CHAPTER 19 Maeve
The red flare detonates in the sky with a sharp, violent crack .
A brilliant, blinding crimson light washes over the flat expanse of the tar roof, casting long, distorted shadows across the gravel. The sudden explosion of color completely destroys the night vision of everyone looking at it.
The scarred cartel leader flinches, throwing his forearm up to shield his eyes, his rifle wavering for a fraction of a second.
Declan doesn't look at the sky. He doesn't hesitate.
He drops the bright orange flare gun onto the gravel, his left hand snapping up to support his right on the grip of his Glock.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The suppressed shots are sharp and mechanical, barely audible over the howling Miami wind, but the results are instant.
The man who assumed Declan was out of bullets was fatally wrong.
Two of the operatives drop to the roof, their heavy tactical vests useless against the precision of close-range impacts to their unprotected throats.
"Move!" Declan barks, his hand locking onto the collar of my tactical jacket.
He shoves me hard to the left. I stumble, my heavy boots sliding on the loose gravel, and crash behind a massive, humming steel HVAC unit. Declan hits the tar paper right beside me just as a hail of automatic gunfire tears into the space we occupied a second ago.
Bullets rip into the steel casing of the air conditioner above our heads. Sparks rain down, bright and hot, followed immediately by the sharp, chemical hiss of punctured freon gas.
I press my hands over my ears, curling my knees into my chest. The smell of ozone, sulfur, and hot metal fills my nose, choking the oxygen out of my lungs.
"I thought you were out of ammo," I gasp, my voice barely a whisper over the deafening noise.
"I had one round in the chamber and a fresh magazine in my vest," Declan says.
He stays crouched low, his back pressed against the vibrating metal of the AC unit.
He ejects the spent magazine, the empty metal casing hitting the gravel, and slams a new one home with a sharp, aggressive clack .
"He made a tactical assumption based on an open slide. It was a fatal error."
He says it with the cold, clinical detachment of a man reading a weather report. Ten minutes ago, this same man was pinning me to a dining table, his mouth hot and desperate against mine. The whiplash between his obsessive hunger and his absolute capacity for violence makes my head spin.
The scarred man is shouting orders in rapid Spanish from the other side of the roof.
"They are flanking," Declan murmurs, his breathing growing heavier.
I look at his chest. The black t-shirt beneath his tactical vest is soaked. The fresh blood from his torn shoulder is spreading fast, mixing with the sweat and the humidity of the night. He is losing too much fluid, and his left arm is hanging at a slightly awkward angle.
He leans around the right edge of the AC unit, firing twice. A grunt of pain echoes from the dark, followed by the sound of a body hitting the gravel.
"One left," Declan says, pulling back into cover. He closes his eyes for a microscopic second, his jaw locking tight against the pain.
I look down at my belt.
My fingers brush against the heavy, industrial-grade aluminum of the tactical flashlight. I look at the waterproof plastic casing containing the laptop resting on the gravel next to my knee.
I am not going to hide under a desk again.
I unclip the flashlight. The metal is cold against my sweaty palm. My hands are shaking, a fine, high-frequency tremor, but the paralyzing panic from the stairwell in Chicago is gone. It has been replaced by a cold, sharp focus.
I look at the left side of the AC unit. The red light of the dying flare casts a long, stretching shadow across the gravel. The shadow is moving.
The last operative is coming around my side. Declan is focused on the right flank, his weapon raised, waiting for the leader to break cover. The left side is completely exposed.
I don't look at Declan. I don't ask for permission. I shift my weight onto my knees, gripping the flashlight in my right hand and the heavy handle of the laptop case in my left.
A boot crunches on the gravel.
The operative steps around the corner of the steel unit, his rifle raised, his eyes scanning the dark space behind the machine.
I point the flashlight directly at his face and press the tactical strobe button.
A blinding, rapid-fire burst of pure white light hits him at point-blank range. A thousand lumens flash in a chaotic, disorienting rhythm. The man cries out, throwing his left hand up to protect his night-adjusted eyes, his rifle wavering blindly toward the sky.
I don't wait for him to recover. I swing the heavy, hard-plastic laptop case with everything I have.
The reinforced edge of the case slams brutally into his forearms and the barrel of his weapon. The impact sends a painful shockwave up my elbows, rattling my teeth, but it knocks the gun entirely out of his line of sight.
Before the man can pull the trigger, Declan pivots.
A single suppressed shot hits the operative in the center of his chest plate. The kinetic force knocks him backward, and as he stumbles, Declan fires a second round directly into the exposed gap under his chin.
The man collapses into the gravel, completely still.
I drop the laptop case. My chest is heaving, fighting for air in the humid night. The strobe light is still flashing wildly across the roof, illuminating the blood and the tar in a chaotic, broken rhythm. I fumble with the rubber button, clicking it off.
The darkness rushes back in, heavy and absolute.
Declan lowers his weapon. He is staring at me.
His chest is rising and falling rapidly, the adrenaline of the firefight burning off to leave the stark reality of what just happened.
He looks at the heavy flashlight in my hand, then down at the man bleeding out on the gravel, and finally back up to my face.
"I told you," I say, my voice trembling, but my chin lifting in defiance. "I'm not a liability."
A muscle ticks in his jaw. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can form a word, a low, vibrating hum begins to build in the air.
It isn't the wind. It’s a rhythmic, heavy thumping that shakes the gravel under my boots and vibrates directly against my sternum.
A sleek, matte-black helicopter rises over the edge of the parapet, completely devoid of running lights or identifying numbers. The downdraft hits us like a localized hurricane, whipping my hair into my face and forcing me to squint against the flying debris and tar paper.
