Chapter 45
CHAPTER 45
CLOVER
I paced the length of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the millionth time, crushing a sea of rotten rose petals into the white satin aisle runner under my feet.
The entire gothic chapel smelled like death. There must have been a wedding there on the night of the invasion because every pew and pedestal was draped in white tulle and dead flowers. Every candelabra dripped with melted wax. And every time I reached the altar and turned around, the sun streaming in through the stained-glass windows was a little lower in the sky.
“They’re taking too long,” I muttered with my thumbnail between my teeth.
“They’ll be here soon,” Kate replied automatically, never once looking up from the front pew, where she was busily prepping for dinner.
While Jack and I had been coming up with a plan and contacting her military mates, Kate had been working just as hard to make sure that everyone had bedding and food and water for the night. Blankets and sleeping bags and pillows had been set up throughout the cathedral, giving each person plenty of privacy, and meat pies had been made ahead of time and packed in insulated delivery bags from the bakery.
I’d felt useful before the mission began, but once Jack and the lads left through the Poddle—an underground river that ran below the cathedral and would allow them to travel to the hospital unseen—there was nothing left to do but try not to have a panic attack. I probably could have offered to help Kate, but she needed something to do just as badly as I did. I didn’t want to take that away from her.
I was just about to turn around again when the sound of squeaky boots on a tile floor echoed through the massive, marble space. Spinning around, I watched as a band of camouflaged men—and one woman—filed in through an arched doorway next to the altar. Their ski masks had been pushed up to reveal their grinning faces, their arms were draped around one another’s neck, and their attention seemed to be on a particularly wet member of their crew—a bald man called Finn, I believe.
“Fucker fell in!” Jack chuckled as Kate rushed over and hugged her wife.
“Bah! I was pushed, and ya know it.” Finn laughed—or maybe he was Oscar and the bearded one was Finn. I’d only met them briefly before they changed into their tactical gear and disappeared into the Poddle through a manhole outside.
The team had worn black wellies to wade through the underground stream to the hospital, but the man at the back of the group, wearing hospital clothes tucked into Kellen’s old combat boots, was wet up to his knees.
“Damien!” I sprinted down the center aisle, satin sliding and rose petals scattering in my wake, and the moment our eyes locked, tears filled mine.
He had his arm around the back of a man called Paul. I remembered him because he seemed to be Jack’s favorite, but as soon as Damien saw me, he let go and leaped over the ornate railing separating the pews from the pulpit. He was on me in two bounds, lifting me off my feet and claiming my mouth in a kiss that tasted like tears I hadn’t known I was crying.
Eons passed in the span of that kiss, seasons and lifetimes merged and diverged, but not one of them could touch us. Because in that moment, we were timeless. There was no Kellen or Darby or Damien or Clover—those people were tiny fractals of who we truly were—like panes of glass in the ornate windows that were currently bathing our skin in rainbows. We weren’t the individual colors. We were the sun shining through all of it.
“You found me,” Damien whispered, wrapping my legs around his waist and pressing his forehead to mine.
“I’ll always find you.” I smiled. “I found your ma too.”
Damien’s eyebrows pulled together as my grin widened.
“Kate.” I nodded toward the pew where dinner was being served. “She was Kellen’s ma.” Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out the photo and showed it to Damien. “That’s why Jack agreed to help. Kate couldn’t bear to lose you twice.”
I lowered my voice. “Neither could I.”
I realized as I watched Damien’s eyes roam over the image that he’d never seen a picture of Kellen before.
“The Devil himself,” he said, pursing his lips. “He failed you. He failed her.” Damien tore his gaze away from the photo of Kate and pinned me with the same haunted, harrowing stare he’d destroyed me with at Heuston Station. “I won’t let that happen again,” he vowed.
“I know.” I smiled, trying to ignore the brutal finality I heard in Damien’s voice as I leaned forward and kissed his beautiful, worried mouth. “Because this time, you don’t have to do it alone.”
Damien’s eyebrows pulled together as I pocketed the photo of his former self—a man who had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders—and glanced past him at the group of people who had come to help him bear that burden.
“Come on,” I said, tapping his arse with my heel. “Your other mother has been dyin’ to see you.”
After the longest night of my life, the sunrise still came too soon.
I’d lain awake for hours, listening to a cathedral full of snoring men and Damien’s steady heart beating beneath my cheek. Every soft thump had been another grain of sand falling through an hourglass. A ticking clock that was counting down to noon.
And then … nothing. I couldn’t see past that. I couldn’t feel Damien in the future. Something bad was going to happen. I knew it like I’d known where every candle was in Darby’s house. It wasn’t a hunch or a case of nerves; it was a fact.
