Chapter 19
Aran
“Coffee and toast, and then we go,” I say before I forget this insane plan and take her back to bed, where I know she’s safe.
I head downstairs, and she follows. I fill the kettle and drop bread into the toaster. She sits at the table without being told, which is progress of a kind.
I set the coffee in front of her and lean against the counter while mine cools.
She picks up the mug and takes a scalding sip. Her knuckles are red against the white ceramic. I look away before I say something about it that she’ll deflect with a joke, and I’ll end up irritated, and we’ll waste ten minutes going in circles.
The toast pops. I butter it, cut it, and put it in front of her.
“Triangles?” she snorts.
“It’s the only way.”
“Agreed.” She takes a bite and stares at me. “You look like you regret agreeing to this.”
“I do regret agreeing to this.”
“But you’re still taking me.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because you asked me like you trusted me.” I pick up my coffee. “Won’t happen again.”
That gets a small smile out of her. Brief. Real. Then it fades.
“We should talk about what happens when we get there,” I say.
She sets the mug down. “I go to the fourth floor. I think.”
“You do nothing unless I tell you.”
Her eyes narrow. “Aran.”
“No. Listen.” I put my coffee down and move closer to the table.
“We are not strolling into that hotel like this is a fucking memory lane tour. If I say stop, you stop. If I say down, you get down. If I take your arm and move you, you move. No arguing. No running off because you think you’ve remembered something near the elevator. ”
“I heard you the first twelve times.”
“Good. Hear me a thirteenth.”
She huffs and tears a corner off her toast. “All right.”
I let her finish eating before I move. “Shoes.”
She stands, carries her mug to the sink, and I watch her out of habit, out of need, out of whatever the fuck this is now.
I don’t trust the outside world with her in it.
That thought should concern me more than it does.
While she pulls her trainers on, I check my weapon and slide it into the holster at the back of my pants.
Aoife looks up. “You always look like you’re heading into a war zone.”
“I usually am.” I step in close enough that she has to tip her head back. “Don’t forget.”
Her throat works. “Subtle.”
“Not my thing.”
I open the hall cupboard and pull out a black baseball cap. She looks at it, then at me. “Absolutely not.”
“Yes.”
“I look ridiculous in hats.”
“You’ll survive.” I drop it on her head, and she adjusts it.
That look she gives me should annoy me. Instead, it does something worse. It makes me want to kiss her until she forgets her own name again. I force myself to step back, grab my keys, and check the front camera feed one last time.
The street’s clear.
I lead her back through the kitchen to the garage and open up the car for her. She slides in, and I open up the garage door, ducking under it when it reaches halfway so I can scan the street.
Still clear.
I don’t trust it. But Aoife trusts me to help her do this, so I move around the car to the driver’s side and climb in. Firing up the engine, I throw it in reverse and back out, closing the garage door behind me.
The drive into town is quiet, but not comfortable quiet. Tense quiet. The kind that hums under the skin.
Aoife sits beside me with the cap low over her blonde hair, arms folded, staring out the window like she can force herself calm by looking hard enough at traffic.
I keep one hand on the wheel, the other close enough to reach for her if I need to.
Not that it would do much in a moving car, but it settles something in me.
I take the longer route.
She notices after about five minutes. “You’re circling.”
“I’m checking for tails.”
“Do you always say things like that so casually?”
“Yes.”
She exhales through her nose and looks back out the window. “Right.”
I check the mirrors again. Silver hatchback, white van, taxi, black Audi two cars back. Normal. Maybe. I change lanes without indicating. The Audi keeps going. Good.
“We won’t use the front entrance,” I say.
She looks small in my passenger seat. Too small for the shit circling her. Her knuckles are angry red where she ripped the strips off. I’m still annoyed about it.
“Nervous?” I ask.
She stares out the window for a second. “Yeah. What if Sandra sees me?”
“Who the fuck is Sandra?”
“My boss.”
I look at her like that should explain itself. “If your boss is the biggest problem in your life right now, then you need a better fucking perspective.”
She glares at me. “I can have more than one problem at once.”
“Not today, you can’t.”
She mutters something under her breath that sounds filthy enough to improve my mood.
I take another turn, double back once more, then head toward the hotel for real. No one sticks. No one follows through the lights. Good enough for now.
When the hotel comes into view, Aoife goes quiet in a different way. Not irritated. Braced.
I pull into the service lane at the back and cut the engine. “Listen to me.”
“I am listening.”
“No, you’re waiting to argue. Different thing.” I turn to face her. “You stay on my right. You don’t talk to anyone unless I say. If someone approaches, you let me handle it.”
“This is my workplace.”
“Was.”
Her jaw tightens. “That’s a bit final.”
“You vanished mid-shift after a violent incident. I don’t like your odds.”
She looks away. “Great. Thanks.”
“You don’t need it,” I say shortly.
“Easy for you to say with your fancy car, nice house and money to burn.”
She completely misses my point, and I let her, because having another argument about how I plan to keep her is not how we need to start this mission.
“I used to have money,” she says after a beat. “Probably not as much as you, but I had money. A good job. A nice apartment. I didn’t have to think about budgeting. My clothes were designer… He took all of that from me.”
I don’t say anything. Whatever I say will either sound trite or she will take offense to it.
She looks at me. “Nothing to say?”
“Like what, I’m sorry you had to leave your nice, comfortable life behind while running for your life?”
She flinches, and I know I should’ve kept my mouth shut. She stares at me for a second, then gives a short nod. “Fair enough,” she says. “Let’s just do this.”
I get out first and scan the lane. Bins. Delivery door. Two smoking kitchen staff by the far wall, too busy with their own shite to notice us. I move around to her side and open the door.
