Killian
Before
After being shot in the head, I fought back from the brink of death because dying wasn’t an option.
I had to save Katarina, it was as simple as that.
I’m told my heart stopped twice, but when I came around, I was ready to leap off the floor and chase after the bastard who shot me.
And then I was going to use his severed limbs to beat Vasili to death.
But first I had to break free from my restraints.
“Shit, we need to sedate him,” some dickhead says.
“Do and I’ll fucking kill you,” I hiss, although my words are a series of gurgles because my lips aren’t moving the way they should.
Not surprising. My mind is full of garbled messages. It’s darker than it should be in the foyer, and there’s a whoosh-whooshing sound that I can’t make sense of. I ignore it and put all my energy into straining against the straps holding me down.
“Untie me right fucking now!”
“What’s he saying?” asks someone else.
“He’s awake?” comes another voice, and this one I do recognize.
“Ash! About time you showed up,” I shout over. Or think I do. “We need to find Katarina before Vasili gets away.”
“Sir, you have to calm down,” the guy nearest me says. “I appreciate this must be scary, but we need to keep you stable. Once we reach the hospital–”
They’re taking me to hospital? Fuck that. I’ll show him what scared looks like. “Get off me, you fucking gobshite!” I yell, putting more effort into forming my words so someone starts listening to me. “Ash, will you not tell them?”
“Killian, keep still and let them do their jobs!” Ash barks.
“You’re in a helicopter for fuck’s sake.
You’re strapped to a gurney because you’ve been shot in the head and leg.
Christ, two minutes ago I thought I’d be delivering a corpse.
I’m glad you’re back in the world of the living, but you’re going to give yourself another cardiac arrest if you don’t start listening to the medics. ”
“Katarina.” I say her name as clear as day.
For a second or two, all I hear is the beat of helicopter blades above my head.
“He took her, Killian,” Ash says at last. “The guy who shot you is dead, I put a few bullets in him myself, but Vasili took Katarina and she went willingly. She thinks you’re dead.” He chokes on his words when he adds. “We all thought you were dead.”
I should be touched by the emotion in Ash’s voice, but all I hear is that Katarina’s gone. Vasili will be on his way back to Russia with her. He’ll tie her up in a pretty bow and offer her for sale to some sleaze-bag unless I can stop him.
I know my head’s fucked up, but I don’t understand how this happened. Sure, I was taking a risk crashing the party, but it wasn’t my presence that kicked things off. Vasili didn’t expect me to be there. He showed up because he knew about Ash’s plan.
It’s possible his goons were better spies than we gave them credit for, but if they could uncover a plot for Katarina’s escape, why didn’t they discover her relationship with me?
The answer doesn’t take up much brain power.
The Bratva didn’t figure it out for themselves.
Someone told them. Someone who thought it best not to spill all of Katarina’s secrets. Someone who wanted to protect me.
Malachy.
As I sink back into the gurney, I know where I’m headed, and that’s straight to hell for what I’m about to do to my family.
“Ash,” I say, my words lethally clear. “If I survive this, let me stay dead.”
“Jesus, fucking Christ,” I curse, pulling my trapped finger from between two slabs of stone, and adding to my collection of blackened fingernails.
Fortunately, the bracing wind howling off the North Sea has a numbing effect on my bare hands and the pain reduces to a dull throb. It’s early November and Rory’s little Scottish Isle has skipped autumn and gone straight to bleak winter. It suits my mood.
I reposition the stone, shifting it this way and that until it settles into place. I’ve lost plenty of things in my life, but my knack for repairing dry stonewalls isn’t one of them. It’s a skill my uncle taught me back in Ireland on the rare occasions he wasn’t banged up.
I’m searching amongst the heather and grass for the next stone when a figure appears, coming from the direction of the crofters cottage that’s been my home for the last few weeks.
I eye the man suspiciously even though I recognize the tall, broad frame immediately.
“Jesus, Killian, you must be freezing,” Ash says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his fur-lined parka. He frowns as he inspects the holes in my Aran sweater and jeans as damp as the weather.
“The name’s Rick,” I correct him. This isolated spot still has the occasional visitors and they know me as Rick Freeman. I’ve left behind my Irish roots. Killian McConkey is dead. “And the hat’s keeping me warm.”
Ash cocks his eyebrow at my beanie. I wear it indoors and out, whatever the weather because some good-for-nothing nurse took it upon himself to shave off my hair. Apparently, it was necessary so they could dig out the bullet lodged in the side of my skull.
I don’t know if Danyl’s aim was off because of the knife I planted in his shoulder or the gunshot wound to his arse, but I’m told I avoided death by a fraction of an inch.
Not that I escaped unscathed. I had a small bleed on the brain that’s weakened my left side.
Naturally, my power of speech returned first and I’m working on the rest.
“Are you here to critique my outfit or is there a reason you’ve turned up on another continent unannounced?” I ask. “I didn’t hear a chopper.”
“I came by boat. Less conspicuous.” He hunches his shoulders. “Any chance of a hot drink?”
I flex my left hand, encouraging the circulation to my throbbing finger. I hate that I’m still clumsy, but building walls is just as good as the rehabilitation regime I’m supposed to be following. “I’ll make us some tea.”
