Chapter 23
Dervla
By the time we get back to the first floor, my nerves have ramped up. I don’t even know what we’re doing here. This is ridiculous. We are defending a university with guns and grenades against a pseudo-terrorist organisation that is trying to overthrow my grandfather, whom I’ve only just met.
And we are just sitting here waiting for it to happen.
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“No?” Aidan asks. “No, what?”
“No, we aren’t doing this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we are not sitting in rooms like targets and hoping our barricades impress people. Fuck that.”
Cormac’s arm slips from around me. Aidan studies my face. Declan comes out of the seminar room with a rifle in one hand and stops when he hears my tone.
Gallagher is the first to speak. “Elaborate.”
I turn on him. “You said Brendan will test the walls first. Fine. Let him test the empty ones. We know he wants the building. We know he wants me. We know he’ll cut power, split attention, and breach where we are weakest. So why are we giving him the shape of the fight?”
“Because we have the stronger position in here,” he replies.
“For a siege. This is not a siege yet. This is a grab. We still have time to choose where the first blood lands.”
Roisin comes down the corridor. “I hate that I’m interested. Continue.”
I pace once, fast, trying to get the idea into words before somebody shoots it down for being reckless. It is reckless. I don’t care.
“The front of this building is obvious. The service entrance is obvious. We have all focused on the Admin Building because it’s the prize.
” I point back down the stairs. “But if Brendan is coming to take St. Augustine’s back, he isn’t doing it for the architecture.
He’s doing it for control. For spectacle. For the story that follows.”
Declan frowns. “Meaning?”
“Meaning we make him choose between the building and me.” I look at all of them in turn. “We pull the centre of gravity somewhere else.”
Aidan’s eyes narrow. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m not suggesting I go stand in the fucking quad with a target painted on my chest.”
“That sounds exactly like what you’re suggesting.”
“It isn’t. The chapel.”
Gallagher goes still.
Roisin’s expression sharpens. “Interesting.”
Cormac’s jaw sets. “No.”
I round on him. “Why not?”
“Because it’s isolated. Stone walls, yes, but fewer exits and no proper fallback.”
“Exactly the point. We don’t fall back. He wants this place, yes. What does he want more? Me dead.”
“So, you’re going to give that to him…?” Aidan asks, dangerously close to losing his shit.
“No, don’t be absurd. But I am going to let him come to me.
He will have eyes on this place. Maybe even in this place.
He knows what we’re doing. He isn’t stupid.
If he sees me leave this building, he will follow.
He will come because he won’t be able to stop himself.
Then we take him out. Cut the head off the snake. ”
“That is a wild plan,” Declan breathes out. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure.”
“Then we do it,” Aidan says.
“You have all lost your fucking minds,” Cormac states.
“Really? You’re going with that?” I drawl. “You mean to tell us you are happy to sit here and be shot at?”
He narrows his eyes. “Well, no, that’s not what—”
“Exactly.”
“Fine,” he relents. “How do we do this without his men still taking the building?”
My mind races. “We split them,” I say.
Nobody speaks for a second, so I keep going before they can bury the idea under caution.
“We leave Roisin, Gallagher and Séamus’ men here so that Admin is still defended. Lights on. Movement at the windows. Maybe a shot or two, a grenade or five, if we need to sell it. The rest of us take the chapel and make that the kill box.”
Gallagher’s eyes narrow in concentration, not rejection. “You really think Brendan will commit to the chapel himself?”
“Yes. Because I’ll be there. He wants me gone. Dead. The heir apparent here to burn out his rot. He won’t trust underlings with it if he thinks he can end me himself.”
Aidan looks like he still wants to throw me over his shoulder and lock me in a cupboard, but he is thinking. That matters more.
“And if he doesn’t come himself?” Cormac asks.
“Then he sends his best men. We kill them. Either way, he loses bodies and momentum.”
Declan shifts the rifle in his hand. “What’s the exit plan?” he asks.
“There isn’t one if we do it right,” I say.
Cormac mutters, “That is not an answer I enjoy.”
“It’s the honest one.” I look at Gallagher. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
He doesn’t answer straight away, which is answer enough. He is turning over the angles, the approach lines, the stone, the sightlines from the windows, the doors. Finally, he says, “The chapel gives us choke points. One entrance. Thick walls. Limited glass.”
Roisin folds her arms. “You do realise this plan sounds deranged.”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s how I know it’s mine.”
Aidan drags a hand over his jaw. “I hate this.”
“But?” I ask.