The side door slides open. A man wearing a tactical headset and a heavy plate carrier leans out, waving us forward frantically.
"Go!" Declan shouts over the deafening roar of the rotors. He grabs my hand, his grip iron-tight.
We run across the roof, fighting the violent wind. I throw the laptop case into the cabin and scramble up the metal skid. The man in the headset grabs the collar of my jacket, hauling me inside onto the ribbed metal floor.
Declan follows, pulling himself up. He stumbles slightly as his boots hit the deck, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side.
The heavy door slams shut.
The helicopter banks sharply, the floor tilting at a severe angle as the pilot accelerates away from the Mandarin Oriental. The neon skyline of Miami falls away beneath us, a glittering, chaotic grid of light retreating into the dark.
I fall back against the canvas webbing of the seat, my lungs burning as I gasp for air. The noise inside the cabin is a relentless, mechanical roar, making it impossible to hear anything else.
The operative in the front seat tosses two heavy, noise-canceling headsets into our laps before turning his attention back to a glowing radar screen mounted on the bulkhead.
I pick up the headset and pull it over my ears. The deafening roar of the rotors instantly drops to a dull, manageable hum.
I look across the narrow cabin.
Declan is slumped against the opposite wall, his head resting back against the metal framing.
His eyes are closed. The pale light from the instrument panel highlights the stark, exhausted lines of his face.
The blood on his shirt has spread all the way down to his tactical belt, a dark, shining stain that makes my stomach turn over.
I unbuckle my harness.
I cross the small space on my knees, the vibration of the floorboards shaking my bones. I stop in front of him, reaching out to press my hands flat against the uninjured side of his chest.
His eyes snap open instantly, dark and alert, the combat instincts overriding the pain. He sees it’s me, and the lethal tension bleeds out of his shoulders.
"You're bleeding through the vest," I say, my voice echoing in his headset.
"It looks worse than it is," Declan replies, his voice a low, gravelly rasp through the comms.
"Stop saying it's fine. You aren't invincible."
I reach for the heavy velcro straps of his tactical vest, pulling them apart. He doesn't stop me. He lifts his right arm slightly, allowing me to strip the heavy Kevlar carrier off his torso. I drop it onto the floor.
The black t-shirt beneath is ruined. The butterfly bandages I applied an hour ago are completely gone, torn away by the friction and the violent movement on the roof. The graze is bleeding freely again.
I look around the cabin, spotting a small red first-aid kit mounted on the wall. I grab it, ripping the zipper open, and pull out a thick trauma pad.
I press the pad directly against his shoulder, applying heavy pressure.
Declan hisses, a sharp, involuntary sound, his right hand coming up to grip my hip to steady himself against the pain.
"Sorry," I murmur, my fingers trembling as I hold the gauze in place.
"Keep the pressure," he instructs, his eyes tracking my face.
We sit in the dim light of the helicopter, the city disappearing into the dark ocean behind us. The adrenaline crash is hitting me in waves, making my teeth chatter despite the warmth of the cabin.
Ten minutes ago, his mouth was on mine. He was promising to ruin me. And then we were fighting for our lives on a tar roof. The lines between his violence and his affection are completely blurred, tangled together in a way that should terrify me.
But looking at him now, bleeding and exhausted, the only thing I feel is a fierce, desperate need to keep him breathing.
"You ruined my moment," I say, trying to force a weak, sarcastic smile to hide the tremor in my voice.
Declan watches me, his thumb pressing lightly into the fabric of my tactical pants at my hip. The corner of his mouth twitches, a faint, dark shadow of a smile.
"The moment is merely postponed," he says through the headset.
I let out a shaky breath, the heat rising in my cheeks despite the cold sweat on my neck. "Where are we going?"
Declan looks past me, glancing at the operative in the front seat, before looking back into my eyes.
"The cartel knows we are in the United States. They have our faces. They have the resources to bribe local law enforcement and access federal databases. We cannot stay on the grid."
"So we're going to another safe house?"
"No." Declan shifts slightly, his hand sliding from my hip to wrap around my waist, pulling me a fraction of an inch closer. "Leo initiated the burn protocol on the firm's domestic servers. We are abandoning the continent."
I freeze, the pressure on his shoulder slipping for a second before I force my hands to steady. "What do you mean, abandoning the continent?"
"We are flying to a private airstrip in the Bahamas," Declan explains, his voice calm, entirely devoid of the panic that is currently exploding in my chest. "From there, we take a ghost flight to a location that does not exist on any official registry."
"Declan, I don't have a passport. I don't have clothes. I don't have anything."
"You don't need a passport where we are going." He reaches up, his large hand covering mine where it rests against the bloody gauze on his shoulder. His fingers are warm, strong, and completely steady. "You have me."
I stare at him. The absolute finality of the statement settles over me like a heavy blanket.
There is no going back to Chicago. There is no clearing my name. Richard Evans and the cartel made sure of that. The life of Maeve Gallagher, junior auditor, is officially dead and buried.
I am completely untethered from the world. I have no money, no identity, and no home. I am sitting in a stolen helicopter, holding a bloody bandage against the shoulder of a man who kills people for a living.
And as his fingers interlace with mine, pressing my palm flat against his chest, I realize the most terrifying truth of all.
I don't want to go back.
I look at the dark, obsessive hunger in his eyes, the same hunger that drove him to burn his entire life down just to keep me in it.
"Okay," I whisper into the microphone.
Declan’s grip on my hand tightens. He pulls me forward, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, until my forehead rests against his uninjured collarbone. He doesn't say anything else. He just holds me there, anchoring me to him as the helicopter flies further and further into the dark.
I close my eyes, listening to the steady, powerful rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my palm.
The chaos is gone. The structure is gone.
There is only him.