Chapter 18
Irish
By the time we left Croft House, daylight had begun thinning into the kind of gray evening that made England seem permanently suspended between rainstorms. The property no longer looked quiet from the road.
Police vehicles lined the drive, forensic teams moved through the west wing and greenhouse, and the discreet bronze sign that had once advertised a private women's recovery center stood beneath enough emergency lights to expose the lie behind every polished letter.
I should have felt satisfaction watching the place come apart.
We had opened the hidden rooms, gotten the residents out, found Isla alive, and copied enough files that Covenant Renewal couldn't erase Croft House with a new coat of paint and another charitable name.
Instead, the only thing I felt as Trigger drove us toward Maverick's temporary medical property was the ache settling into my shoulders now that adrenaline no longer held everything tight.
Croft had escaped, someone higher in the organization had almost certainly known the facility was compromised before we reached the lower level, and the documents Cipher had pulled suggested what we found beneath that house was nowhere near the end of the network.
Skye had gone ahead with Isla, and I had been aware of that absence from the second their vehicle disappeared down the drive.
It made no sense. She was exactly where she needed to be, and Isla needed her more than I did.
Still, after days of knowing where Skye was every time I entered a room, the empty space beside me had become noticeable in a way I didn't like examining too closely.
Trigger glanced toward me from the driver's seat. "Shoulder's all right?"
"Concrete dust."
"Didn't ask about the wall."
I looked at him.
He kept his attention on the road.
"You stepped into a bad angle."
"I saw him moving toward Skye."
"I know."
"Then you know why."
Trigger was silent for a few seconds before saying, "Knowing why doesn't mean I won't call it stupid."
"I didn't get hit."
"That's what men say when luck does half the work."
I looked out the window rather than answer.
He wasn't wrong.
That irritated me more than if he'd been full of shit.
Hawkeye sat behind us, quiet as usual, and I caught his reflection in the mirror before turning slightly. "That shot was clean."
He looked up.
"Thank you."
"How'd you even have the angle?"
"Ventilation opening. Saw movement through the west-wall optic."
Raze's voice came through from the second SUV over the radio. "He says that like putting a bolt through a six-inch gap into a man's shoulder is ordinary."
Hawkeye shrugged. "He was standing still."
"He was shooting at Irish."
"Still counts."
Storm laughed somewhere in the background.
I shook my head, but the prospect's answer stayed with me.
He hadn't frozen. Hadn't waited for Trigger to tell him what to do.
He had seen a threat the rest of us couldn't neutralize and acted without turning the entire corridor into a gunfight.
If he kept that up, the patch everyone still treated like a future possibility wasn't going to remain one forever.
Maverick's medical property sat nearly forty minutes from Croft House, far enough away that no one connected to the facility could stumble across it and private enough that the rescued residents didn't have to trade one swarm of strangers for another.
The converted manor belonged to a retired physician Maverick knew through Ellie, and by the time we arrived, several rooms had been opened for temporary examinations while others had been turned into quiet spaces where people could eat, sleep, call family, or simply sit with a door they controlled themselves.
The first thing I noticed after entering was that every bedroom door locked only from the inside, a detail Skye had clearly registered as well when our eyes met across the corridor.
She stood near the end of the corridor talking quietly with Storm, her hair still tied back from the operation and the sleeves of her jumper pushed above her elbows. There was dried dirt near one knee and a faint smear of something dark along her forearm that I hoped was grease instead of blood.
She looked exhausted and beautiful, which seemed like the kind of thought a man ought to be able to turn off after spending the day inside a concealed medical prison, but apparently I had lost that ability somewhere along the way.
Her gaze found me before I reached them.
It dropped immediately to my shoulder.
"I'm still not shot."
"That doesn't make what you did less idiotic."
Storm looked between us. "I'm going to find coffee before this becomes foreplay."
Skye's head snapped toward her.
Storm walked away smiling.
I waited until she disappeared through the next doorway before looking back at Skye. "How's Isla?"
The anger in her face softened immediately. "Sleeping. The doctor got fluids into her and drew blood after Isla agreed. Remedy is reviewing the results remotely with him."
"Anything serious?"
