by Maria Luis
“The PM, Miss Carrigan. I’m talking about your blasted father. Is it true about his plans for Parliament?”
Instead of answering, I spin, fast, and let my jumper tear from my shoulders. It shreds at the sleeve, leaving the guard to stand there with a fistful of sunshine yellow fabric. Cool air hits my left arm, a dash of ice against the fury gathering in my gut.
“Do not touch me again,” I grit, nails biting into my palms. “And if you think for even one second that I won’t go to Kathryn Levell about this, then you’re downright delus—”
“Guthram.”
Silas Hanover wheels back around. “What?”
A single finger jabs in my direction. “Burns,” he says, letting the ripped sleeve fall to the floor. He lowers his gaze to my scarred arm. “Fresh, too. Not even a few weeks old.”
My gaze flies from one man to the other.
There’s a familiarity between them that I don’t understand. A . . . a sort of kinship that makes itself all the more apparent when I grip my handbag, tight, and power down the hall, my pumps clipping ominously against concrete—only to be cut short by Hanover.
He grabs my wrist, turning my arm over.
Unease sweeps over me, and I yank, hard. “Take your hands off me.”
“A red poppy,” Hanover murmurs, as if tasting the word on his tongue and finding it offensive, “and these scars . . .” Tracing a finger over the blisters, he gives a low, skin-crawling laugh. Pensive dark eyes flick to mine. “Connelly, bring me that brooch, would you?”
No.
Oh, fuck, no.
Desperation floods my veins and I dart right, ducking under Hanover’s arm. But I get no farther than three steps when a forearm clamps down over my head and cinches tight across my throat. A startled cry bursts from my lips, and then Hanover drags me backward.
Feet flailing. Nails scratching.
“Let me go!”
Shadows dance in my peripheral as I’m shoved hard against a door. The metallic tang of blood bursts on my tongue. Turning my head, I angle my chin upward to draw air into my lungs, but the movement inadvertently gives Hanover better access to what he so desperately wants. And he takes it, the bastard. He squeezes my throat until I’m scratching at the door and struggling to hold onto the fragile threads of life.
“Why—” Vision swimming, I claw at his arm fruitlessly. “Why . . . are you doing this?”
“Nothing happens in London without me knowing it, Little Rowan. I have ears everywhere, friends in all places. And you”—that dark, caustic laugh comes again, this time directly in my ear—"everyone knows that there’s no love lost between you and your old man. Just like we both know that he didn’t send you here. So, the question is . . . who did? Was it the queen?”
“Maybe it was me,” I choke out, refusing to give him Damien’s name. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe you owe your freedom to me. And here you are, trying to kill me for—”
His arm flexes and the air slips away, a ghost that never was.
Firm fingers grasp my chin and force my head down, just as the mangled brooch is shoved centimeters away from my face. The guard, Connelly, growls, “Mary should’ve looked before she let this one through. It’s a camera.”
“Check the back.”
The silver piece is turned over and held toward the light. “Marked with the number 503.”
“Of course it is. Fucking Holyrood.”
I’m wrenched away from the door, Hanover’s hand fisting the back of my shirt as he hauls me down the corridor. I trip over my pumps, one of them clattering to the floor and disappearing behind me. I want to scream. I want to cry for help. But all I manage is: “I’ll kill you. Do you hear me, Hanover? I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t be the first to try.”
“Which room should we put her?” Connelly asks. “With the others?”
“No,” Hanover says.
“Really.” The guard whistles. “Solitary, then?”
“No,” I breathe, throwing all my weight in the opposite direction to slow our pace. But Hanover treats me like I’m nothing more than a disobedient dog. He uses my shirt like a lead, bunching the material at my throat, and forcibly drags me behind him. “You can’t do this.” Desperation turns me wild, frantic. “Do you hear me, Hanover? You can’t do this. My father—”
“Has wanted you dead for years.” When my head snaps up, Hanover spares me a cruel grin over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. Deep down, you’ve always known it was true.”
