Chapter 18
Declan
Ihate waiting.
It makes my skin itch. Makes every sound feel like a fucking insult.
Dervla gets the direct number from Darragh. I move to the window and spot Cormac and Gallagher, hauling boxes across to a parked car near the library.
“I’ll go and help Cormac and Gallagher. They look like they need it,” I say, gesturing to the window with my head.
“Go,” she says.
I head out and take the stairs two at a time before cutting across the quad, rain needling at my face. The whole campus looks wrong. Empty in places it should be busy. Watchful in the places that aren’t supposed to watch back.
Cormac and Gallagher are at the boot of a dark estate car, shifting wooden crates from a trolley. Not just boxes either. Heavy ones. Useful ones. Cormac looks up as I approach and jerks his chin at the remaining stack.
“Took your sweet time.”
“Fuck off,” I say, grabbing the nearest crate. “Jesus. What did you two do, rob an army depot?”
“Something like that,” Gallagher says.
That catches my attention. “That sounds like a story.”
“It is not one you’re getting right now,” he replies, slamming the boot shut on one load before opening the rear passenger door and starting on another.
I carry the crate to the car and wedge it into the back seat beside two duffel bags that clink like metal. Guns. Plenty of them.
Cormac comes back for another load. His hair is damp, dark with rain, his expression set in that murderously calm way he gets when he’s already accepted violence is the next logical step. “How’s she doing?”
“Good.” I leave it at that. There is nothing else to say.
Gallagher lifts a long black case from the trolley and shoves it inside.
“Where are you going with all of this?” I ask.
“To the Admin Building,” Cormac responds. “Unless you feel like carrying it across campus, we are driving it there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say, and help with the last of the weapons cache.
“You two head over,” Gallagher says. “I’ll drive across.”
We turn to head across the campus in the driving rain. Cormac looks like he is about to put his fist through something and follow up with his head.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar. I know you too well, remember.”
“Leave it,” he clips out.
“Yeah, that’s not happening. Spill it. What happened down there? See a rat and get scared?” I snort.
“Do you like being alive?” he growls. “I said leave it.”
I go serious and stare at him. Whatever it is has got him worked up with no outlet. “Look, I’m not pushing, but if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
“I do, but I can’t,” he mutters. “I hate this.”
“Hey,” I say, stopping and placing my hand on his shoulder so he stops too. “What is it?”
Cormac looks down at where I’ve stopped him, then back at my face, jaw tight enough to crack a tooth. I drop my hand and clench it into a fist.
He drags a hand over his mouth and stares out across the rain-slick quad towards Admin.
“It’s her dad,” he says at last.
“What about him?”
Cormac’s eyes cut to mine. “He’s alive.”
The words hit like a brick to the face.
I just stare at him. “No.”
“Yeah.”
I laugh once. It comes out wrong. Rain runs down the back of my neck, and I don’t move.
“You saw him.”
“In the tunnels. Under the library. With Gallagher. He knew already.”
I look towards the car, towards Gallagher behind the wheel, and every bit of my mood turns ugly. “That sneaky old bastard.”
Cormac lets out a harsh breath. “Tell me about it.”
“Okay. I’m guessing he said not to tell Dervla yet.”
“He did.”
“And that’s why you look like you’re about to blow a gasket.”
“Yep.”
“You have to tell her.”
His eyes meet mine. “He asked me not to.”
“Where do your loyalties lie?”
He snarls. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s totally fair.”
“It will hurt her.”
“It will. It will hurt her more if she finds out you knew and didn’t say anything.”
“Fuck,” he grits out. “I know. I know. But Cillian…”
“Cillian, what?”
“He did this for a reason, right? He didn’t go to all this trouble just for the fun of it. He knows Dervla is grieving him. If I pull the plug on his endgame, what if it fucks everything else up?”
I stare at him. He has a point. A big one, and I hate the logic of it. “So now two of us know, and she will murder us both.”
“Aidan will look after her,” he says, and he is not joking.
“That is not the part of this I’m worried about,” I say.
Cormac gives me a grim look. “No shit.”
We reach the doors to the Admin Building, and Gallagher pulls up beside us, tyres hissing on wet stone.
He kills the engine and gets out, shutting the door with a hard thud.
His eyes move between us once. He knows exactly what we are talking about.
That alone makes me want to put him through the nearest wall.
“We do not have time for this now,” he says.
“Interesting use of we,” I reply.
His expression doesn’t change. “Mr Finnegan.”
“Don’t Mr Finnegan me like I’m in detention. You let her grieve a man who is apparently wandering around under the fucking library.”
