Chapter 11
Dervla
Ikeep walking because if I stop in that corridor, I might laugh, scream, or double back and put Whitmore’s expensive pen through his hand.
Cormac falls into step beside me. “You okay?”
“Ask me again when I’m out of this building.”
“Do you think he knew?” I ask as we reach the ground floor.
Cormac pushes the main door open, and wet, cold air hits us. “About the fight?”
“About Eoin. About Roisin setting it up.”
He glances down at me as we step out into the drizzle. “He knew enough not to be surprised.”
“Yeah.” My mouth twists. “That’s what I thought.”
We cut across the quad at a slower pace than we arrived. Students pass around us with umbrellas and coffees and deadlines, while my morning has already involved accusing a Board member of orchestrating armed violence.
Cormac takes my hand again. His palm is warm, rough, steady. It does something unhelpful to the knot in my chest.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and before I know what’s happening, Cormac has shoved me up against one of the old oak trees and is yelling at me.
“Get down,” he growls.
Instinct drops me before thought catches up.
Cormac’s body blocks mine as something cracks through the air and splinters bark above my head.
Gunshot.
“Move,” Cormac barks.
He drags me low around the far side of the tree as another shot snaps past. I hear it hit stone this time. My pulse goes feral.
Shooter. Elevated, maybe. Not close enough for me to see through the chaos.
Cormac crouches in front of me, one arm caging me in without pinning me, his gaze cutting hard across the buildings ringing the quad. His hand closes around mine, and then we break.
We sprint bent low across wet grass toward the nearest covered walkway.
Students are flooding in the opposite direction, but no one is panicking.
It’s like an everyday occurrence. Maybe it is in elite universities where the mafia runs shit behind locked doors.
Somewhere behind us, a third shot rings out.
“Who is shooting at me?” I growl. “And how did you know?”
“Instinct,” he says and leaves it at that.
Fair enough. I felt it too. “What now?”
“Try not to fucking die,” he says and shoves me through the arch of the covered walkway just as another shot cracks overhead.
Stone chips spit off a column to my left.
The outside is quiet. Every student has moved inside or left the campus.
Leaving might be wiser, but it’s an open run between here and there. Maybe not so wise.
Cormac grabs the back of my jumper and hauls me behind a thick stone pillar. “Stay the fuck down.”
“I know that part,” I snap, crouching low.
His phone is already in his hand. He dials without looking. “Quad. Shooter.” He hangs up before whoever answered can say much of anything.
“Do you know where from?”
He scans the upper windows, the rooflines, the bell tower in the distance. His face has gone blank in that terrifying way of his. “Not yet.”
Another crack. Different angle.
Cormac’s head turns sharply. “West side.”
“They aren’t giving up.”
“You aren’t dead yet.”
“Yet,” I grit out.
“Declan’s on his way. The longer this guy stays and shoots at you, the more chance Dec has of finding him.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Pretty much.” He shrugs.
“A bit minimalist for my taste.”
Cormac cuts me a look that says shut the fuck up and listen.
So I do.
Rain ticks off stone. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm starts up, shrill and useless. My pulse pounds against my throat so hard it makes every sound feel warped around the edges. Cormac shifts his weight by a fraction, peering around the pillar for less than a second before he pulls back in.
“Single shooter?” I ask.
“Maybe.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
A door slams somewhere to our right. Another shot cracks out, then another, too fast together to be random warning fire. The second one punches into the opposite wall and showers us with dust and chips of stone.
“Fuck,” I hiss, ducking lower.
Cormac’s hand lands flat on the back of my neck for one hard second, pushing my head down. “Stay behind me.” His phone buzzes in his hand. He checks it, types one word, shoves it back into his pocket. “Aidan. Two minutes.”
“Declan?”
“Already hunting.”
“So, our plan is to stay out here and get shot at,” I reiterate, just in case I got that part wrong.
“Yep.”
“Great,” I mutter. “Come on, Declan.”
“Are you ready to draw fire? Shooter might get bored and leave.”
I give him a look that could wither an ancient oak, but he’s right. We have to make this fucker stick around. “Ready as in keen?” I whisper. “No. Ready as in not interested in dying in a fucking cloister? Also, no.”
Cormac’s expression doesn’t shift. “Pity.”
Another shot cracks across the quad.
Not aimed at us this time. Too high. Too wide. It slams into stone somewhere beyond the arch, sending another burst of screaming through the buildings.
“He’s herding us,” I say, the realisation sliding cold into place.
Cormac glances at me. “Maybe.”
“No. He doesn’t just want me dead. He wants me moving.”
His jaw tightens. “Toward what?”
“That’s what we need to find out. I’m guessing a physical ambush of some kind.”
“You want to run towards an ambush?”