“You’re lying.” The collar of my shirt nips tighter, and I pull on the material desperately. Fading consciousness blurs the world gray at the edges. Pushing feebly at Hanover’s wrists, I hiss, “He had nothing to gain with me dying in the fire.”
“Only a million pounds.”
“At thirteen? I didn’t even have five quid to my name!”
“Inheritance is a tricky thing, though, isn’t it? Particularly when it belongs to a wife and her children.” That cruel face barely flinches when he adds, “You didn’t go down nearly as easily as she did.”
Mum screaming.
A bedroom door bolted shut.
And my father, down in the garden beside Silas Hanover, peering up at my window while I begged him to save me.
“He’ll thank me, honestly,” Hanover continues, “for doing what he couldn’t. Never did have the stomach for violence when he always had ample greed.” He grips my shirt tighter, snapping me forward until I’m at his feet. “But unlike your father, I always give credit where it’s due. So, thank you, Little Rowan, for setting me free after all these years. I’m sure your father intended to leave me to die, same as he did to you.”
Pain radiates from my core.
The shadows creep forward and the darkness swoops in, and I let the world hear me scream.
Have no mercy.
And God help us all because I have none.
I swing my right leg forward and snatch the pump off my foot. Turning into Hanover’s grip, I twist my body and surge upward—and plunge the stiletto heel in his gut. It sinks past fabric, sinks deep into skin. Clasping his stomach, he staggers backward from the blow.
I run.
I run to the grim melody of Silas Hanover screaming and Connelly barking orders, and I’m halfway down the hall when the sirens begin anew. The shrill of banshees. The wail of hell. Lights dim overhead, casting a red tint over everything in sight. Gruff voices enter the corridor behind me and all I need is one look over my shoulder to know that I’m fucked.
The guards have entered the fray.
“Oh, hell.”
Skidding sideways, I change directions and duck down the next corridor—only to stumble to a stop when a paired column of guards comes into view. Glossy black helmets conceal their faces and terrifying guns are held diagonally across their chests. The second that they latch eyes on my paralyzed frame, they assume position. The first two rows lower to their knees, the second and third fanning out to create a blockade that I’ll cross only in my dreams.
Ice dances down my spine.
Fear creeps into my heart.
On bare feet, I inch backward. Only, the guards don’t follow because they don’t need to—one panicked glance down the bordering hallway reveals that I’ve already been effectively cornered.
There’s no way to freedom, no way to escape whatever comes next.
I’m going to die.
Damien demanded to know what Ian had thought of before Isla Quinn killed him in The Octagon. Friend or not, I’ll never know Ian Coney’s heart or soul—but I know my own. As I inhale my last breaths of life, I grasp onto the only memory of warmth that I can recall—blue eyes fixed on my face and calloused hands pressing my palm to a pair of soft lips, and a wish . . . a wish that I desperately hope will come true.
“May you find happiness,” I breathe, feeling my eyes burn with tears, “and live for us both.”
Slowly, my hands come up.
And then my knees sink to the floor.<
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35
Damien
If there’s a hell on earth, Broadmoor Hospital has become its epicenter and I its devil.
One by one they all fall down.
Necks snapping, rounds flying; I grab the guard to my right and slam the stock of my rifle into his face. Blood spurts from his nose. His hands come up to shove me off but I’m already swinging his body to the left just as another comes barreling toward me. The guard in my grasp catches the spray of bullets. Dropping him to the floor, I swiftly angle my gun and fire.
Another falls.
I don’t wait long enough to see him hit the ground.
Weapon clutched to my shoulder, I take the next corner and flick my gaze down the length of the empty hallway. Panic is a seed inside my gut, unfurling and growing until its tremor is a vibration that’s embedded in my bones, a living, breathing thing that screams, Where are you?
I shouldn’t have sent her in here.