“But if you stay here, we are waiting for them to decide the terms.” His eyes pin me. “If we do your plan, we decide the terms.”
Cormac looks between us like he is deciding which of us to strangle first. “I still think this is fucked.”
“It is fucked,” I say. “Everything is fucked. Welcome to St. Augustine’s, where fucked is the order of the day. But because it’s fucked, it will work.”
“Your dad will kill me,” Gallagher mutters.
“He has no say in this. He started this by faking his death,” I say coldly.
“That’s adorable,” Roisin says dryly. “Unfortunately, he still has several armed men and a pathological interest in outcomes, so his say exists whether you approve of it or not.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“No,” Aidan says. “You’re not.”
He sounds grimly amused by that, which is not the same as happy.
Gallagher exhales through his nose. “If we do this, we do it properly. No half-measures. No improvising once we move.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve met me.”
“Yes. That is why I’m saying it. Once the doors open, they funnel. That helps us, but—”
“It also traps us,” Cormac says.
I look at him. “Only if we lose.”
His stare goes flat. “That was meant to reassure me?”
“No, inform you that I don’t intend to lose.”
Aidan approaches me and hands me the gun I left on the desk earlier. I take it with a steady hand. “It has a full magazine, point and shoot. You will be close range, so you shouldn’t miss.”
“Just like before,” I murmur.
He nods grimly, even though he wasn’t there. He holds out the grenade with his other hand. “Pull the pin and run like fuck.”
“Run to where?” I ask with a soft smile.
“Don’t,” he says, shaking his head. “Don’t joke. You get the door clear, you move, you pull the pin, hurl it, and you run. Repeat it.”
I take a breath. “Get the door clear, move, pull the pin, hurl, run.”
“Again.”
“Get the door clear, move, pull the pin, hurl, run.”
His stare stays on mine for a beat longer, then he nods once. “Good girl.”
Declan hands the rifle to Gallagher and pulls out two handguns from the back of his pants. “Right then. Since we’re apparently doing the most unhinged option available, we should move before someone sensible stops us.”
“No chance of that,” Roisin says.
“You four go now,” Gallagher says.
I nod, keeping the gun in my hand. “When we get to the chapel, I go in alone. No fucking arguments. You three stay outside. You let Brendan in. No one else. This is between him and me.”
“I hate this plan,” Cormac mutters.
“So you’ve said. We’re still doing it.”
“This is how it’s going to go down. You go in first. Alone. We stay out of sight but close enough to breach the second it goes wrong.”
“It won’t go wrong.”
He ignores that. “If Brendan comes in alone, he gets his illusion. If he brings company, we adapt.”
“Do not jump the gun because you think I can’t handle this,” I say, striding off so no one can argue with me.
“How do you plan to get out of here?” Aidan calls after me. “We barricaded the doors.”
I pause with a grimace and march to Whitmore’s—my—office, forcing them to keep up with me. I don’t say goodbye to Roisin and Gallagher, or Darragh and Winston. Goodbyes are for losers. I don’t intend to lose.
“Out of the window,” I say, unlocking it and pushing it open. I stare down at the ground. It’s far enough that we can’t jump, but there is a drain pipe running alongside it.
“Convenient,” Cormac says, sticking his head out alongside mine.
“Maybe, or maybe it’s part of the plan to escape. Either way. We’re going down.” I pocket the grenade and shove the gun in the back of my jeans before I hoist myself up and swing my legs out of the window. Aidan catches my wrist before I can commit fully.
“Absolutely not first.”
I look down at him. “You just agreed to this.”
“I agreed to the plan. I did not agree to you snapping your neck on the way to it.”
“That would be embarrassing,” Declan mutters.
Cormac moves in, already shoving the window higher. “I’m going down first.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he gives me a look that says he will physically haul me back inside if I push it. Right now, I don’t have time for that particular battle.
“Go. But if you take too long, I’m kicking you off the pipe.”
“Noted.”
He swings himself out with the kind of steady control that makes me both furious and relieved. His boots find the brackets and seams in the stone, hands moving down the drainpipe until he reaches the ground. He looks up.
“Come on.”
I go.
The metal is cold under my palms. The wall scrapes at my boots as I lower myself, heart thudding harder than I want it to.
I don’t look down until Cormac’s hands are at my waist, helping me land.
Then Aidan comes, then Declan, all of us dropping into wet grass under the office window like criminals escaping our own headquarters.
“Let’s go,” I say and move off quickly.
We cut across the back of the building, keeping low along the stone wall until the chapel rises out of the grey ahead of us.