look, then held it to his ear.
"Mrs. Stone."
His face changed by a fraction. Isabella's voice came sharp enough that I heard pieces. My sister sounded terrified and angry and every inch Gabriel's wife. Declan let her speak. He did not interrupt. When he answered, his voice dropped.
"I'll bring her back. On my life."
He ended the call and gave me the phone.
Those five words pressed into the car harder than any promise should. On my life. Men in Declan's world did not say that lightly. My ribs tightened around a fear I had no room to carry, fear for him as much as fear of him.
"Don't make promises like that," I said.
"Too late."
"Then make one more move," I said. "Call Cormac. Put extra men on Isabella and Siobhan. If Vale used a nurse face here, he knows the medical rooms better than we do. He rang one bell at my apartment and one at The Black Harp. He may have a third."
Aidan's eyes lifted in the mirror. Declan reached for his comm without looking away from me.
"Cormac," he said. "Two more on Mrs. Stone. Two on Siobhan. Lock every clinic route tied to Maeve's packet until I tell you otherwise."
Cormac answered at once. "Already moving."
Declan's thumb left the comm. His gaze dropped to my mouth for one breath, then returned to my eyes. "Good order, Nora."
The praise went straight through my body, low and sharp. I gripped the cracked picture frame so hard the broken glass clicked under my thumb.
"Declan."
He looked at me then. Streetlight moved across his face, catching the scar near his eyebrow, the blood at his jaw, the tired darkness under his eyes. "You think I started making them tonight?"
My mouth went dry.
Aidan stared very hard through the windshield. "I am going to pretend the back seat has a privacy screen."
"Keep pretending," Declan said.
The Black Harp appeared ahead, all dark wood and old brass under rain.
Its public windows were lit low, but no customers stood near the door.
Two Stone cars blocked the curb. Men moved without shouting.
That scared me more. Panic made noise. This was worse, the clipped quiet of people trained to bleed efficiently.
Finn met us inside the side entrance with blood on his temple and murder in his eyes. He was upright through stubbornness and a hand braced against the wall.
"Rina's room is empty," he said. "Looped feed. Door opened with a clinic credential tagged to Maeve's donor packet. Harkin's alive. Scared out of his skull. Keeps asking if the little bird rang the bell."
The little bird.
My father's old name for me moved through the basement hallway before I did.
The walls under The Black Harp were brick and old pipe, warmer than my building but carrying the same damp breath.
Somewhere above us, a chair scraped across the closed bar floor.
Below, the lower corridor smelled of antiseptic, beer soaked into old wood, and hot electrical wire.
Declan took point. Aidan stayed behind me. Finn limped at our side despite Declan's glare.
"You're bleeding," I told Finn.
"Everyone's got a hobby."
"Mine is telling bleeding men to sit down."
His mouth twitched. "I see why he likes you."
Declan did not turn around. "Finn."
"What? She does."
The heat that went through my face was humiliating and badly timed. Declan kept moving, but his shoulders tightened. That tiny reaction steadied me more than it should have. There was a living man under all that violence, and somehow I had started looking for him.
Rina's holding room sat behind a gray medical door with a keypad beside it.
The lock plate hung loose, wires exposed.
Inside, the bed was empty. One restraint strap had been cut clean.
The other lay untouched. A plastic water cup sat on the floor beside the bed, water spread in a thin fan across the tile.
I stepped past Declan before he could stop me.
His hand caught my coat at the back, gentle and firm. "Slowly."
"Slowly," I repeated.
The room looked wrong in the way a room looked wrong after someone had tried to make it tell the wrong story.
The blanket was twisted toward the door, dramatic and messy.
The cut strap lay on top where anyone would see it.
The water cup had fallen too neatly, the spill away from the bed instead of under it.
Rina had staged part of this.
My pulse moved into my throat. I crouched, careful with my arm, and looked under the bed. Dust gathered near the back wheels. A small strip of gauze had been tied around the rear leg, hidden from the doorway. Something hard sat inside the knot.
"She left something," I said.
Declan was beside me in one breath. He did not reach over me. He waited.
That waiting hit me harder than command.
I untied the gauze with my good hand. Inside was a small white access card, bent at one corner, and a torn piece of a patient bracelet. The printed name had been cut away. Three letters remained at the edge.
brO.
My breath stopped.
"Brooks," I whispered.
Aidan crouched near the door. "Or broken. Or bronze."
"Brooks," I said again, because my body knew before my head could protect me. "She left it for me."
On the back of the access card, someone had scratched four words with something sharp.
ASK HARKIN WHERE COLD MOTHERS SLEEP.
Finn's face went pale under the blood.
Declan took the card from my hand and looked at it. The muscles in his forearm stood out. "Harkin said that?"
Finn shook his head. "He woke up saying he wouldn't tell the mothers. Then Siobhan sedated him because his pulse went wild. I thought it was fever."
The brass disc in Declan's evidence sleeve gave one soft click.
Every man in the room went still.
A sound came from the hallway, a bell so faint it might have been inside the pipes.
I rose before fear could pin me down. "Take me to Harkin."
Declan turned. "Nora."
"Rina left a question for him, and my name is on her bracelet. Thomas sent me to the dead ringer. Rina sent me to Harkin. We keep following the living people before Vale turns them into clues."
His eyes held mine, furious and afraid and bright with something he refused to give a softer name. For once, he did not argue.
"Finn," he said. "Clear the way. Aidan, rear. Nora stays on my left."
The bell sounded again, deeper now, from somewhere below the floor.
Harkin's room waited at the end of the lower corridor with two guards outside and frost blooming white across the inside edge of the glass.