Chapter 18
Cormac
Dervla hasn’t moved. Her blade is still pressed against Aidan’s shirt, and her face is doing the thing it does when she’s recalculating everything she thought she knew, which, if you’re counting, is the third time in twenty-four hours.
The woman’s going to run out of assumptions to burn through at this rate.
I know what Aidan means. I’ve known for several years, since the night he sat us down and told us what he’d been building.
Not the details. Aidan doesn’t give details until you need them.
But the shape of it. The scope. Enough to know that the seat, the Board, Apex, all the little games that everyone at St. Augustine’s kills themselves over, they’re pieces on a board that Aidan is playing differently from everyone else.
Declan knows too. He’s the one who built the intelligence framework, the network of contacts and information channels that feeds Aidan’s strategy.
He understood the scale of it before I did, because Declan thinks in systems and I think in straight lines, and the system Aidan described that night was big enough to make even Dec’s eyes go wide for a second before he filed it away and started working.
None of that is for tonight. Tonight is about the woman with the blade and the dead man that has been removed, and the fact that someone tried to kill her in her own house. We need to deal with the immediate before Aidan starts redesigning the long-term.
“Aidan,” I say. “Read the room.”
He glances at me. I tilt my head toward Dervla, who is standing in a hallway that smells like cleaning fluid, in an oversized t-shirt with bare legs and a blade at his chest, and who has just been told that the man she’s been treating as a rival has ambitions so far beyond the Board seat that it might as well be a stepping stone.
She needs something she can hold onto. Not the grand plan. The next step.
Aidan reads me, the way he always reads me, and adjusts.
“Tomorrow night,” he says to Dervla. “Whitmore’s office. The Admin Building will be clear. Security does a sweep at seven and then again at eleven. That gives us a four-hour window.”
Her blade doesn’t move. “You want to break into the Vice-Chancellor’s office.”
“I want to open a safe that contains the Board minutes from the weeks before your father was murdered. I want to know what was on the table, what votes were pending, and who stood to lose if any vote went sideways.”
“And the safe combination?”
“I told you. I know it.”
“How?”
Aidan gives her a look that says don’t ask questions you don’t need the answer to yet, and for once, she doesn’t push. Not because she’s backing down. Because she’s smart enough to know that some information is more useful when you don’t have to carry it.
She lowers the blade. Not a surrender. A decision. “Walk me through the building.”
Aidan nods and moves into the kitchen. Dervla follows. Declan peels himself off the wall where he’s been standing so still, I’d almost forgotten he was there, and I bring up the rear, pausing to check the deadbolt on the front door before I join them.
The kitchen is bright after the dark hallway. Dervla flicks on the lights and pulls out a chair, sitting with one leg tucked under her, blade flat on the table like a place setting. Aidan takes the seat across from her. Declan leans against the counter. I stay standing because sitting is too still.
“The Admin Building has three floors,” Aidan says. “Ground floor is reception, student services, and the registrar. The second floor is faculty offices and meeting rooms. The third floor is Whitmore’s office, his assistant’s office, and the archive room.”
“Cameras?” Dervla asks.
“Six. Two in the main lobby, one on each stairwell, one in the second-floor corridor, and one outside Whitmore’s office door.”
“So we’re on film the second we walk in.”
“Not if we don’t use the main entrance.” Aidan pulls out his phone and opens a photo.
It’s a blueprint. Not a sketch. An actual building plan, the kind you’d get from a planning office or an architect’s file.
He’s had this for a while. “There’s a service entrance on the north side.
Staff use it for deliveries. It feeds into a ground-floor corridor that bypasses the lobby entirely. No cameras in that section.”
“Locked?”
“Keypad. Four digits. The code changes monthly. This month’s is 7149.”
Dervla stares at him. “How do you know the code?”
“I know the facilities manager. He owes me.”
“Of course he does.”
“The stairwell cameras are the problem,” Declan says from the counter. “We can avoid the lobby, but we have to go up two flights. That puts us on the stairwell camera for floor two and the corridor camera for floor three.”
“Can you kill them?” I ask.
“Not without triggering the security system. They’re on a live feed to the night station. If the feed drops, the guard calls it in.”
“So we need the guard.”
“We need the guard not to be watching,” Declan corrects. “There’s one on duty after the seven o’clock sweep. He sits in the ground-floor security office and monitors the feeds. If something distracts him at the right moment, we have a window.”
