Chapter 24
Declan
“Guys!”
Dervla’s voice brings me running. I’m first up the stairs, my boots thudding against the wood as I take the stairs two at a time. Aidan is right behind me. Cormac hits the landing a second later.
Dervla is standing in the middle of her room with the phone still in her hand, white as the wall behind her.
Something in me goes instantly cold.
“What happened?” I ask.
“We need to move the hard drive,” she says.
“Why?” Aidan says, coming closer. “Who called?”
“I called Alanna. Long story with a tale of woe, but it ends with the hard drive wasn’t meant for me, it was meant for Séamus. She was panicked. She never panics. I didn’t know she could…”
“Back up,” I say. “What else did she say?”
I look at Dervla and know from her face that whatever came before the hard drive has pissed her off.
“She said my mother didn’t leave. She said Dad killed her. Two months before he died.”
Silence hits like a punch.
“Divorce papers…” Aidan murmurs.
Cormac goes utterly still.
“Why?” I ask.
“She said Mum tried to have me killed when I was little. Not directly. She made enquiries. Dad found out. He hunted her down and killed her.” Dervla laughs once, sharp and ugly.
“Fucking hell, Dervla,” I mutter.
“It’s fine,” she says, brushing it off in that way she does. She is partway between not giving a shit and giving all the shits. She just doesn’t know which way to turn. “That part is irrelevant. The hard drive is what we need to focus on.”
“Okay,” I say with a fierce look at the other guys, so they don’t push her. It’s not what she needs right now. She needs to focus on the thing she finds important, and her mother isn’t it right now.
“Okay,” she repeats and sticks her hand under the mattress. “Her exact words were: My God, Dervla. That wasn’t for you! Do you have it now? Dear God. Lock it down, Dervla, until I can get to you. He left it for Séamus. It is the only thing that can protect you.”
“That’s panic,” I mutter.
“No shit,” she says. “But I guess it makes sense in a way. Why would Dad leave me something I have no way of understanding?”
“We should also ask how well Nan knows Séamus,” Aidan adds.
“Yeah. But now I don’t know if she’s coming here, or what?”
“Call her back.”
“I tried. She isn’t picking up now.”
“What car does she drive?” I ask.
She presses her lips together with a snort. “A Lambo. Do not ask.”
“That’s good,” I say and start moving.
“Why? What’s good about it? She can get here faster than if she drove a Volvo?”
“No, it means we can head towards her while she heads towards us, and we will spot her.”
“Is that wise?” Dervla asks. “She said to lock it down until she can get to me.”
I turn to face her incredulously. “And you have suddenly decided to be obedient?”
She blinks and then lets out a loud bark of a laugh. “Fuck, no. You’re right. Let’s move.”
I’m already out the door before anyone can argue.
Aidan swears behind me, then follows. Cormac is on my heels, muttering about getting a bag of food to take on the way. Dervla comes last, gripping the hard drive.
“Put that somewhere on your body,” I instruct her. “Don’t be waving it around for everyone to see.”
“Right,” she grits out and shoves it down her bra.
Fair enough.
By the time we hit the hall, Aidan has his keys out, and Cormac has raided the kitchen like we’re going on a fucking road trip instead of racing toward what might be a dangerous situation.
“Jackets,” Aidan snaps.
I grab mine off the peg. Cormac throws Dervla hers without looking. She catches it one-handed and shoves her arms through, face set.
Outside, the night bites. The air is damp and mean. Aidan heads for his car.
We pile in fast. Aidan in the driver’s seat, Dervla in the back next to me and Cormac in the passenger seat.
Aidan tears out of the drive.
“Call her again,” I say.
Dervla does. Puts it on speaker this time. It rings. Rings. Rings.
Nothing.
“She wouldn’t cut the call like that unless something spooked her,” Cormac says.
Aidan takes a corner too fast. The tyres grip the road, the car’s engine purring. Dervla braces a hand against the back of my seat and stares at her phone like she can force it to ring by hatred alone.
“Try again,” I say.
She does. Same result. Endless ringing. No answer.
“Where does she live?” Aidan asks.
“Not far from Dad’s. Mine,” she corrects with a grimace.
Streetlights smear across the windows. Campus drops away behind us, and the road opens into dark, wet stretches bordered by hedges and old stone walls. My knee won’t stop bouncing. I plant my foot harder.
Dervla is too quiet.
I look at her. Her face is pale in the passing light, phone clutched in one hand, the other pressed flat to her chest like she’s checking the hard drive is still there.
“You good?” I ask, which is stupid because obviously she isn’t.
She gives me a look, as if I’ve asked whether she fancies a fucking holiday.