Gallagher’s jaw tightens by a fraction. “And if she knew before today, do you think she would be sitting in that office right now, consolidating control?”
I open my mouth, then shut it again because I hate that I don’t have a clean answer.
Cormac looks between us. “This is what I’m saying.”
“It is still rotten,” I snap.
“Yes,” Gallagher says. “It is. But we are past the point where moral purity is a useful tool.”
That almost earns him a punch.
Instead, I stare at the crates in the back of the car, the rain on the roof, the library behind him, like it has not just hidden a dead man and a war chest under its foundations.
“Get the boxes,” Gallagher says.
I hate that he sounds right while sounding like a prick.
I yank open the rear door and start hauling crates out anyway because standing here arguing in the rain is pointless when Dervla is inside a building we’ve just stripped bare and painted as a target. Cormac grabs the long case. Gallagher takes two duffels like they weigh nothing.
The front doors are locked tight. Aidan appears in the glass and overrides the system. “Get in quick,” he says, opening the doors.
Darragh appears from the corridor, and his eyes go straight to what we’re carrying. “That’ll do nicely.”
“Good,” I say. “Where’s Dervla?”
“Still on the phone.”
Gallagher jerks his chin towards the stairs. “We need the higher ground. Second floor. Move.”
We take the stairs with arms full of weapons, boots thudding against stone, and I keep thinking about Cillian Callaghan alive while his daughter spends months breaking around the shape of his death. It sits under my skin like poison. Useful poison, maybe, but still poison.
I follow Gallagher down the corridor to a lecture room that overlooks the main drive and half the quad. Good sightlines. Thick walls.
“Here,” Gallagher says.
We dump the crates onto old seminar tables and start cracking them open. Handguns. Ammo. Two compact rifles. Shotguns. More magazines than I can count at a glance. The duffels are full of knives, zip ties, first aid kits, and body armour plates.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter.
Gallagher doesn’t answer. He opens the long case and reveals a scoped rifle laid out like a sacrament.
Cormac gives a low whistle. “You trained?”
“Of course,” he says.
Aidan comes in behind us. “She’s off the call.”
I look up. “And?”
“She’s livid.”
“About?”
Aidan gives me a look. “Séamus told her to hold the building, trust no one, and wait for contact. She did not enjoy being told to wait.”
His stare bores into mine, then he glares at Cormac. He knows something is up. His eyes narrow, but neither of us says anything.
“Set up and then we wait to see who they send and when,” Gallagher says.
“Fun,” I mutter and push past Aidan to leave the room instead. If I stay there a second longer, I’m going to blurt it out.
The corridor outside is colder than the lecture room. Quieter too, though not by much.
I scrub a hand over my face and pace once, trying to burn the urge to go straight to Dervla and tell her everything.
It doesn’t work.
Of course it doesn’t fucking work.
The lecture room door opens behind me.
Gallagher.
He shuts the door behind him, cutting off the clatter of metal.
He studies me for a second with that same unreadable, carved-stone face that makes normal people confess to shit they haven’t even done yet.
“You want to tell her,” he says.
It is not a question, which annoys me more than if it were.
I glance down the corridor towards Whitmore’s office. Dervla is somewhere down there, probably tearing strips off Séamus in her head now that the call is over. The knowledge sits heavy and ugly. “She deserves the truth.”
Gallagher inclines his head once. “Eventually.”
“Eventually isn’t good enough.”
His eyes harden. “Mr Finnegan.”
“No. You do not get to stand there acting reasonable when you helped fake her father’s death and then watched her grieve him.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. Good. At least he is human enough for that. “I didn’t help him. He was on his own with that. I found out two days ago.”
“Two days ago. If that is true, why did you accuse Maeve Doyle yesterday of killing him instead of Siobhán? Surely, he must’ve told you.”
“Roisin doesn’t know, and Cillian wanted to keep the thread going. If I had jumped on Siobhán without a shred of proof or motive, it would’ve looked suspicious.”
I fucking hate that it makes sense.
“See,” he says with a smile.
“Fuck you,” I grit out. “Dervla deserves to know.”
“She does and she will. Just not by you or me or Mr Byrne.”
I inhale deeply. He’s right. This is Cillian’s responsibility. If we went to her and told her, what could we say apart from your dad faked his death? Sorry and all that, but we don’t have fuck all else to tell you.
“Fine,” I grit out. “I get it. But she is going to hate us.”
“She will understand.”
“No, she won’t.” I push past him and stalk off. I need to think, to not be near anyone, especially not her. Not yet.