“How long?” Dervla asks.
“Two minutes to get from the second-floor stairwell to Whitmore’s office. Another three to open the safe, photograph the contents, and get out. Five minutes total.”
“That’s tight.”
“It’s doable.”
Dervla looks at me. “And where do you fit in?”
“I’m the distraction.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I walk into the building through the front door, set off the lobby camera, and give the guard something to deal with while the three of you go up the back stairs.” I crack my knuckles. “Drunk student. Lost my wallet. Need to check the lost property. I’ll keep him busy.”
“You’d be on camera.”
“Yeah. But a drunk student looking for his wallet at eight on a Sunday night isn’t suspicious. It’s pathetic. No one’s reviewing that footage unless something else triggers an investigation.”
“And if they do review it?”
“Then they see me being an arsehole. Not exactly breaking news.”
The ghost of a smile crosses her face. She kills it before it can settle, but I saw it, and that’s enough.
“Five minutes,” Aidan says. “Declan handles the stairwell timing. I open the safe. Dervla photographs the contents. Cormac runs the distraction. We’re in and out in minutes.”
“What about the alarm on the office door?” Declan asks.
“There isn’t one,” Aidan says. “Whitmore relies on the camera and the safe. He thinks the combination is enough because he’s the only person who knows it.”
“Except you.”
“Except me.”
“And how did you come by it?” Dervla presses, because she’s Dervla, and she can’t let a thread dangle without pulling it.
“My dad.”
“Right.” Dervla sits back. Her fingers drum once on the table beside her blade, a single, restless tap. “Tomorrow night. Service entrance at what time?”
“Seven-thirty. Cormac goes in through the front. The rest of us go up the back stairs.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“Define wrong.”
“Whitmore is in his office. The guard doesn’t buy Cormac’s act. The safe combination has changed. Any of the seventeen things that could fuck this up.”
“If Whitmore is in his office on a Sunday night, we abort and come back. If the guard doesn’t buy Cormac, Cormac leaves, and we use the window instead, which adds three minutes but is still inside the sweep. If the combination has changed...” Aidan pauses. “Then my dad will find the new one.”
The kitchen is quiet. The clock ticks. Declan is watching Aidan with an expression I’ve seen before, the one that means he’s recalculating his own position based on new data.
I’m watching Dervla, because her face is doing something complicated, something between fury and the grudging recognition that Aidan has just handed her a piece of honesty that he didn’t have to give.
“Tomorrow night,” she says. “Seven-thirty. Don’t be late.”
She picks her knife up from the table, stands, and walks out of the kitchen. She heads up the stairs.
The three of us stand in the kitchen. The clock ticks. The garden is black through the window.
“She’s in,” Cormac says.
Aidan nods.
“You told her your endgame,” I add, because someone has to say it.
Aidan picks up his phone and checks the time. “That’s a problem for later.”
“Going to check the boarded window,” I say and follow her out.
I don’t go to the study. I go up the stairs, not bothering to be quiet about it. She hears me coming. Good. Sneaking up on her right now would be a good way to lose something I’m attached to.
She’s on the landing, her hand on her bedroom doorknob.
“Don’t I get a thank you?”
She doesn’t turn around. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” I say, moving closer.
She turns, and I step into her space, pressing her up against the door. “I would’ve handled it.”
Reaching out, I trace my fingers down her right arm. “Is that so?”
“Fuck you, Cormac. I’m not helpless.” Her eyes flash danger, daring me to carry on.
“Maybe not, but have you killed before, sweetheart?”
“Once or twice,” she grits out. “When arseholes touched me without permission.”
The corner of my mouth lifts up as I stare at her lips. “Feisty. I like it.”
She raises her left hand and places the top of her blade at the side of my neck. “Try me.”
My hand snaps up, and I grip her wrist, pushing her arm up against the door, pinning her in place. “Do you want to see my blood, Dervla? I’ll offer it up. All you have to do is ask.”
She glares at me in a way that would make a lesser man go running, but all it does is turn me on. I hold my left arm out and draw the blade closer. It trembles in her grip as I press it to the flesh on the inside of my arm.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
Without taking my eyes from her, I press the tip into my skin and drag it down. It stings. It’s a good kind of pain.
“Cormac,” she breathes, her eyes locked on mine as I move her wrist in the pattern I want it. Her grip tightens on the blade. She doesn’t drop it, she assists.