Chapter 22
Cormac
She’s trying to say it.
That look is familiar now. The one where she lines up the sensible option, tests it in her head, and finds she would rather choke than speak it out loud.
Aidan stays in the doorway, filling it with that controlled, brutal patience of his. He is giving her room to lie if she wants. He is also making it clear that he will hear the lie.
Declan appears behind him a second later, takes one look at the busted door, and then at Dervla. He doesn’t say anything.
Dervla wipes under one eye with the heel of her hand and squares her shoulders. “Fine. We stay.”
Aidan’s expression doesn’t change. “Why?”
She glares at him. “Because I’m not abandoning the field ten minutes after taking it.”
“That’s pride,” he says. “Try again.”
Her jaw tightens. I feel it where she’s still half against me.
“Because if Brendan Murphy takes this place back, then everything my dad did, everything Whitmore died over, everything we’ve done all this time, means fuck all.
” Her voice is rougher now, stripped down.
“Because if this place is what they use to breed the next generation of the country’s future, then handing it back is not just cowardly.
It’s stupid.” She lifts her chin. “Because they’ve been building this shit under everyone’s noses for years, and if I walk now, they win. ”
Aidan studies her for one long beat. “Better. But?”
She glares at him. “But most of all, my family, the one I had no idea existed a few days ago, needs me to do this. I am the only one with three old family bloodlines running through my veins. I am the fucking elite of the mafia underworld. I am the fucking queen.”
“Now she’s got it,” I say, exchanging a glance with Aidan, who nods with approval.
“There you go. Wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
“Yes,” she intones. “Very hard.”
I slide my hand from the back of her neck and step away to give her room. She has a wicked gleam in her eyes that wasn’t there before. She believes what she’s saying. She had the opportunity to run, and she didn’t take it.
“Food,” I say. “Then positions.”
Declan jerks his head down the corridor. “Let’s go. I’m fucking starving.”
We head for the staff canteen on the ground floor in a tight group, weapons carried openly where subtlety has already died.
I keep Dervla in the middle without making it obvious. She notices anyway because she notices everything.
“Don’t start,” she mutters.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re doing it with your body.”
Declan laughs once. “That is the most Cormac sentence anyone’s ever thrown at him.”
“She’s not wrong,” Aidan says.
I cut both of them a look. “If either of you starts sounding like a therapist, I’ll leave you outside when this place gets stormed.”
“That’s hurtful,” Declan says.
“No, it isn’t.”
We hit the canteen doors. Locked.
Raising my fist, I bang on it, and seconds later, Gallagher opens it with his active keycard. One of two that still opens the doors.
“You’re going to have to get us some of those,” I point out.
“Roisin is already on it. We realised this earlier,” he says, letting us in. “We found lasagne, beef bourguignon, fish, and steak pie all already made and warming up for the lunch service today.”
“Nice,” I mutter. “You staff members know how to eat. We get burgers and fries in the dining hall.”
“Not every day,” he says with a dry tone that makes me snort.
“Right,” Declan says, already heading for the heated trays. “I’m taking enough for three people, and if anyone judges me, they can get fucked.”
“Nobody’s judging you,” I say, grabbing plates from the stack, intending to do the same. “You’re built like a problem. Eat accordingly.”
Dervla snorts softly beside me, which is better than tears, alone in a bathroom. I take the win where I can get it.
The canteen is bright with stainless steel counters and industrial ovens. Long tables are bolted to the floor. It feels wrong that normal lunch service was meant to happen here today while everything outside curdles into war.
Roisin is by the far counter with her laptop open beside a tray of food, typing one-handed while she shovels in forkfuls of lasagne. Efficient. Slightly feral. Gallagher’s influence, probably.
She doesn’t look up as we start shovelling food onto our plates. “All staff cards are dead apart from Kevin’s, my Board one, and these four for you.”
Dervla serves herself steak pie with the sort of focus people usually reserve for loaded weapons. “And dad?” she croaks.
“We don’t know where he went,” Gallagher says. “Your man, Darragh, is searching the building.”
“Do you think he left? Maybe he went to Séamus’?” I ask.
“Possibly. He isn’t meant to be here. He only showed himself because the cat was out of the bag.”
“Are you implying that if he is seen, Dervla’s legitimacy to this fucked-up throne is compromised?” I ask with a frown.
Gallagher moves to stand behind Roisin. It’s a protective stance. One, she does nothing to stop. “I’m implying that a dead man walking into the middle of a succession crisis creates complications.”
