The Actions of a Desperate Man
Chapter forty
WRAITH
We're on the LIE between Long Island and Queens, when the ringtone for my team sounds over the car speakers. I flick my gaze to the video panel on the dash and see McLaren's name flash on the screen.
áine's finger darts forward and she presses the button on the display to accept the call. "Hey, sister, you com—"
"Kenneth knows áine is working on the books." McLaren interrupts my wife, her voice clipped and urgent. "Considering what she's found, he's going to be shitting a brick."
Or planning another hit. We cut off his access to the players he would have relied on for this but there are other gangs and syndicates that freelance hits. Even with McLaren monitoring him, it's possible.
Never underestimate a desperate man with ties in the underworld.
Goddamnit.
"How?"
"O'Grady. My program monitoring Kenneth's calls caught her name and alert—"
Bang. Something hits the rear quarter panel.
áine screams.
The SUV breaks loose, the heavy tires shrieking against the asphalt as we lose traction and the rearend comes around. My hands lock on the wheel, fighting the skid as we slide sideways.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the massive grill of a flatbed truck a split second before it hits us dead center on the passenger side. One massive, resonant concussion through the whole frame, ringing through my body like I'm inside the Liberty Bell.
And the SUV tips.
The sound of metal scraping on metal tells me one of the security detail hit the truck.
Too late.
The side airbags deploy with a sound like a shotgun blast, filling the cabin with a sudden, blinding cloud of white chemical powder and the hot, acrid smell of scorched nylon.
For a half-second, we hang in weightless suspension. And then the SUV slams down onto its driver's side.
An earsplitting screech sounds as the armored doors and side panels scrape along the asphalt at freeway speeds. Sparks shower past the fractured windows, a brilliant cascade of orange fire flashing through the white airbag smoke.
The momentum finally dies with one last, heavy shudder. The SUV groans, dead on its left side.
The driver’s side window beneath my cheek is a spiderweb of fractured safety glass, pressing flat against the asphalt of the Long Island Expressway.
I do an instant internal grid check. Ribs intact. Vision clear. Extremities responsive. Weapon operational.
"áine." Ignoring my training for silence in combat situations, I shout her name.
The passenger side is now the ceiling. Hanging sideways, suspended four feet above me by the violent tautness of her seatbelt, her caramel hair obscuring her face, my wife dangles limply.
Dread takes hold for a split second. I shove it away. She is not dead. Knocked out maybe. Not dead.
I unbuckle quickly and reach for her wrist. Her pulse is steady. She's breathing.
Not dead.
Then she makes a sound. Her head shifts. Her hair falls away and her eyes flutter open.
And I start breathing again.
Cupping her face, my thumbs lock rigidly along her jawline, my fingers grip the base of her skull to hold her head in place. "Don't move, baby girl. Does anything hurt?"
"I can't breathe," she chokes out, her face flushing a dangerous crimson as her body weight suffocates her diaphragm. "The belt—"
"I know. I'll get you out of it as soon as I can, but don't shake your head. Answer me with words only."
"Oh…kay…"
"Good girl. Now, wiggle your toes for me."
The toes revealed by her sandal on her right foot move.
"Now, the other."
Her left toes move.
"Sensation is intact," I tell her the good news, my forearms locking into iron pillars to keep her head perfectly aligned with her shoulders.
"But you are dangling. If I hit the buckle, your weight drops and exacerbate damage we don't know about.
You stay exactly where you are until I have more hands. "
Puff. Puff. Puff.
The rhythm is unmistakable to a trained ear. Subsonic, suppressed rounds striking the reinforced underbelly of our vehicle. Destroying any thought that this was an accident and not a hit.
There's a clang against the A-Pillar followed almost immediately by a duller, heavy crack against the passenger window. There's a keyhole mark, but the polycarbonate layer holds and the ricochet does not shatter the window.
áine shrieks, flinching violently.
"Hold still," I admonish her, my muscles absorbing her movement as I keep her neck locked in place. "I have you. Look at me. Our men are out there. They've got our backs."
Proving my words, Dagda's muffled voice sounds from outside. "Perimeter suppressed! We’ve got two shooters advancing from the flatbed and a third car."
Fuck. Suppressed. Not secured.
And we've got a team of three cars with an unknown number of combatants.
"Dagda, get down here!" I order. "Noah, through the windshield! áine's experiencing suspension trauma and her airway is closing."
The rear passenger door is violently wrenched open, and Dagda drops into the cabin. Noah nimbly climbs up the undercarriage and onto the SUV so he can lean down and strike the edge of the windshield.
