CHAPTER TWENTY
Liam
The drive back from the waterfront was quiet, but I couldn’t find comfort in the silence. My jacket still carried the sharp smell of salt water and cold fog, and the events that had unfolded clung to me like a shadow I couldn’t shake.
Diggs and Michael spoke occasionally near the front of the car, discussing the cleanup and the next steps in tracking Victor Hale, but their voices faded into the background as my thoughts drifted toward home and Nora.
I expected to find her there, waiting somewhere within the familiar rhythm of the house.
I imagined her upstairs with a book in her hands, or in the kitchen making tea she’d forget to drink while it grew cold. The image was so clear in my mind that, for a brief moment, I allowed myself to believe that all was well.
The moment I stepped through the front door, that belief vanished. The silence inside the house felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain immediately. I stood in the hallway for a second, listening for footsteps upstairs or movement in the kitchen. There was nothing.
“Nora?” I called, my voice carrying through the house.
A sharp unease settled in my chest as I moved quickly through the rooms, checking the kitchen first, then the sitting room, then the small library where Nora sometimes hid when she wanted to be alone. Every room was empty and untouched.
“Nora,” I called again, louder this time, but the house remained silent.
My unease turned into urgency as I took the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door to her room.
The lamp was still on, casting a soft glow across the bed and the chair beside it, while her book lay open on the table, abandoned in the middle of a page, like she’d only stepped away for a moment.
I searched the room desperately for some sign that would make sense of the emptiness, but what I found only made the panic grow sharper. Her bag was missing, and some of her clothes were gone from the wardrobe.
Then it dawned on me. This wasn’t an abduction. Nora had packed and chosen to leave. Then I saw her phone lying on the table beside the lamp, dark and lifeless.
I crossed the room slowly, as though moving too fast might make it disappear, and when I picked up the phone and pressed the power button, nothing happened.
I tried again and realized that she’d deliberately switched it off.
That was the final confirmation that Nora hadn’t been taken by surprise; she’d walked away deliberately, and she’d made certain that I wouldn’t be able to stop her.
I stared at Nora’s phone for several seconds, my fingers tightening around it until the edges pressed painfully into my palm.
The realization that Nora had left it behind on purpose settled heavily in my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath for a moment. She’d known I would call. She’d known I would search for her the second I noticed she was gone. And she’d made sure there would be no way for me to reach her.
Panic rose inside me with frightening speed, but I forced it down. Panic wouldn’t help Nora. Panic wouldn’t bring her back. Action would. I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Diggs before I’d fully turned away from the table.
“Get back to the house now,” I said the moment he answered.
There was a brief pause on the line. “What happened?”
“Nora is gone.” The words tasted wrong in my mouth.
Diggs’s voice sharpened immediately. “Gone how?”
“She packed a bag, took some of her things, and left her phone behind. I want you, Paddy, and Michael here in five minutes. Call every contact we have and start pulling security footage from the surrounding streets.”
“I’m on my way,” he said. I ended the call and dialed Paddy next, then Michael, repeating the same orders with the same cold urgency. By the time I lowered the phone, my hand was trembling. I looked around Nora’s room again, forcing myself to notice every detail.
She hadn’t been taken.
The knowledge should have eased my fear, but it only made it worse. If Nora had walked out of this house willingly, then she’d walked toward something she believed was more important than her own safety.
My mind moved through recent events with brutal speed: the threatening note, the fixer’s confession, and the desperate urgency that had been hiding beneath everything Nora had said in the past few days. There was only one person she could be going to: the one responsible for all of this.
I closed my eyes for a brief second and tried to picture where she would go first. The bus station…the train station? Any place where she could disappear into a crowd before I noticed she was missing. I opened my eyes and looked at the dark phone in my hand.
“You should have told me,” I whispered into the empty room.
The front door slammed downstairs and footsteps rushed through the hallways. Diggs was the first to reach the doorway, followed closely by Paddy and Michael, all three men wearing the same expression of alarm they’d learned to hide from everyone else.
“What do we have to do?” Diggs asked.
I held up Nora’s phone. “We have a woman who planned her escape and doesn’t want to be found,” I said, my voice low and controlled, “and we have very little time before Victor Hale realizes she’s on her way to him.”
The room fell silent as my words settled over them.
***
I gave the order that sent the entire O’Connor network into motion.
“Diggs, Paddy, Michael, get the cars ready. We leave now.”
For a second, no one moved, as though the force in my voice had pinned them to the floor. Then they were gone, rushing down the stairs and through the halls with the kind of speed that only came when they understood exactly how serious I was.
I followed them outside. The night air hit me hard, cold and sharp against my skin, but I barely felt it. My mind was already racing ahead, picturing Nora somewhere beyond the city lights, alone and moving farther away with every passing minute.
Diggs reached the first car and yanked the back door open. Paddy was already speaking into his phone, barking orders to our men stationed across Boston.
“Watch every highway exit heading south and west,” he said. “Check the bus stations, the train stations, and every road leading out of the city. I want eyes on every route.”
Michael opened the trunk of the second car and began loading weapons, radios, and spare ammunition with practiced efficiency. The metallic sound of magazines snapping into place cut through the night.
I crossed the driveway and grabbed the keys from Diggs before he could hand them to me.
“Liam, I’ll drive,” he said carefully.
“No,” I replied. “I’m not sitting in the backseat while Nora disappears.”
He held my gaze for a moment, then stepped aside. I climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. The engine roared to life, vibrating through the steering wheel like a living thing.
Paddy ran to the window. “We have men checking every departure list. The moment we know which bus or train she took, they’ll call.”
“We don’t wait for a call,” I said. “We start moving now.”
Diggs and Michael jumped into the other cars, their headlights flaring behind me. I pressed my foot against the accelerator, and the tires screeched as we tore out of the driveway and onto the empty street.
Boston blurred around us in streaks of light and shadow. Traffic lights flashed past. Buildings disappeared behind us. The city felt like a maze designed to hide Nora from me. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my hands ached.
Nora had left believing she could face Victor Hale alone. She’d left believing I would be safer if she carried this burden by herself. But she was wrong. Victor Hale had taken enough from her already. He’d stolen her peace, her safety, and her freedom. He wouldn’t take her from me, too.
My phone rang through the car. It was Diggs. I answered without taking my eyes off the road.
“We have a lead,” he said. “A bus left the station thirty minutes ago heading toward New Haven. Nora might be on it.”
“Might be?” I snapped. “I don’t want a maybe, I want a certainty. So give me one.”
“It’s the strongest lead we have.”
I pushed the accelerator harder. The car surged forward, the engine growling as the city lights began to thin and the highway opened before me.
“Then we go to New Haven,” I said.
The convoy sped down the road, chasing the woman who’d disappeared into the darkness, taking my heart with her.