Shouldn’t have assumed that Robert Guthram would be the same man from my childhood who always stood up for right versus wrong and never let Jayme Paul or the older blokes mess with me or my brothers. And I—
A guard cuts down the hallway, followed swiftly by another six or seven.
Broadmoor Hospital is a house of horrors, and, on silent feet, I descend further into the madness. With my back to the wall, I shadow the group jogging down the hall. They never once glance back.
And I fight every instinct that demands that I kill them all here and now.
They wind their way through the maze of the psychiatric ward, never stopping to look in the windows as they pass, as if the sight before them is one they’ve examined a thousand times over. Unable to stop myself, I allow mine to wander from one to the next.
One person in the first room, three huddled in the second.
I recognize the face in the third.
Run to her. Chase her.
But my heart is lodged in my throat and I can’t turn away from the window, can’t turn away from Caren Fitz, a famed London hotelier, who went missing three years ago. Until his disappearance, he’d been a frequent visitor to The Bell & Hand. Slowly, as if aware that he’s being watched, his head lifts from where he’s seated at a desk. His gaze collides with mine.
It takes him only two seconds to recognize me.
Face paling, he rushes to the oval window and pounds his fists on the door. “Priest,” he shouts, his voice muffled, “get me out! Help!”
Sirens begin to blare, shrieking their ferocity, and I send a dark look down the hall. The guards have already turned the corner and fucking hell. Rowena. I need to find Rowena.
I watch Fitz’s expression crumple as I move away, see it shatter completely when I turn.
With each step that I take after the guards, I force myself to stare into the passing rooms. Some I don’t recognize but others, like Caren Fitz, are people who’ve come time and time again to The Bell & Hand. All known anti-loyalists in relatively affluent posts in society. Men and women both who have gone missing over the last few years, their faces plastered across all of Britain to see on the telly, in the newspapers.
Only, they aren’t missing at all.
My grip on my rifle turns tight at the thought of Rowena being shoved into one of those holding rooms. I felt her terror when Guthram plucked the red poppy brooch from her jumper, saw the fear reflected in her violet eyes just before everything went upside down when the guard crushed the camera beneath his shoe. Instinct propeled me from the car before my next breath, heedless to the fact that I’m the country’s most wanted fugitive. I thought of her, nothing and no one but her.
Wherever you are, I will find you.
A promise. A vow that I’ll never break.
When I turn a sharp corner and see the shoulders of the guards standing uniformly in a row, rifles raised, adrenaline pumps through my veins, only to be replaced by fear the likes of which I’ve never known.
Beyond those black helmets, a pair of slim arms reaches toward the ceiling in surrender.
Scarred skin. Yellow fabric.
No. Jesus Christ, no.
Her name leaves me on a violent roar.
As one, the guards whip around. Any scrap of hope I had of doing the right thing, the good thing, disappears instantly. I tear through them all, one after another. Beyond the cry of the siren, bones shatter and limbs sever. I duck beneath outstretched arms and slide my knife from its holster to jab between first and second ribs, there and gone again before they even realize that they’ve been struck. I use bodies as shields, letting the dead fend off attempts from the still-living until there is no one left standing but me.
And her.
Huddled in the corner of the hallway, with her bare arms raised over her head to shield herself from the spray of gunfire, Rowena Carrigan lives.
I stagger toward her.
Breathe her name on a hoarse whisper.
Her shorn head lifts, those violet eyes of hers red-rimmed as she chokes back a sob. Before I can cross over to her, she launches to her feet and hurls herself at me. Lingering fear guides my bloodied hands to the back of her head as I step into her space, my right palm smoothing down to between her shoulder blades, my left still cradling her skull.
“I was dead,” she whispers raggedly into my chest, “I was seconds away from dying and you—”
“I’ll chase you, Rowena. Wherever you are, however you got there, I will find you.” Against my sternum, her heart thrums an incessant beat that matches the pace of mine. Over the crown of her head, I scan the empty halls. Carnage is a disease, and within these walls, I’ve opened festering wounds. “We have to go before more come. Can you run?”