Made of a specialized laminated ballistic glass that is designed to stay in one piece but fracture into a dense spiderweb upon a massive impact, the windshield is the primary exit if the doors are pinned. Or a necessary entrance point to help extract a passenger safely after a collision.
Noah's third heavy, rhythmic strike with a compact halligan bar punches a hole into the windshield. Grabbing the edge with the tool, he pulls back and rolls the spider cracked windshield away like a sardine can.
He doesn't waste any time crawling in prone over the dashboard.
"I have C-spine," I bark, my hold on áine strong and steady. "Dagda, take her hips. Noah, trap her shoulders. On my count, lift her an inch to take the tension off the webbing. One. Two. Three. Lift."
My men groan, their strength fighting gravity in the tight space. They hoist her torso upward, slackening the seatbelt.
"Cut the shoulder harness first," I command, my gaze locked with my wife's, willing her to trust us. To trust me. "Three. Two. One. Cut."
Snap. The heavy nylon parts.
"Lap belt. Cut."
The second strap gives way. Her full weight drops instantly. Dagda and Noah catch her.
I don't allow my grip on her to slip a fraction of a millimeter. Bracing against the driver's door beneath me, I hoist upward, my hands locked around her jawline, keeping her neck in perfect, rigid alignment with her spine as her body goes horizontal.
"We're taking her straight out the front," I bark, my muscles straining as I move in lockstep with her. "Noah, back out. Pull from the armpits. Dagda, guide her legs. Move as one unit. Now."
Noah scrambles backward through the cleared windshield frame, planting his heavy boots firmly on the road. "Ready, Boss."
"On three. One, two, three—"
With a coordinated, powerful surge, Dagda pushes her lower body forward while Noah pulls. I slide my own body flat along the center console, arms extended, acting as a human brace for her head.
She slides smoothly over the vinyl of the dashboard, emerging torso-first into afternoon sunshine.
The two guards holding the perimeter immediately break formation and come to help. They slide their arms under her torso and thighs the second she clears the SUV frame, absorbing her weight before her spine can sag.
I scramble out right behind her, my knees hitting the road, my hands still framing her face. "Keep her flat. Straight to Dagda's truck. Move!"
It's the only other armored vehicle in our convoy.
Without my men's suppression fire, the shooting from the hit team intensifies.
"Boss," Noah says, his tone urgent. "There's a civilian woman pinned by her steering wheel and the engine block is smoking."
I look down at áine, protective fury a red haze in my brain.
"You have to help her." áine says to me. "I'm fine. You don’t have to do all this."
"I'm not risking you." That should be a given.
"You were in the accident too and you're moving around. This is overkill."
I don't agree, letting my silence be my answer as we carry her to Dagda's vehicle.
"Once my wife is secure in the truck, you and Miller drop smoke, check the civilian, and pull her out," I order our extra guards.
There are plenty of people slowing to look, but no one stops to help us. Fucking A. That would be one hell of a mess.
But it looks like both we and the flatbed have help already since we each have two vehicles parked near us.
Dagda even thought to put the emergency flashers on.
The hit team is using suppressors, and so are we. The freeway noise is keeping the shots from being heard, but that won't last forever. Not if traffic slows down enough.
By some kind of miracle, our SUV stopped against the median, leaving room for traffic to get around us. The flatbed truck is blocking one lane, but it's a Sunday afternoon.
Traffic is light on the LIE right now.
Tires squeal and three more cars slam to a halt near us. It's Mick and two teams of soldiers.
Mick jumps out of his car and the guards exit one of the others, but the men remain inside the third.
"She okay?" Mick demands.
"I'm fine," áine says with clear exasperation as we carefully slide her onto the backseat of the SUV. "Mr. Protective Pants is being extra."
"She could have a spinal injury." I don’t have to explain that to Mick, but maybe saying it out loud for áine to hear again will make her realize I'm not being extra.
"They're leaving," Dagda says. "Do you want our men to follow?"
"My men already are." Mick points to where the car still filled with soldiers is already on the road, following our assailants.
His men jump back into the second car and take off a couple of seconds later.
That leaves my men to guard áine and deal with the civilian woman caught in the trap.
Turns out? It's Allison.
Driving herself without a security detail because Kenneth Shaughnessy doesn't give a rat's ass about protecting his family, she was too slow to react to the accident happening in front of her.
"Get your wife to the hospital. I've got this." Mick waves his hand, indicating the crashed SUV and Allison's sedan.
"Copy that."
This fucking ordeal answered one question.
I love my wife.
The thought of losing her guts me like nothing ever has. Not my grandfather's murder. Not my grandmother's death. Not my mother's murder.
There's no other word that fits the feelings pounding in my chest right now.
Right after I broke my promise and failed yet again to protect my wife from attack.