Chapter 34
Aran
Six fifteen.
Aoife is staring at the apartment building through the windshield, and she hasn’t moved in ten minutes. She’s not frozen. She’s coiled. There’s a difference.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Remember. You stay behind me until we’re at the door. Then you’re in front. I’m against the wall. You knock. The rest runs how it runs. You don’t improvise.”
“I won’t.”
I get out first. She steps out into the early evening air and doesn’t look back at the car once. She’s already gone past the point where looking back helps.
I keep her on my right as we walk. She knows that by now. She steps into the space without thinking.
The street is almost empty. A woman unlocks a car two doors up. A cyclist comes the other way. Nobody looking. Nobody who’ll remember two people walking toward a building they’ve passed a hundred times.
At the front entrance, Aoife stops in front of the keypad. She doesn’t hesitate.
Two. Eight. Zero. Three. Nine. Six.
The lock buzzes. She glances at me with a slightly triumphant expression before she pushes the door open. We’re in.
The lobby is exactly what Dave’s photos showed.
Tile floor, brushed metal post boxes, a plant in a pot that hasn’t been watered in a while.
Lift to the left. Stairs straight ahead.
One camera, low corner by the door. I angle my face away from it as we pass.
Aoife’s hair falls forward. Neither of us registers to the lens.
“Stairs,” I say.
She nods.
We take them quietly. Two floors up.
Second floor. Corridor to the left. Four doors. Fourteen at the far end. Nothing but quiet. Silence in the way luxury apartments are.
Outside the door, I take her shoulder lightly and hold her in place for a breath. I check my weapon, holstered at my back, stashed under my shirt and take one step to the left of the door, so I’m flush with the wall, out of the peephole sightline. Aoife moves into position.
She lifts her hand.
She breathes in deeply.
She doesn’t look at me.
She knocks.
Three clean raps. The sound of a woman who expects the door to open.
Aoife blinks when the lock clicks and exhales slowly. The door pulls inward.
There is a pause long enough for me to imagine his gaze raking over her.
His voice slides through the gap first, theatrical, like he’s been rehearsing this moment. “Look what the cat dragged in. I knew you’d be back. Can’t live without me, can you?”
I see her face before she speaks. Her jaw is set. Her chin is lifted. Her eyes are on him and only him. I track her line of sight. She is around five-one, five-two. That makes him around five-eleven.
“Hello, Darragh.”
“Ee-fie,” he murmurs a nickname that makes me want to rip his tongue out. A pause. “Christ. Look at you. Where have you been living, a hostel? You look a wreck, but we can sort you out, get you looking worthy again.”
That’s when I see red.
I step out from the wall, behind Aoife, silent as a fucking ghost.
He frowns.
His gaze tracks up.
And up.
His eyes widen.
I don’t give him time to speak, or even move.
With my right hand, I grab Aoife’s upper arm and move her—firm, fast, enough so I can bring my left up with a clear line. Darragh’s face is a stationary target framed in his own doorway, and the angle is clean.
Contact.
Jaw. Slightly left of center. His head snaps. His knees go. He hits the floor on his back with his feet still inside the threshold and his arms flung wide.
Aoife gasps, her hand over her mouth.
I step over Darragh as I enter the apartment, and Aoife rushes in behind me.
“Shut the door.”
She does it with her foot. I’m impressed.
Bending, I grab his left ankle and drag him into the sitting room.
I grab a dining room chair off to the right and then haul him up into it. His head lolls.
“You knocked him out with one punch,” Aoife murmurs.
I smirk but don’t say anything.
Moving to the kitchen, I grab a glass of water and then sit on the coffee table facing him, gun in my left hand, glass in my right. I chuck the water in his face, and he splutters back to life as I place the glass on the table next to me.
He blinks twice. His jaw must be killing him. There’s already a lump forming. His face changes in stages. Confusion. Calculation. Then the arrogance reassembling. The face he wears in public slots back into place.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says. His voice is a little thick as he rubs his jaw. “But you’ve made a serious mistake.”
I don’t answer.
“I have money. If that’s what this is. I can get you money. Tonight. Enough that you walk out of here and never have to work again.”
I just stare at him. He is free to get up out of that chair to make his move, but he stays pinned in place.
“Look. Whatever your rate is, double it. I’m serious. Name it. We can end this right now, and nobody has to know anything happened.”
Nothing.
His breathing is getting faster. He’s trying to keep his voice level, and it’s slipping. His eyes keep cutting to Aoife and back to me. She says nothing.
That’s the thing that’s breaking him. Not me. Her silence.
I hold up the Glock and add the suppressor.
“Apologize to her,” I say.
His head jerks. “What?”
“Apologize to her.”
“Fuck you. I haven’t done anything I need to—”
I press the barrel of the gun to his forehead. It does the asking for me. The silence in the room is total.
Darragh goes very still. The arrogance doesn’t leave his face. Not even for a second. No remorse. No shame.
His eyes slide to Aoife. Then back to me. “She’s a fucking cunt. You’re welcome to her.”
Aoife’s breathing increases in speed. Not much, enough. That hurt her.
“You hurt her, Darragh. Unacceptable.” I pull the trigger.
The suppressor does its job. The sound is a sharp crack, not a bang. A contained, efficient thing that barely registers beyond the walls of this room.