The crofters cottage was the first of Rory’s renovation projects, becoming his base while an army of construction workers repaired the castle on the east side of his Hebridean isle.
There’s been a temporary halt to the works since I arrived, officially due to the inclement weather, and unofficially so no one asks too many questions about some guy called Rick who’s keeping an eye on the place, and whose accent might be American with just a twang of Scottish.
Definitely not Irish, I keep telling them.
The traditional, single-story cottage has thick stone walls, small windows and a thatched roof. Its two rooms would have housed a family of eight at one time, but even with the extension for the kitchen and bathroom, it’s only comfortable for one person, or two at a push.
“You’re not staying, are you?” I ask as I switch on the kettle in the ultra-modern kitchen.
Ash scratches at his beard, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “You don’t want me sleeping in your bed?”
“There’s only one person who’ll be slipping between my sheets, Ash, and it isn’t you.” I throw a couple of teabags into the mugs I set down on the counter and take a breath. There can only be one reason my friend has appeared out of the blue. “You have news.”
“I have a potential contact,” he says, then raises a hand before I can launch into my cross-examination. “Potential being the operative word. We could be dealing with a spy, or a chancer looking for information she can sell to the Russians.”
My heart stutters. “She?”
Ash nods. “She made contact with Mace,” he explains.
“He’d tried breaking through the Bratva’s firewall to get information on Katarina’s whereabouts, but it didn’t work.
It never does. But the next thing we know, he gets contacted by someone who seems to be an insider as far as we can tell.
She wants to trade information. So far, we don’t know what she has or what she’ll want in return. ”
It has to be Katarina’s sestra. “I need to speak to her.”
“Absolutely not. Like the rest of the world, she thinks you’re dead,” Ash reminds me, shrugging off his coat. “Your father and brothers buried what little of your remains they think they recovered from the car wreck.”
The comment brings me back to earth with a thump.
The staged accident for Katarina’s disappearance had been hastily adapted to fit me and my road trip back to Vegas.
I’d allegedly driven off the side of a mountain in Colorado.
Only Shelley knows it was a cover up, but she’s under the illusion it was so the Griffins could relocate my body and avoid my family finding out I was ready to turn my back on them.
I can’t shield them from all the pain but I can give them that.
“How are they doing? Did you go to the funeral?”
“Your dad wanted a quiet affair. Just family.”
I curse as I splash myself with the boiling water I’m pouring into the mugs. “They didn’t give me a proper send off?” I ask. “Why the fuck not? Just wait ‘til I–” I clamp my big gob shut.
Ash heaves out a sigh. “Starting to regret becoming an avenging angel?”
I add unhealthy amounts of sugar to each mug and swirl the teabags while I stew on his words. Ash had tried talking me out of it before I was rushed into surgery, but when he’d left the hospital, it was to manage the news of my death.
My hospital records have since been erased and only the Griffins and Rory know I’m alive and well.
As for the rest, some think I died in Colorado and others carry the secret that I died at the hands of the Bratva.
So far, those very distinct layers of deceit remain intact, and even Vasili has kept quiet about our shoot out for fear of incurring my dad’s wrath.
“The only way I’ll regret anything is if I put my family through all this and still don’t get to save Kitty.” I step towards the fridge. “Did you bring fresh milk?”
Ash looks affronted. “What kind of friend do you take me for? I put all the groceries away before I came looking for you.”
“Ah, you’re a good man,” I say. “I do appreciate everything you’re doing for me, big fella. I know lying to my dad doesn’t sit right with you, but I love her, Ash.”
“Figured as much,” he says. “And I do get it. I’d do the same.”
I’m about to reply when I open the fridge to find it packed tight with food, including what I recognize as the lemon drizzle cake his housekeeper makes. “I might also love Connie. If I wasn’t deceased, I’d ask you to give her a big kiss from me. With tongues.”
He shakes his head. “Only you could be more irritating when you’re dead than when you were alive. No wonder I’m ready to retire.”
It’s delivered as a throwaway comment, but his blank expression doesn’t fool me. I return to the counter and add a splash of milk to our tea. I squeeze the teabags until the color of our brews are as deep as one of Shelley’s spray tans.
“You’re actually doing it, aren’t you?” I ask, handing a mug to my friend.
Ash is another one whose life led him along paths not of his choosing and he’s been itching to step away from the empire he built. “It’s the perfect time to let our respective brothers forge their own alliances, don’t you think?”
“The end of an era,” I agree as the weight of my actions hits me in the chest, and not for the first time. “I’d feel guilty for what’s landed on Malachy’s shoulders if I didn’t strongly suspect he had it coming.”
I’ve shared my suspicions with my friend, but Ash hasn’t found any evidence to either support or disprove the theory that Malachy betrayed us.
“Whether or not he fed the information to Vasili, John isn’t going to be happy with either of us,” Ash warns. “Please don’t fuck up my retirement plans, Killian. Stay dead long enough for your family to get used to living without either of us.”
“You know me.”
“I do know you. That’s why I’m saying it. Any risks we take need to be careful and considered.”
“What risks?” I ask innocently. “You can’t kill a dead man. And if this contact is who I think she is, she’s the one taking the risks, and she’s doing it for Katarina. She’s my way in.”