Chapter 18 #2
The folder under my arm is thin and ugly, plain brown card, no markings.
Inside are copies, not originals. Names, times, a route adjustment, a payment chain that runs through two shell charities and a marine repair subcontractor Patrick used years ago when he wanted hands nobody could trace back to him.
I could not bring more without burning the one source who still takes my calls.
The lobby doors glide open, and the guard behind the desk looks up, then past me, then back to me with the kind of polite blank expression that says he has already decided no.
“I need to see Cillian Byrne,” I say. “Now.”
His eyes drop to my coat, my shoes, my face. He doesn’t know me. That helps and hurts at the same time.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Then you can leave a message with reception.”
“It’s not a message.” I step closer and lower my voice. “It’s a live threat. If he leaves this building on the wrong route today, he gets killed.”
That gets a second guard moving from the side corridor, not alarmed, just ready. The first one presses an earpiece and keeps his voice calm.
“Name.”
I hesitate for half a beat, then give him the truth. “Saoirse.”
He waits, clearly expecting a surname.
“Just tell him Saoirse is here and tell him it’s about a contract on his life.”
“No.”
The word lands flat and immediate. He doesn’t even blink when he says it, and I feel heat rise in my face.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand you’re agitated and making threats in the lobby of a private office.”
“I’m warning him.”
“Then leave what you have and go.”
I look toward the lift bank, toward the smoked glass wall beyond reception, toward the corridor I know leads to internal access.
Two months and I still know the bones of this place, shift changes, camera angles, who stands where when senior staff are in the building. I know enough to know I’m out of time.
“Please,” I say, and I hate how raw it sounds. “Just tell Conall. He’ll know the names in the file.”
The second guard comes to my side, not touching me yet. “Ma’am.”
My hand tightens on the folder. I could drop the names and the route right here, loud enough for half the lobby to hear. I could burn the source, blow the operation, start a panic, and maybe still fail if they think I’m lying.
Then the side doors open.
I know his stride before I look. Fast, controlled, no wasted movement, men parting around him without making a performance of it. He has two people with him, one talking from a tablet, the other carrying papers, and he takes three steps into the lobby before he sees me.
He stops.
For one second, the whole room feels held in place.
He looks harder than he did the night he threw me out. Leaner through the face, more guarded in the eyes. His coat is dark, shirt open at the throat, and there is a fresh line of healing skin near his knuckles that wasn’t there before. He says nothing.
The guard nearest me straightens. “Mr. Byrne, she says she has threat information and is requesting immediate access. No appointment.”
His gaze never leaves my face. “I can see that.”
I move before I lose nerve. “Please listen to me.”
He says to the guards, “Step back.”
They do, but not far.
I swallow and hold the folder out. “There’s a hit in motion.
It’s not rumor. I have route details, timing windows, and a payment chain.
They’re building it through subcontractors and a cleanup crew out of the northside marine yards.
If you leave by your usual river road line after six, they’ll box your convoy at the bridge works. ”
He watches me with a face I cannot read now, and that is new. Before, even when he lied, I could read the shape under it.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says.
“I know.”
“You were told not to come back.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you in my lobby?”
I almost laugh at that, harsh and tired, but I keep my voice steady. “I just told you. You’re in danger.”
His mouth shifts once, no softness in it. “I’m always in danger.”
“This is different.”
“You expect me to trust your judgment on that.”
“I expect you to verify the file and move your route.”
He steps closer, close enough that I catch rain and cold air on his coat. His voice drops, and the people around us politely become furniture.
“You disappear for weeks, you walk in here with a folder and a panicked face, and you want what, gratitude?”
“No.” My grip slips on the file and I fix it. “I want you alive.”
Something flashes across his face, fast and gone, and he looks down at the folder without taking it.
“Conall,” he says, still looking at me.
Conall appears from the corridor behind him, takes in the scene, and goes still when he recognizes me. “Boss.”
“Take the file.”
I exhale and hand it over. Conall opens it where he stands, scans the first page, flips to the second. His eyes sharpen.
“Where did you get this?” he asks me.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if it’s bait.”
“It’s real.”
Cillian glances at Conall. “Is it?”
Conall keeps reading, then lifts his head. “Some of these names check with old marine subcontractors. I need five minutes.”
“You’ve got two,” Cillian says.
I step in before they turn away. “You don’t have two if the outer watcher is already in place. They stage early. One vehicle stalls traffic. One bike closes from behind. Shooter team takes elevation off the service flats.”
Cillian’s eyes cut back to me. “How do you know the formation?”
I hold his gaze. “Patrick used the same layout in Galway on a freight dispute, and he reused parts of it on a failed port scare last winter. He changes faces, not habits.”
He stares at me for a long second, then he says very quietly, “You don’t get to stand here and talk to me like we’re discussing weather.”
My throat tightens. “I know what I get and what I don’t. Please, just change the route.”
The front doors open again with a rush of damp air, and three men in municipal jackets walk in arguing over paperwork, loud, normal, exactly the kind of cover I’ve spent two months learning to fear on sight. My eyes move to them and I immediately realize something’s wrong.
Too early. Either they moved the window, or this was the backup team.
One of them peels off too cleanly.
No paperwork in his left hand. Right shoulder set wrongly under the jacket. Head turning, not to reception, to Cillian.
“Down!” I shout.
Everything breaks at once.
The man’s hand comes up from inside the municipal jacket with a compact pistol already leveled, and the first shot cracks through the lobby glass before anyone finishes reacting.
Cillian turns toward the sound, fast but not fast enough, and I move into him on instinct, both hands shoving hard at his chest.
The second shot hits me high under the collarbone and spins me sideways.
I don’t feel pain first. I feel impact, heat, then the floor rushing up at the edge of my vision while guards draw and scream and glass bursts somewhere behind me.
Cillian catches my arm before I fully go down, then another shot slams into the desk and the lobby fills with gunfire, people shouting, bodies dropping behind furniture.
His hand is on me, then under me, dragging me behind the reception wall while someone yells his name and Conall is firing in tight, controlled bursts toward the doors.
My mouth opens and nothing comes out but air.
Warmth spreads fast under my coat.
Cillian is in my face now, one hand pressing hard over the wound, the other gripping my jaw to keep me with him, and his voice is the only thing I can hear clearly. “Saoirse! Stay with me, please!”
“My baby,” I whisper, even as the world blurs. “Save my baby.”