"Dehydration, malnutrition, repeated sedative exposure. They don't think there's permanent organ damage, but she needs more tests." Skye exhaled slowly. "They found bruising consistent with restraints, but nothing broken. She keeps waking up confused about where she is."
I resisted the instinct to reach for her until she closed the distance herself.
Her fingers touched the front of my jacket, not gripping this time, only resting there.
"She asked if the door locked."
I looked down at her.
"What'd you tell her?"
"That it did, but only from her side."
Something moved through Skye's expression that I recognized too well.
Relief and grief had started living beside each other.
"She locked it," Skye continued. "Then she unlocked it. Then she locked it again, like she needed to prove she could."
I covered her hand with mine.
"Let her."
"I am."
"You sound surprised."
"By myself, mostly."
That earned my attention.
Skye looked toward the closed room at the end of the hall.
"Everything in me wants to fix this for her.
I want to decide what she eats, where she sleeps, when she sees a doctor, whether she answers questions, how long she rests.
I keep catching myself about to manage every detail because that's what I've always done when something goes wrong. "
"And now?"
"Now I ask."
A small smile touched her mouth, but it carried more exhaustion than humor. "Apparently being told what to do for twenty-three days makes Isla particularly unimpressed when I try."
"Smart woman."
"Don't encourage her."
"I haven't even properly met her yet."
"You've met enough."
I let my thumb move once across the back of her hand before remembering we were standing in a hallway full of people who had already noticed too much.
Skye noticed that hesitation too.
Of course she did.
She didn't call me on it.
That worried me almost as much as when she did.
A door opened farther down the corridor, and Remedy's face appeared on the tablet Storm carried back toward us. Sunshine was visible behind him at Harbor House, holding Charlie on one hip while trying to read something over his shoulder.
"There he is," Remedy said. "The man who apparently thinks concrete is body armor."
Skye looked smug.
I sighed. "Trigger talks too much."
"Storm talks faster."
Storm raised her coffee in acknowledgment.
Remedy's expression turned serious. "Skye, Isla's preliminary bloodwork is ugly but not catastrophic.
The sedative levels are consistent with repeated dosing over time, but the local physician is already managing hydration and monitoring her heart rhythm.
She needs rest more than anything tonight.
No interrogation, no prolonged statement, and no one pushing her to remember details in order. "
"Agreed."
"If she starts vomiting, becomes difficult to wake, has trouble breathing, or shows seizure activity, hospital whether she likes it or not. Choice matters, but so does keeping her alive."
Skye nodded. "I understand."
"And you need to sleep too."
Her expression changed immediately.
Remedy grinned. "Knew that one would be harder."
"I'm fine."
"That's what Irish says when bullets miss him."
I looked at Storm as she took a long drink of coffee, clearly pleased with herself, and decided betrayal apparently came in several forms.
The conversation ended only when Charlie started demanding the tablet because she wanted to see "Uncle Irish's Scotland," despite the fact that we were not currently in Scotland.
Sunshine redirected her with the promise of pancakes, and Remedy disconnected after making all of us swear to call if Isla's condition changed.
The property finally settled into something resembling quiet, but the reprieve lasted only until Cipher called.
Something in his voice drew every member of the team toward the temporary operations room Maverick had established in what used to be the manor's library.
Laptops covered a long table beneath shelves filled with old medical texts, and Eli occupied one side of the main screen while Cipher worked from the other.
Trigger came in behind me, followed by Raze, Storm, Hawkeye, and Maverick. Skye hesitated near the door.
I looked at her. "You should be with Isla."
"She's asleep."
"You don't have to be in here."
"I know."
The answer stopped me because she wasn't asking permission or waiting for me to decide whether she belonged in the room. She was choosing to be there, and once I recognized the difference, I stepped aside and let her pass.
Cipher waited until everyone settled before bringing up the Croft House server map. "We recovered more than I expected before the local system started wiping itself. Eli caught the deletion command halfway through."
"External?" Trigger asked.
"Yes. Someone knew Croft House was compromised."
"Croft?"
Cipher shook his head. "Command originated through a Covenant network outside the property. Could've been automated, but the timing says human."