“We can’t get out. There’s no way—”
“Do you trust me?”
She pulls away from my chest to nod. “With my life.”
“Then follow me.”
I manage two steps before she tugs on my arm. When I glance back, she shifts her gaze to the bare corridor. “Silas . . .” She touches her tongue to her bottom lip. “Robert Guthram—he might still be there.”
My eyes narrow. “He might?”
“I stabbed him.”
“You don’t have a knife—”
“It’s probably best not to ask questions right now, since we’re short on time and all. But, Damien, we need him.”
The edge in her voice tells me that whatever Guthram has done, it probably relates to the anti-loyalists locked away within Broadmoor Hospital. I think of Caren Fitz. His wife, his children . . . I attended the man’s bloody funeral all while he was alive and stuck in a psych ward in Crowthorne. We can’t save them all today—not just with just Rowena and me—but if we have Guthram, if we have information . . .
“Tell me where he is.”
“I’ll take you to him.”
“Rowena—”
But she’s already jogging down the hall, her skirt riding up her knees. With a curse, I follow quickly. Her feet are bare, her jumper torn, the flesh around her throat pinkened with the shape of a handprint.
A gust of rage sweeps beneath my skin.
The red haze of the emergency lights casts shadows over the walls, tunneling the corridor so that it appears narrow and twisted. Rowena guides me with only her hand. Down one hallway and then to the next. She tracks the blood staining the concrete, as if knowing that at the end we’ll find Guthram.
And we do.
He’s shoved himself against a wall, his legs bent to the side. In the ten years since I’ve seen him, he’s aged a century. Fine lines feather across his forehead and white hair tangles in with the brown. His lids flutter as I sink down in front of him, then open completely when he feels my hand fist his shirt to tow him off the floor.
“I knew it was you,” he grunts, batting at my hands. “I fucking knew it was you.”
I don’t respond.
Instead, I slip one arm under his waist and brace myself as I lift him clear over my shoulder. Exhaustion threatens to send me sprawling
to the floor. But I grit my teeth and readjust my grip on the bastard and, after a shaky first step, I begin to move at a quick clip.
“The watch,” I mutter to Rowena. “Go to the home screen for me.” With a worried glance in my direction, she does as I say. “Tap the right-hand corner like I showed you. Good . . . good, now see the coordinates? Pull them up and choose anywhere behind the hospital. Press down . . . select grenade.”
A second later, mingled in with the pulsing siren, comes the heavy boom! of an explosion.
Rowena’s lips part. “Damien—”
“It’s an illusion.” I shuffle her down another hall after glancing ahead. “It channels the closest WiFi connection, manipulating nearby technology to produce sound. They won’t know that, though, and it’ll give us a few minutes.”
Slowly, as if she’s half-terrified by the watch’s power, she holds up her wrist. “You created this?”
“Yes.”
“And the brooch? You did that too?”
I nod.
“You really can do everything, can’t you?”
We’re surrounded by death, layered by grim misery, and my chest fucking swells at the awe in her husky voice. Over my shoulder, Guthram releases a pitiful groan. Ignoring him, I lead Rowena through the final maze of corridors before gesturing toward the door that I left cracked open with a rock. We push our way in, and relief nearly takes me down when I see that the room is still empty.
Beside me, Rowena stares at the bare bones window . . . and the bars that have been left mangled on the floor. “Do I want to know?” she asks mildly.
Probably not.
“Go first. You’ll need to help me shove him out.”
Rowena clambers through and, together, we maneuver Guthram. By the time I’m pushing my way out into the crisp sunshine, there’s no mistaking the sound of a helicopter circling above Broadmoor.
Fuck.
Bending at the knees, I hike Guthram’s bulky weight back over my shoulder. Grit my teeth and let my gaze follow the narrow trail to where I parked the car. We stay and we die or we move and we die. If my brothers were here, they’d tell me it’s suicide. Glancing up at the sky, I note the angle of the helicopter’s rotation.