“It’s not an ambush if we know it’s there.”
“We don’t know it’s there. Wherever there is,” he points out far too reasonably for a man who carved my name into his arm.
“It’s a funnel,” I whisper, mind racing now that the surprise of being shot at has developed into something resembling anger. “He’s pushing us off the quad, off open ground, into a tighter route. Less witnesses. Less angles.”
Cormac studies me for half a beat. “And if you’re wrong?”
“Then I die in a more interesting location.”
“Not happening.”
Another shot cracks, close enough to make the pillar shudder against my shoulder. Cormac swears, checks the line of sight again, then drags his gaze back to me.
“We hold until Aidan gets here.”
I nod once, furious at how sensible that is.
The seconds stretch ugly and slow. My thighs burn from crouching.
I tense.
“Cormac—”
He’s already moving, gun up.
“Aidan,” I breathe when I see him, moving as if he’s daring the marksman to shoot him. “Get down, you idiot.”
“Dec?” Cormac asks.
“Opposite side.”
He nods.
“What’s the plan?”
“We run where they want us to run,” I say.
“Straight into an ambush,” Cormac adds.
“Bold,” Aidan says. “What makes you think you’re being herded?”
“Because he’s missed too many times for a clean kill,” I say, keeping my voice low and fast. “If he wanted me dead in the first three shots, I’d be fucking dead. He’s controlling direction. Scaring the herd. Making us choose cover.”
Aidan’s eyes flick past me, calculating angles, sightlines, routes. Rain darkens his hair. He looks carved out of bad intent.
“So where does this route go?” I ask.
He glances past the archway, across the slick stone and open stretch beyond. “If we break east, we hit the old philosophy corridor. Narrow access. Dead-end classroom wing if the fire doors are shut. If we go west, we get funnelled between the chapel wall and the admin annex.”
“Kill box,” Cormac says.
“Exactly.” Aidan’s mouth hardens. “So we don’t go where he wants.” Another shot cracks. Too close. Stone spits near the arch entrance.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
Aidan drops beside us properly this time, gun out, body angled toward the quad. “We have two options. We stay here until Declan find this guy or we move where he wants us to go.”
“I vote move. It will help Dec pin him down,” I say, picking up the nickname because it feels right.
Cormac gives me a dark look. “You sound way too into this.”
“I’m not into it. I’m refusing to crouch here while some cunt takes potshots at us.”
Aidan makes the decision in that cold, brutal way he does, like the argument is over because he says it is.
“Fine. We move south, not east or west. Service passage behind the old lecture theatre. Minimal line of sight, multiple exits. The ambush will have to relocate if they want to get the jump on us.”
I nod. It’s the best plan we’ve got. We’re still giving them what they want, but on our terms.
Aidan looks at me once. “When I say go, you stay between us.”
“I hate that sentence.”
“Tough.”
Cormac shifts, ready to spring. Rain runs off his hair and tracks down the side of his face. He looks like violence given a body. Rage. Focus. Whoever this is, they’ve made one very stupid choice.
Aidan counts under his breath. “Go.”
We break from cover hard and low.
I run with Cormac and Aidan flanking me, their movements precise and lethal as we race over rain-slicked stone toward the service passage that cuts behind the old lecture theatre.
My boots skid once, catch, and keep going.
A shot cracks overhead and punches into the arch behind us. Another follows, lower. Too low.
“They’ve shifted,” Aidan snaps.
No shit.
We hit the mouth of the passage and dive into the shadow. The walls close in at once, wet stone on either side, rainwater streaming down the guttering above. The noise changes in here. Footsteps echo. Gunshots sound flatter, more contained. More dangerous.
Cormac grabs my arm and yanks me tighter to the wall as another shot hits the corner behind us, spraying grit over my shoulder.
“They’re pushing in,” I hiss.
“Yep.”
Aidan reaches the bend first and stops dead for half a second, gun up. “Move.”
We turn the corner, and the world narrows to a figure at the far end of the passage, stepping out from a recessed doorway with a gun already raised.
Aidan fires. The shot in the tight space is deafening. Cormac goes forward at the same time, and the gunman jerks back into the doorway. Another shot goes off, wild, smashing into the wall beside us.
“Left,” Aidan barks.
We veer. There’s a service door halfway down the passage, old painted wood swollen from damp. Cormac slams his shoulder into it once. It gives with a crack. He shoves me through first.
I stumble into darkness. Aidan comes in behind me and kicks the door shut just as another bullet punches through the wood at chest height.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
“Keep moving,” he says.
The room is some kind of maintenance store. Shelves. Buckets. Folded chairs. A narrow slit window too high to use. One more door at the rear. Cormac is already on it, wrenching it open into a stairwell that drops down and up.
“Which way?” I ask.