And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I tried to hide my fear from Damien. I only hyperventilated in the bathroom. I kept my trembling hands in my pockets. I spoke as little as possible, not wanting him to hear the tremor in my voice. But the closer it got to half ten—the time when Jack had said she wanted everyone to head out—the closer I came to having a full-blown public panic attack.
At ten, Jack had everyone gather round the altar, where everything they’d taken from the soldiers at the hospital—handguns, a machine gun, extra ammo, a laptop, a satellite phone—had been laid out like Sunday communion. And that was when the chest pain started. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I wanted so badly to wrap myself around Damien and let his quiet strength comfort me, but he would know. He would know I was falling apart, and I couldn’t do that to him. He needed to focus. He needed to think positively and be surrounded by calm, confident people. He needed to muster the courage to face the man who’d killed his mother and his wife, and there was no way he could do that if the one person who was supposed to believe in him was acting like he was going to die. My panic could undermine the entire operation. So, I sat in a church pew while they went over the plan, clutching Kate’s hand until my trembling knuckles turned white.
I didn’t need to hear what they were saying—Jack and I had come up with the plan together before she and the lads from her old unit worked out the details—but I still hung on every word they said, hoping their collective years of experience would calm my nerves.
Damien would meet Alexi in the middle of the Ha’penny Bridge. We’d chosen that spot because it was close to where the River Poddle emptied into the River Liffey, so we could take the underground tunnel there and not be seen. It was also a pedestrian bridge, so there was no way someone could drive up and kidnap Damien while he stood out in the open. And it was at least three meters above street level with railings made of vertical metal poles, so it was more sheltered from a ground attack than any of the other bridges.
Which was why we were going to attack from the air. Brian, Finn, Oscar, and the little guy they’d introduced as Wheezy were all snipers. Or had been, before they retired. Each of them was going to be stationed in the top floor of one of the four buildings closest to the bridge, ready to take out Alexi as soon as he showed his shiny bald head. And just in case something went wrong, Jack and Paul were going to be stationed on the ground on either side of the bridge in case they needed to shoot out some tires … or a driver.
It was a good plan, but something was missing. I could feel it. We had a blind spot. My mind churned over every worst-case scenario, trying to figure out what more we could do, but we were out of time.
With a guttural, “Ooh-rah!” the lads—and Jack—began choosing and loading their weapons.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
I wasn’t ready. They weren’t ready.
Everyone was wearing camo and wellies, weighed down with torches and tactical gear, while my sweet, brave Damien was completely unarmed, dressed in a set of hospital pajamas and a damp pair of boots.
I shook my head as he walked toward me and felt Kate squeeze my hand in response.
This couldn’t be happening.
Every instinct I had told me to grab him and run. Run back to Glenshire and hide out forever. Keep him safe. Keep him all to myself. But there was an entire country that needed him more than I did.
And we were out of time.
Standing, Kate and I met him in the aisle, where I committed every chiseled angle of this new face to memory. Even the deep purple bruise on the inside corner of his left eye. It was the last time I was going to see it while he was alive.
Damien’s pace didn’t slow as he stalked toward me. His eyes didn’t light up. And when he grabbed me and picked me up this time, there were no smiling kisses, no relief or rejoicing. There was only the rib-crushing embrace of anxiety.
Damien’s heart pounded against mine as he buried his face in my neck and took a deep breath.
“Hey,” I cooed, smoothing my hand over his soft hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”
My panic subsided, just enough for me to comfort him, but I could tell it was like the ocean receding before a tidal wave. As soon as he left, the grief was going to come back tenfold and drown me.
Damien shook his head. “I’m not coming back, Clo. I can feel it.”
“Shh. Don’t say that. You have six Special Ops rangers watching over you. You’re gonna be fine.” Pulling back, just enough to encourage Damien to look at me, I said, “Hey, two hours from now … Alexi’s gonna be dead. And we’re gonna have our country back. Right?”
I forced a smile that Damien didn’t return.
“I don’t know, Clo. I feel like we missed something.”
Shite.
My smile slipped as we stared at one another in complete honesty.
“I don’t want to wait twenty more years for another half hour in heaven with you.” Damien shook his head as his devastated gray gaze fell to my lips.
“Then, don’t,” I whispered, kissing him first.
“All right, lovebirds,” Jack teased, coming up beside us to give Kate a kiss of her own. “Save it for the after-party. We’ve got a president to assassinate.”
Whispering something in Kate’s ear, Jack gave her a swat on the arse, adjusted the machine gun strapped across her back, and marched toward the exit they’d come through the night before.
Setting me down, Damien pressed his lips to mine in a way that reminded me of lying on a bed of green grass under a blue sky in a cemetery full of white granite gravestones.
“Remember me,” he whispered.
Then, after an obligatory hug for Kate, he was gone.