Darragh’s head snaps back. His body goes slack in the chair. Then gravity does the rest, and he slumps sideways, sliding off the seat and hitting the floor with a dull, heavy sound.
I lower the gun.
The room is very quiet. The kind of quiet that follows something final.
I don’t look at him. There’s nothing to look at. I’ve seen this before, and it never changes. The body is just a body now. Whatever made it dangerous left the second the round did its work.
I look up at Aoife.
She’s standing by the door. Her eyes are wide, locked on the floor where he fell. She’s not blinking. Her chest is moving fast, shallow breaths that aren’t getting deep enough.
“Aoife.”
Her eyes don’t move. “What now?”
“Now, you leave, and I call the clean-up crew.”
“Clean up.”
“Unless you want to help me haul him over the balcony in daylight, hope no one sees him hit the deck and then dump him in the river.”
Her gaze shoots to mine. She considers it for a second. “Maybe not.”
I move to her and grip the back of her neck. “You okay?”
She purses her lips. “He was never going to apologize.”
“No. Narcissists are never wrong in their eyes. I could’ve tortured him to make him say it, but it would’ve been empty words.”
“No,” she says, “I don’t—didn’t—want that. This was… good.”
“Go. Set the Satnav to Home and go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t want to be here for this, Aoife.”
“Why, are they going to chop him up and put him in bags to dispose of?” She scoffs, but when she sees my face, she gulps and pales. “Oh. I’m staying.”
I consider arguing with her, but she isn’t budging, and we don’t really have time. I know that already. Plus, I’m not thrilled to let her out on her own. So, instead, I nod and pull out my phone.
Stepping back from her, I look down at Darragh Walsh and feel absolutely fuck all as I dial.
“Yeah,” a voice answers.
“Track my location.”
A pause. “Twenty.”
“Make it fifteen.” I hang up.
Then I get to work.
First thing, I clear what matters. The glass I used. The chair. The bit of water on the floor. My prints don’t belong here, and neither does anything that ties Aoife to this beyond what’s already unavoidable. She knocked. She walked in. That’s enough risk for one night.
I drag the chair back to where I found it. Wipe what I touched. The kitchen cupboard handle. The glass. Kitchen tap.
“Did you touch anything?” I ask Aoife.
“Just the door when I knocked.” I nod, and my phone buzzes once. One word.
Here.
I look at Aoife. “My people are downstairs.”
She nods as I move to the door and open it a fraction with the cloth around the handle.
Two men come up the stairs fast and quietly. Must’ve used the service entrance.
One of them is broad, with a shaved head, snapping black gloves on. The other carries a duffel, and that blank face men in this line of work wear when they’ve seen worse and don’t need details. I don’t know their names. I don’t need to. I let them in wordlessly.
“Better if you leave,” the first one says.
“We’re going,” I say. “Text me when it’s done.”
He nods, and I take Aoife by the upper arm and guide her out.
Aoife keeps pace beside me, quiet, pale, her face set in that strange stillness people get when something inside them has gone beyond shock and not yet settled anywhere else.
I keep one hand on the back of her neck as we take the stairs down, not because she’ll fall but because I need to feel she’s still here.
The lobby is empty.
Good.
I push the front door open and get her out onto the street. Evening traffic hums a block over. A car passes at the far end. Nobody looks twice at us.
We get back to the Q7. I open her door, get her in, shut it, then circle to my side and slide behind the wheel.
Only when the doors are locked do I look at her properly.
She’s staring straight ahead.
Her hands are in her lap. Not shaking. Not yet.
“Seatbelt.”
She obeys without a word. The click sounds too loud.
I start the engine and pull away clean and easy, no rush, no drama, no fucking hint of what just happened two floors up.
I take the first left, then a right, then straight, creating distance between us and the building until it’s just another block behind me and not the place where Aoife watched her old life end for good on a sitting room floor.
I check the mirrors. No tails. No sudden lights. No one is doing anything stupid.
Beside me, she says nothing.
I take us over the bridge, through two sets of lights, then out toward the quieter roads near the safehouse. My grip on the wheel is steady. My pulse isn’t. It’s not the kill. That part is done. Clean. Simple. Necessary.
It’s her.
I glance at her again.
Still staring ahead. Too still.
I take the next turn and pull into a side street for half a second, just long enough to look at her without traffic on my ass. “Look at me.”
She turns her head slowly.
Her eyes are clear. No tears. No panic. Just that hollowed-out look that comes after something snaps loose and hasn’t found where to settle yet.
“Do you need anything?” It’s better than asking her if she is okay. She will lie.
“No, I’m fine. I didn’t expect to be fine. I think that’s what has shocked me. I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel disgust or grief. I’m not horrified even though I saw you put a bullet in a man’s head. I’m not… anything. I don’t feel anything. Is that bad?”
“No,” I say. “It’s not bad. It’s your head protecting itself.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to decide whether to believe that.
I put the car back in gear and pull off again. “Sometimes it hits straight away. Sometimes later. Sometimes not at all. There’s no right way to react to seeing a bastard die.”
“He was a bastard,” she agrees quietly.
Another block passes under us. Cork keeps moving around us as if nothing happened.
“I thought I’d feel…” She stops. “Triumphant. Sick. Scared. Something bigger than this. But when you shot him, I just thought, finally.”
That lands hard on me. “Then maybe finally is enough.”