“No,” she says. Honest, flat, almost bored by the question. “But I’m here.”
That lands harder than if she’d said she was falling apart.
Aidan’s jaw tightens. He takes another bend fast, headlights cutting over dripping hedgerows and black fields. Cormac has one hand braced on the dash and the other shoved into the pocket of his jacket, probably around the handle of a blade because he’s Cormac and that’s how he breathes.
I check behind us. “No one’s following.”
“Yet,” Aidan mutters.
Dervla’s phone lights up in her hand.
Unknown number.
Every muscle in my body goes tight. “Answer it.”
She swipes and hits speaker. “What?”
“Dervla,” Séamus says with that calm control that has to be innate. It’s not something you learn. “You left the house in a hurry.”
“And?” she snaps.
“You have a tail.”
“No, we don’t,” I say and then grimace. “Of course we do.”
“Look, Séamus,” Dervla clips out. “We are in a bit of a hurry. What do you want?”
“Turn left at the next junction. Drive for five miles and turn right.” He hangs up.
Dervla tightens her grip on the phone. “Do we listen or keep going?”
Cormac snorts. “Do we listen to the mafia king or disobey his order? Gee, let’s think.”
“Okay, smartarse,” I say, kneeing the back of his seat. “It was a valid question.”
“Driver decides,” Aidan says and flicks his indicator on as we approach the junction. “Left, it is.”
“Seriously?” Dervla snaps. “He says jump, and we say, how high, sir?”
“Pretty much,” I mutter.
“Fantastic. What if someone is tracking Alanna?”
“What if Alanna was the one who called Séamus?”
She purses her lips for a moment. “Good point.”
We leave the main road, and the world narrows fast.
The lane is little more than a black ribbon between high hedges and old walls silvering under the headlights. No houses. No traffic. Just wet tarmac, skeletal trees, and the sense that if someone wanted to disappear a body out here, they would not struggle for options.
I twist in my seat and peer out the back window. At first, I see nothing except darkness and the occasional flash of reflected light off wet stone. Then a pair of headlights appears far back, too measured, too consistent.
Not close enough to force us. Close enough to remind us they can.
“If they try to box us in, stay down,” I instruct.
The miles crawl.
I keep watching the lights behind us and count the seconds between bends.
They don’t gain. They don’t fall back.
That is somehow worse.
Aidan takes the right turn exactly where Séamus said, and the lane gets even narrower, the hedges crowding in hard enough to scrape paint if he misjudges it. The car eats the dark. Dervla shifts beside me, tense as wire, one hand still pressed to her chest.
“Tell me this is leading somewhere useful,” she says.
“It’s leading somewhere he wants us,” Cormac replies.
“Not what I asked.”
Aidan’s voice is flat. “Five more seconds and we find out.”
The lane bends hard right, then dips.
Aidan doesn’t slow nearly enough.
The car takes the corner on a hiss of tyres, and the headlights catch wrought iron gates standing open between two stone pillars. Beyond them, a long drive cuts through black trees toward a house lit gold against the dark.
Not a house.
A fucking estate.
“Well,” I say, impressed. “That’s subtle.”
Aidan swings us through the gates without hesitation. The headlights behind us keep coming for half a second, then stop at the road and sit there, distant and watching.
Cormac turns in his seat to look back. “They’re not following in.”
“Not surprising,” I say, jerking my chin to the armed guards that have surrounded the car.
“Jesus,” Dervla mutters as she stares at them.
The gates close behind us with an ominous clang.
The drive curls up through yew and tarmac. Security lights come on in stages ahead of us, one after another, like the place is waking up to receive us. My hand slides inside my jacket on instinct. Gun. Knife. Neither feels remotely adequate now.
By the time we pull into the sweep in front of the house, I’ve counted three cameras, at least half a dozen more men outside, armed to the teeth.
Aidan cuts the engine.
For one beat, nobody moves.
Then my door opens.
I look up at the guy who opened it. He’s built like he was carved for violence and dressed for money. Dark suit. Earpiece. Expression blank in that trained way that says he’s seen awful things and never found them surprising. He steps back from the rear passenger door and looks straight at Dervla.
“Miss Callaghan.”
Dervla gives him a stare sharp enough to skin paint. “That depends who’s asking.”
He doesn’t blink. “No one. Mr ó Briain is expecting you.”
She stares at him, her jaw clenched tight enough that a muscle twitches beneath the skin of her cheek, her eyes narrowed to slits of cold green contempt.
I’m already out of the car before she can move. The cold air hits harder out here, cleaner somehow, though this place still feels like a trap with better landscaping. Cormac gets out, and Aidan shuts his door with calm, but I don’t buy it for a second.