She steps out and looks up at the building like it might bite her, holding out her hotel ID. “To get through the service door.”
Nodding, I shut the car door softly. “Stay close.”
I take her through the service entrance with my hand at her lower back, guiding her fast. Heat from the kitchens hits us first. Pans clattering.
Someone swearing about overcooked food. Normal.
That’s the weird part. A violent exchange, a dead corridor, a witness taken, and the hotel still runs breakfast as if nothing happened.
Aoife stiffens the second we hit the back hall.
I feel it through my hand.
“You all right?” I ask quietly.
“No,” she says. “Keep moving.”
So I do.
We cut through the service corridor, and I check every face, every doorway, every blind corner.
Staff move around us with trays, linen bags, clipboards.
Nobody gives us more than a passing look.
Good. Either the hotel kept a lid on yesterday, or people are doing what people always do when something ugly happens near money—they pretend it didn’t.
Aoife stays glued to my side.
I take us to the service elevator instead of the main bank. She swipes her card with a hand that shakes once before she stills it. The light goes green. I put myself between her and the corridor while we wait.
“Still want to do this?” I ask.
She lifts her chin. “Yes.”
The elevator arrives with a ding that sounds far too cheerful for the day we’re having. I step in first, check it, then pull her in after me. Fourth floor. The doors shut.
In the quiet, she looks straight ahead, jaw clenched.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” I say.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
That gets me a look. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“Good,” I say. “Do it for survival instead.”
The doors open.
The fourth floor looks exactly like it did yesterday. Carpet. Cream walls. Soft lights. The ice machine. Door 412 is closed with a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the handle.
“Okay, where were you when you saw Nessa?”
“Nessa,” she murmurs and moves forward. I catch her wrist before she gets more than two steps ahead of me.
“Slow.”
She looks down at my hand on her, then up at me. “I am going slow.”
“No, you’re about to sprint into a memory and call it helpful.”
Her eyes flash, but she reins it in. Good. She points with her free hand. “My cart was here. Just outside 414. I came out, turned, saw her about there.” She gestures toward the elevator. “Walking that way.”
I let go of her wrist and move with her, keeping half a step behind and to the side. The corridor is quiet enough to make my skin itch. Too clean. Too soft. Like yesterday didn’t happen here. Like I didn’t drag the wrong woman out of this place with my gun in my hand and blood on my knuckles.
Aoife stops by 414 and stares down the hall.
“Talk me through it,” I say.
She nods once, breathing shallow. “I had the caddy here. I’d just finished in the room. I pulled the door shut. Looked up. Saw her.” She glances toward the elevator again. “Blonde. Black jacket. Black jeans. Walking normally.”
She closes her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “She looked at me over her shoulder.”
“You saw her face?”
“Briefly. Not long enough that I remembered until now.”
“Show me,” I say.
She nods and steps closer to the elevator, slower this time. I stay right on her. The doors are shut. Stainless steel, polished enough to throw back a warped version of us.
“She looked back like this,” Aoife says, turning her head over her shoulder.
I watch it.
Not just the movement. The angle. The line of sight.
“Again.”
She does it again, a little more uncertain.
“She wasn’t looking at you,” I say.
Aoife turns fully to me. “What?”
I step into the spot she indicated and look toward 412, then toward the ice machine, then back to the elevator. “If she turned like that, she was checking behind her. Not checking you. Checking the corridor.”
Her forehead creases. “So she was making sure no one followed?”
“Maybe. Or waiting for something.”
I move to 412 and stare at the door. “When Granville ran out, did he look at the elevator first or at you first?”
She blinks. “Me.”
“Then the elevator mattered less to him in that second than the witness who saw him.”
Aoife stares at me.
“Was Nessa still here when Granville came out?”
She shakes her head. “I heard the doors ping and then slide shut right before he came out.”
“So Nessa wasn’t on the floor. Only you.”
“Did he think I was her?”
“Maybe. It depends on whether they’ve ever met before or not.”
Aoife wets her lips.
“You two are the same height, same hair. In a rush, from a doorway, with adrenaline pumping? Close enough.”
Her face drains. “So you grabbed me because you thought I was her, and he looked at me because he thought I was her.”
“Possibly.” I step closer before she can drift too far into her own head. “Look at me.”
She does.
“You are here. With me. Stay there.”
Her throat works. She nods once. “She did set me up, didn’t she? She knew I worked here. She knew I looked like her. She knew. That bitch!”
I wince, knowing I’m keeping something monumental from her, but it’s not my story to tell. Connor is pissed off enough right now.
I don’t get to finish that thought.
A housekeeping trolley rattles out of the service lift at the far end, and Aoife goes rigid beside me.
For one second, I think she’s seen something useful.
Then a woman in a navy blazer steps out behind the trolley and barks, “Aoife O’Leary?”
Aoife mutters, “Fuck.”
The woman spots me, takes me in from boots to face, and pulls up short. Late forties, hard bob, clipboard tucked under one arm. Sandra, I’m guessing from Aoife’s reaction. She has the look of someone who enjoys rules more than people.
“You,” she says to Aoife, voice sharp enough to cut tile. “Where the hell have you been?”
Aoife squares up before I can stop her. “Busy.”
Sandra’s eyes flick to me again. “And who is this?”
I step in before Aoife can say something likely to make this worse. “Her boyfriend.”
Sandra eyes me up now with far more caution. Chances are, she saw me on the CCTV yesterday. She might’ve even seen me taking Aoife out of here and discharging bullets in the stairwell.
I grasp Aoife’s arm lightly. “We need to go,” I murmur.
She nods, knowing we are busted.
I take a step forward, and she follows without argument, for once.