CHAPTER 26 DECLAN #2
"Your burned hand is not a bandage, Declan."
"It's doing a grand job for something that hates me."
"Use the green trauma wrap in the wall kit to your right. Keep her seated. If she argues, ignore her."
Nora muttered, "I heard that."
"Good," Siobhan said. "Save your strength for bleeding less."
I moved Nora toward the wall kit. She went two steps, then her injured ankle caught against a loose cable and she stumbled. My arm swept under her knees before she hit the floor.
"Put me down," she said.
"I did. Then you tried falling. I disliked it."
"Declan."
"Nora."
Her eyes narrowed, but she let her head rest against my shoulder for one breath.
That one small surrender did more damage to me than the case had done to my palm.
I carried her to an overturned transport bench and sat with her across my lap because the bench was slick with water and broken glass, and I trusted my own body more than anything in this room.
The green trauma wrap tore open between my teeth. Nora watched my hands work. Torn skin, burned palm, dried blood across my knuckles, her blood mixing with mine where I wrapped her wrist tight.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"Your wrist?"
"Your hand."
"A bit."
"Declan."
I pulled the wrap snug. "A lot. There. Honesty. Awful habit."
Her fingers brushed the edge of my palm, careful around the burn. "You put it in the case for me."
"I put it in because you were about to let the bastard take your blood alone."
"You could have been trapped too."
"I know."
"You still did it."
My thumb paused against the wrap. Around us, the bay kept moving.
Men shouted routes. Maeve gave sharp orders.
Aidan cuffed Vale's uninjured wrist behind his back while the other Stone guard kept a gun at his neck.
The case hummed and spat lines across the screen, hungry for commands it no longer held.
Nora's eyes stayed on mine, dark and wet and furious with living.
"I told your mother I had both her girls," I said. "I meant it."
Her breath broke. She leaned forward, and I met her halfway.
Our foreheads touched, just for a moment, in the blue light and blood stink of the bay.
Her good hand gripped my coat at the shoulder.
Mine rested at the back of her head, careful, because everything about her had become precious and breakable and impossible to release.
"You got her out," she whispered.
"You saved the rest."
"We did."
The word moved through me like a blade coming free.
Behind us, Vale started laughing again.
I closed my eyes for half a breath. Nora felt the change in me and tightened her fingers in my coat.
"Declan," she said softly.
"I won't kill him." I opened my eyes. "Yet."
"Good."
"You like adding conditions after you've already won."
"You like pretending you don't obey them."
A smile tried to pull at my mouth. It failed halfway because Siobhan came through the corridor doors with Marian's mobile cradle behind her, Isabella walking beside it with one hand braced on the rail and the other pressed low across her stomach.
The room changed.
Nora went rigid in my lap.
Marian Brooks looked like the dead had returned with tubes, tape, and stubborn breath.
Her face was gray. A clear mask covered her mouth and nose.
Siobhan had straps across the cradle and two bags hanging from a pole, one red-tinged, one clear.
Isabella kept whispering to her through tears she had stopped wiping away.
"Mama," Nora said.
Marian's eyes opened at the sound.
Every man near the route fell silent. Even Vale stopped laughing.
I set Nora on her feet with my arm locked around her waist. Siobhan shot me a warning look, but Nora took one step, then another. Her knees shook. I kept her upright without making it look like I was carrying her.
Marian's eyes found her daughter. The machines on the cradle stuttered, then steadied.
"Came," Marian whispered through the mask.
Nora's good hand covered her mouth. The sound she made nearly took me down with her.
Isabella reached across the cradle and caught Nora's fingers. For a moment, both sisters held their mother's rail, one pregnant and shaking, the other bleeding and barely standing, with Thomas Brooks's ring caught between them in Nora's palm.
"You came home," Marian whispered.
Nora bent over the rail. "I brought everybody I could."
Marian's eyes shifted to me. Recognition moved slowly through the drugs and pain.
"Reeve," she breathed.
I stepped closer. "Declan."
Her fingers twitched under the blanket. "Living."
The word went straight under my ribs.
"Aye," I said. "That's the idea."
Isabella looked at me over the cradle, tears wet on her cheeks, anger and gratitude both there. "Thank you."
I could handle bullets. I could handle knives. I could handle Nora's blood on my hands better than I could handle Isabella Brooks Stone thanking me while her mother breathed between us.
"Thank Nora," I said. "I was transport with a bad attitude."
Nora gave a broken little laugh. Marian's eyes softened.
The case shrieked.
Every screen in the bay turned white.
Siobhan grabbed Marian's rail. Maeve snapped, "Weapons up." Aidan drove Vale face-first toward the floor and planted a knee in his back.