“You don’t say,” I mutter.
Dervla goes very still beside me for half a second, then keeps serving vegetables like she didn’t hear that.
Roisin finally looks up from the laptop. “Publicly, Cillian Callaghan is dead. Legally, dead enough to have triggered movement, transfer, panic, and opportunity. If he suddenly appears, every enemy narrative gets easier. Not harder.”
“Meaning what?” Declan asks.
“Meaning she becomes the girl who only took the chair because Daddy was pulling strings from the dark.”
Dervla gives her a savage smile. “Thanks, bitch. That really improved my appetite.”
“You’re welcome.”
I load my plate with lasagne and beef and pie because if I’m about to spend hours shooting Roman fuckers, I’m not doing it hungry. “So he stays hidden. Fine. Doesn’t change the immediate problem.”
Gallagher nods once. “Exactly.”
Darragh comes through the service door then, wet at the shoulders, a radio in one hand. “Perimeter still quiet.”
“Too quiet,” I say.
Darragh looks at Dervla. “No movement at the gates. No vehicles on the approach road. Nothing on foot.”
“Which means they’re either waiting for dark or they’ve got another way in,” Aidan says.
That lands badly because we all think the same thing at once. Old place. Old tunnels. Old systems.
Gallagher’s expression hardens. “The old tunnels are sealed from the inside. They won’t get in that way.”
“Sealed by who?” I ask.
“By me,” Gallagher says.
“Good for you,” Declan says around a mouthful of pie. “That was before we started finding out half the country’s been lying.”
Gallagher gives him a flat look. “The mechanisms are old, but they’re sound.”
“Old and sound is what people say right before the wall caves in,” I mutter.
“Bear in mind that the building we are currently holed up in is newer than the original parts. There are two access points, apart from the main front doors and the service access at the back. It’s not like we are defending the entire castle,” he grouses.
“Castle,” Dervla mutters with her eyebrow raised. “Interesting choice of words.”
“That’s exactly what it was, back in the day,” Roisin says. “The library was the Keep.”
“Great history lesson. Thanks,” Dervla says, and shoves pie into her mouth.
I think she did that to stop herself from bitching further. “So we’re thinking after dark then? Makes sense. My guess is they will come from the treeline on foot.”
“Mine as well,” Aidan says. “They’re not going to roll up in a motorcade.”
“Precisely. What we have to figure out is if this Brendan arsehole is an on-the-ground kind of General, or a sit at the back and keep his own arse safe one.”
“Instinct tells me the latter, but I could be wrong,” Dervla says. “If he is the leader of this humongous effort to infect institutions across the country, maybe even the continent and beyond, he isn’t going to come running headfirst into a confrontation.”
“Even if it’s just us,” Roisin says.
None of us takes offence to that. She’s right.
“Then he sends men first,” I say. “Tests the proverbial walls. Tests us. Finds the weak point before he risks his own neck.”
Dervla looks at Gallagher. “You know this place best. If you were trying to take it back, what would you do?”
He doesn’t need to think long. “Cut power. Force movement. Hit the windows from range to pin us away from the doors. Then breach fast through the service entrance while everyone is looking at the front.”
I nod once. “Agreed.”
“Can they cut the power from outside?” I ask.
Gallagher glances at Roisin. She answers without looking up from the laptop.
“Main campus box is in a locked plant room behind Maintenance. Separate from this building, but the generator that kicks in after a few minutes is under the foyer and has one access point via a maintenance hole behind the desk.”
“So if it has a generator, why would they cut the power?” I ask.
“Because they can.”
“Fair enough.”
“The point is, after dark, if they cut the power, the generator gives it five minutes before it kicks in, in case it’s a flash cut. Then it’s not swapping from one to the other over a few seconds and causing a surge on the grid.”
“So if they know this, we have five minutes where they will strike. If they don’t know this, they will have a shock when the power comes back on,” I muse. “Either way, five minutes is a long time if you’re being shot at in the dark.”
“Only if they get inside,” Gallagher says. “The main course of action is to prevent them from blowing the glass front doors in. The service entrance is a fire door. Harder to blow up.”
“Then we make sure they don’t get near either of them,” I say.
Dervla sets her fork down and looks around the canteen. “Tables. Filing cabinets. Chairs. Anything heavy from the ground floor. We barricade the inside of the foyer and the service corridor.”
Gallagher nods once. “We can reinforce the reception desk as a fallback point.”