28. Angie/Connor #2
“We got this, brother,” Marcus says again and I focus on that. My best friend is a businessman. He’s the legitimate side of the operations. But we came up together, and I know he’s always been good in a crisis.
There’s nobody in the world I’d rather have watching my back.
“Almost there,” the driver says as we roar down the street.
Ahead, half the wall is blown to pieces, the front gate smashed and twisted.
Bodies are scattered on the drive. Blood splattered on the trees.
The driver slams to a halt. A truck’s overturned ahead of us, a corpse hanging from the front window.
“We go on foot.” I leap from the car. Marcus goes with me. When the driver tries to follow, I tell him to stay behind and to direct whoever else shows up.
“Together,” Marcus says, gripping his gun.
For my family, I think, as we hurry through the ruin of the wall and into the trees ahead.
Angie
The man comes to a staggering halt. I throw my hands up. I’m not sure what I plan on doing, if I’m going to punch him, bite him, or bleed on him, but a groan of pure relief wrenches from my throat as Colm rushes to help.
He’s covered in blood. It’s smeared on his shoulder, down his side. His right arm hangs limp and he’s got a gun clutched in his left. “Ladies, I got you now,” he says, snarling through his teeth. “Men came in through the back. We don’t have much time.”
“Mom and Dad are in the safe room. We have to hurry.” Rowan starts toward the doors.
Colm helps get my mother up. He hefts Mom over his shoulder, carrying her like a bag. “Both of you, stay behind me.”
He goes first toward the stairs and onto the main landing. I follow, forcing Rowan behind me. She holds my hand, her palm slick with sweat.
“We’ll be okay,” I tell her, trying to be reassuring. She needs to stay calm right now. “Colm will handle this. We’ll get to safety?—“
We rush across the open area at the top of the steps and gunfire erupts from down below.
Rowan screams. I pull her forward, yanking us both to the floor. Colm grunts and blood sprays as his head explodes in a shower of gore, brains, and skull matter. His corpse falls under the weight of my mother, both of them slamming to the carpet.
“Mom!” I scream, crawling forward. There’s shouting from down below and more shooting. “Mom! Oh, god, Mom?—“
I reach their side, slithering through blood-drenched carpet. Mom’s motionless. I roll her onto her side and her eyes find mine, a goofy smile on her face.
“Some movie,” she says.
Blazed as hell. Somewhere in outer space.
“You shouldn’t have taken more,” I whisper, pulling her against me. I look back and Rowan’s still lying on the floor, covering her head.
I don’t know what to do. There are men below and if I try to stand, they’ll have an angle on me. But if I don’t start running, they’ll come up and we’re dead anyway.
But Rowan’s behind us, and I can’t carry Mom on my own.
Oh, God.
I brush a hand over my belly. Fear fills me like a weight. I can’t die here—I can’t let my baby die here?—
I also can’t let Rowan and Mom get hurt.
“Please, don’t shoot!” I call out. “Please, we’re not a threat!” I can’t think of anything else.
“Stay where you are,” a man calls back. “We’re coming up. If you move, we’ll kill you.”
“Okay, we’re not moving. Please don’t hurt us! There’s an old woman here and a young girl.”
“Don’t move,” he repeats. I hear him on the steps. Climbing, getting closer.
I raise my chin in time to see Cathal striding toward me, a massive shotgun clutched between his hands. My jaw drops as he comes around the corner from his wing, notches the gun on his shoulder, and blasts it down the stairs.
I catch a glimpse of a man’s chest breaking open, blood and ribs blistering the air. Cathal fires again, and again, the booms deafening. “Run!” he roars, shooting down at the attackers below.
I scramble back and grab Rowan. She’s sobbing but she reacts when I touch her. She gets to her feet, crying and stumbling, nearly tripping over Colm’s corpse, but she makes it past Cathal and back into her wing. I hurry to Mom, take her arm, and start to drag her.
“Hurry, damn you!” Cathal shoots again but the next trigger-pull is a click. I scream, pulling as hard as I can, back aching and legs burning. Mom hardly reacts, a goofy smile on her face, drool at the corner of her mouth.
Cathal throws the shotgun down the steps and grabs Mom’s other arm. Together, we get her around the corner. He kneels down, hefts Mom, and lifts her to his chest like a baby.
“Run, Angie!” He ushers me forward urgently. “Go! Hurry!”
We sprint to the end of the hall and through another set of doors.
This room is similar to the master I share with Connor.
He leads me to the closet and I’m shocked to find the whole back wall is open, a room lined with steel beyond it.
