16. Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Declan
Rowan calls at four in the morning. That's the first tell. Men who have nothing to hide don't call at four in the morning.
His voice has that particular quietness he uses when he wants something.
"I know where they're holding her." A pause, just long enough to seem reluctant. "Your girl. Maeve. I didn't want to involve myself, but—"
"Where."
He gives me an address on the south side. Warehouse district. Close enough to the docks to make noise disappear.
I write it down. Rowan offering a favour at four in the morning means Rowan needs something from me he can't take directly. That's the only kind of favour he gives.
"Come alone," he says. "Fewer questions that way."
"Right."
I take four men.
The warehouse is dark from the outside. Three positions before we're off the cars. Northeast corner, ground level. Rafter line, east side. Two on the interior door.
"Four," Cormac says at my shoulder, low. He's been with me eleven years. He doesn't need telling twice about anything.
"Four," I agree.
We go in through the loading dock. I've already told my men what this is: not a clean rescue. A rescue with a lesson attached. Rowan wants me to walk in, see Maeve, feel the gun at my back, and owe him my life. That's his play.
He's wrong about what I do with debts.
The first hitter is in the northeast corner, behind a stack of pallets. Russian training. They hold their breath differently from Irish boys. I've noticed that before.
We take him before he can signal.
The second is harder. He's in the rafters. That means at least twelve hours of prep. Rowan's been sitting on this address since yesterday. He called at four because that's when most men are least sharp.
Most men.
Cormac takes the shot. Clean.
The third and fourth are guarding the interior room. They hear us coming. Not because we're loud. Because the second man made a sound on the way down that he shouldn't have. Half a second. Enough.
It becomes a firefight.
I move fast and low, straight for the interior door. The moment Maeve is in the room, everything else is furniture.
The door comes off its hinges. I'm already through it.
Maeve is in a chair. Zip-tied at the wrists and ankles, a strip of tape across her mouth she's clearly been working on for hours. Her left eye is swollen. There's blood on her collar, dried, from a cut above her ear.
She's furious. Not scared. Furious.
I pull the tape. She takes one breath, sharp, deliberate, the kind that says she's been holding herself together for hours and is choosing how to spend what's left of it.
"Two left. One behind you."
I pivot. The hitter coming through the door gets one shot off before I put him down.
Behind me, Cormac handles the last one.
Then it's quiet.
I crouch in front of Maeve and start on the zip ties. My hands are steady. They're always steady. I've learned to save the shaking for somewhere private, somewhere it doesn't cost me anything.
"How long?" I ask.
"Eight hours. Give or take." She flexes her wrists when the tie comes loose. Rolls her neck. Something in it cracks audibly. "They weren't planning to kill me. Keeping me comfortable enough to stay cooperative." Her voice is flat.
She says his name the way someone says a name they've been sharpening for eight hours. "Rowan's orders. They said it twice."
"He wanted you findable."
"He wanted you grateful." She stands, and I catch her arm because her left leg gives slightly. She shakes me off after one step and walks herself. "He knows about the evidence, Declan. The accounts, the trail, all of it. He knows it exists."
I sit with it.
"One of the men talked," Maeve says. "While he thought I was unconscious. He was on the phone with someone in your building."
Your building. Not the penthouse. The townhouse.
Someone close enough to know what Nora's been building at two in the morning.
I stand up. "Can you walk?"
"I just said—"
"Cormac."
Cormac steps in. Maeve looks at him, then at me, and doesn't argue.
Outside, the cold hits hard. Two of my men are on the ground.
Paulie, who I recruited myself, who sent money to his mother in Cork every month. Dara, who'd just gotten engaged to a woman I'd never met.
Four seconds. That's all I give it.
"Declan," Maeve says.
I don't answer.
Then I move.
On the drive back, the logic assembles itself.
It's Rowan. Not Cotter. He's muscle, not architecture. A man like that doesn't build pipelines, he just guards them. Not Breslin. The routing predates his clearance by fourteen months. Rowan is the only name left standing after everything else falls away.
Rowan doesn't move directly. He never has. What he needs is Finn. Finn moving first, Finn's hands doing it, Rowan's staying clean. He has Finn's trust. Decades of it. And he knows Nora's evidence exists, which means he knows he's running out of time to use Finn before Finn hears the truth.
So he pushes. Hard. Tonight if he can.
My phone buzzes before we're off the south side.
I look at the screen. Finn. I answer on the second ring. Anything else would be a tell.
"Declan." That voice. The same one that handed me a glass two fingers deep and said I looked tired. The one that remembered Cassidy's name four years after, unprompted, while Rowan stood in the same room and said nothing.
It used to mean something when he said my name. That's the part I can't put anywhere useful right now.
"I hear there was trouble tonight."
"Handled."
"Good man." The pause he always leaves after that. The one that used to feel like warmth. "I'd rather it didn't have to be you bringing her in. But you're the only one I trust to do it right." Then, lower: "Sort it cleanly. The way these things should be handled."
I keep my voice even. "What are you thinking?"
"Come to the warehouse. Both of you. Tonight."
He hangs up.
I stare at the road. The city moves past the window, all light and noise and people who have no idea what cleanly means in the places I've worked.
Rowan's play is complete. He doesn't need to touch us. He just needed to make Finn afraid, give him a tidy solution, and let the old man do what old men in this business do when they're frightened.
Clean it up. Before it becomes a problem.
Nora is the problem.
And I've just been handed a meeting that ends with her in the ground.
"Declan," Maeve says again.
"I heard you," I say. "I'm thinking."
She's quiet for exactly four seconds. Then: "How much time do we have?"
I check the clock on the dash.
"Five hours."
It's not enough. It's also all we've got.
"Then stop thinking," Maeve says. "And drive faster."