Danielle is holding a sobbing Rowan in the back corner, stroking her hair.
“Inside.” Cathal grunts and places Mom down on the floor beside a rack filled with food and several pallets of bottled water. He groans, knuckling his spine. “Angie, hurry. We need to close the doors.”
I look back over my shoulder. “Connor’s not here.”
“He’ll be fine. If anyone can handle this, it’s my son.”
“But, what if he doesn’t know?—“
“He’ll know.” Cathal gently steers me. “Please, Angie. He’d be angry if I let something bad happen to his pregnant wife. My fool daughter already disobeyed me once.”
I catch my lip between my teeth, so afraid, so deeply, deeply afraid of going into that room, worried I might never see my husband again. What if we come back out and the world’s changed? What if we never come back out at all?
But there’s nothing I can do. Cathal drags me into the safe room, punches a code into an electronic pad, and the doors bang shut with a deep clang as a lock engages, and we’re alone.
Connor
I take point with Marcus behind. He sweeps our flanks while I keep my eyes locked ahead.
We don’t meet any resistance. Only a single body in the bushes. One of the house guards, his throat cut as if someone snuck up on him.
But how the hell did that happen? If they blew a fucking hole in the fence?
I’m disturbed but don’t have time to interrogate it.
There’s still sporadic shooting coming from the house, but it’s slowing down, which isn’t a good sign.
Either Colm and the defenders won or the Gallaghers are cleaning the place up.
I fix my hold on my gun as we crest the hill and crouch in the brush fifty yards from the front doors.
Two trucks are parked out front. I count six men total lurking around.
I don’t recognize any of them and I realize with a cold hate that they must be Gallaghers.
I hold Marcus back a moment, plotting our move, thinking we’ll enter the mansion through the side and use the tight hallways to our advantage, find what’s left of the defense, and rally a counter attack to save my family?—
When a man steps from the lead truck.
He’s wearing a fine black suit. His hair’s slicked back and he flips off a pair of sunglasses, tucking them neatly into his chest pocket. He taps at a phone as if he were at a business meeting. The others around him watch reverently.
Fergus Gallagher.
The eldest of the three brothers.
His broad chest shakes as he laughs at something. Hate boils in my guts. He takes a cigar from his back pocket and lights it, chewing the end, puffing away.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asks urgently.
I didn’t realize I was drifting toward him, but now my feet are moving, and I can’t stop it. “Stay here.”
“Connor, stop,” he hisses. “You’re outnumbered seven to one. You’re dead if you keep going.”
“He hurt my family.” Rage guides me. A strange calmness descends, a clarity I’ve rarely felt in my life. “And now I have to hurt him.”
It’s odd, these moments, how they seem to happen from a distance.
I’ve been in fights before. Been in life-or-death struggles.
And always it’s like I saw everything play out from fifty feet above my head, like I was working a doll in a vast theater.
My body is flooded with purpose, a righteous, cold hate, and there are only two thoughts in my head.
Kill Fergus.
Save Angie.
I raise my gun and fire.
A guard’s head explodes. He drops, spraying blood. I fire again, hit another guard, two more times, another guard, two more, another. That’s four dead, three standing, but now they’re reacting. Fergus remains rooted, cigar dangling from his teeth comically, as his men raise their weapons at me.
Marcus squeezes off several rounds. He hits the guard on the left, spinning him sideways, knocking his ally off balance. I kill the wounded man as he falls, leaving one more. I aim, squeeze, but my gun’s out of ammo.
The last Gallagher soldier grins as he aims, but Marcus blows his jaw off. He gags, tongue flailing, choking on blood.
I barrel past the corpses and slam into Fergus.
It’s like hitting a brick wall. The eldest Gallagher is a physical monster.
He’s thicker and heavier than me, but I’m in better shape.
I bash him in the face with my gun, smacking his skull, kneeing, punching, kicking.
He fights back, jabbing the end of his cigar into my neck.
I roar, skin hissing and burning, and I shove the barrel of my gun into his mouth.
I’m out of bullets, but I keep pushing. I shove, harder, until the cigar falls away, but I still don’t stop.
I grab his hair, jamming the gun deeper into his throat.
He gags, choking, and I drive a thumb into his eye.
I rip and hook, gouging it out, blood spraying as I savage him.
I knee him over and over, tearing at his hair, forcing the gun so deep it shreds his esophagus.
Blood wells up around the barrel, choking him, and Fergus flails at me.
I hit him more, beating him, pummeling him with both fists now, until his body goes still.
I kneel on top of the corpse, breathing hard, covered in blood. I’m drenched in it from hair to toes.