Taking a deep breath, Matt climbed out of his car and walked over to where Grant was getting first aid. He pointed to the nasty gash over his eyebrow. “How’d that happen?” Matt asked. The airbags in the car had deployed, so there shouldn’t have been any way of him busting his head open.
“Fucker hit me with the butt of his gun,” Grant said on a grimace.
“Kaitlyn will kill me for getting your pretty face messed up,” Matt said, unable to express his relief at seeing his best friend of nearly three decades reasonably unharmed. “Why didn’t you call me back?”
“They took my damn phone,” Grant said.
On his own phone, Matt pulled up the app to locate lost phones and plugged in the number. According the map, the phone was only yards away from them. He called it and then followed the ring tone. It had been tossed carelessly into the bushes near the backdoor of Loralei’s home.
Matt stooped to pick up the phone. As he closed his hand over it, he realized why they'd taken it to begin with. It was impossible to track a phone without the number, and having accessed Grant's, they had all the information they needed to be able to track Loralei. Fear exploded inside him.
* * *
“I’m taking one of the cruisers,” he said to one of the uniformed officers, tossing the phone to him. . “Get him home safe!”
Matt climbed behind the wheel of the cruiser and hit the lights, even as he was speed dialing Loralei’s number. He had a sick feeling in his gut. Shit was about to get real.
7
Ciaran awoke, the small cabin silent save for the even sounds of Loralei breathing next to him. It was wrong. There was such a thing as too quiet.
Outside, there was no sound. No birds called, no branches rustled. Everything was still.
On the nightstand, his phone blinked at him, the little green light alerting him to a message. Carefully and silently, he retrieved the device and scanned the text.
It was a warning from Matt, but it had come too late. Whoever was coming for them was already there.
Still lying back against the pillows, not wanting to be up, moving around, and making himself an even bigger target, Ciaran spoke softly.
“Loralei, it’s time to wake up,” he uttered.
“No,” she mumbled in response and snuggled deeper into the pillows.
“I don’t think you have a choice, love. They’re here,” he warned.
Her eyes opened, suddenly alert and wide awake. “How do you know? Did you hear something?”
“No. That’s the problem. The whole house is quiet…power has been cut. Truck is probably disabled. I would have done that first if it were me,” he replied, still keeping his tone barely above a whisper.
“What do we do?” she asked.
He hated to see her fear, hated to see the uncertainty in her eyes as she pondered their uncertain fate. It would be the last time, he swore, that she would have to feel that way.
Ciaran reached over the edge of the bed. The first article of clothing he found was her sweater, followed by his pants. He hauled them both up. “Put that on, but no large movements…Move slowly, deliberately. Try to make as little noise as possible,” he whispered.
“Do you think they can see us?” she asked.
“I don’t know…but I wouldn’t bet against it.”
While Loralei donned her sweater, he slipped into his discarded jeans. Denim was hardly body armor, but he found himself reluctant to face off in a fight to the death with his dick hanging out.
There was no doubt for him that it would be a fight to the death. These weren’t the kind of people who understood mercy on either end of it. Leaving them alive was inviting them to come back.
He’d stashed his guns just beneath the bed while Loralei had slept. Now, closing his hand around the hilt of one, he checked the clip and then flipped the safety to the off position. All the while, he listened. There was a slight scuffling sound on the porch, something that, had he been asleep, he might never have heard.
“When I tell you,” he whispered, “I want you to hit the floor and crawl to that fucking kitchen. The island is the only cover we have.”
“Do you really think they’re not going to just shoot through these walls?”
“These walls are twelve-inch-thick logs. They’ll stop a bullet or, at the very least, make it ineffective. So just concentrate on getting to the kitchen where there’s no direct path from any window in here.”
“What about you?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear, tears shining in their depths.
“I’m going to end this in a less-than-law-abiding manner. Somehow, I don’t think your brother will mind,” he said as he grabbed one of the other guns he had at the ready. He pressed it into her hand.
“Ciaran, I don’t want to lose you now,” she said, even as she automatically checked the clip and flipped the safety off before looking up at him again. “If you screw up again, I want to have a chance to kill you myself.”
He would have laughed. By God, he wanted to. “You’ll get your shot, mavourneen,” he vowed.
“I’m counting on it,” she said evenly.
He held up three fingers and began to count off. By the time he hit two, a tiny green dot from a laser site was dancing around the room, trying to find a target.
At one, Loralei did as he’d asked. She crawled toward the kitchen even as the first short shattered the glass at the back half of the cabin. Ciaran moved quickly, getting into position against that wall, ready and waiting for whoever came through that window first.
When the first volley of gunfire ended, the bed was shredded. Bits of fabric and the innards of the mattress flitted about the room like a macabre snowfall.
What came next left him reeling. It wasn’t a person who came through the window. Instead, they tossed in a small green canister.
“Fuck,” he whispered and immediately turned his head away while covering his ears.
Even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his fists muffling the sound, the stun grenade was brutally effective at leaving his senses utterly worthless. All but blind and deaf from the concussive force and the flash, his stomach was rolling from the accompanying dizziness. Since he couldn’t see shit in front of him, the gun was all but useless.
Somehow, he got to his feet, but he was still staggering when the first man came through the remnants of the broken-out window. The first blow landed, the punch sending him back against the wall. Immediately, he dropped to a crouch and his fist shot out, landing a crippling blow to the other man’s balls. It was a cheap shot, but effective, and he couldn’t afford to fight fair. They weren’t.
“Xyocec!” the man cursed as he lifted his weapon to fire.
Ciaran never gave him the chance. With his limited vision, the only shot he had was to stay in close contact with the other man and fight by feel.
They grappled for control of the gun, of each other. Ultimately, Ciaran managed to get the assailant in a hold he couldn’t break. Snapping someone’s neck wasn’t the simple thing it appeared to be in movies. Muscles tensed and resisted. The fight for survival and the adrenaline it produced had left them more evenly matched than he liked. Ciaran had the skill, but the other man was stronger, bigger.
Using his legs for more leverage, he tightened his hold around the man’s neck and applied more force with his opposite hand. With continued pressure and an unrelenting need to protect Loralei and get them both out alive, Ciaran didn’t stop until he heard that unmistakable sound. Whether the man was dead or alive, he wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Working to get to his feet again, he paused, still on his knees, when he felt the barrel against his temple. The flash of the grenade had decimated his peripheral vision and left him open. The second Russian had slipped in while they fought. Ciaran realized then that it had been the man’s intent all along. The other one had been sacrificed like a pawn.
“You are smarter than I gave you credit for, Irish.”
“Not bloody smart enough,” Ciaran
snapped.
The Russian shrugged. “It cannot be helped. You are like the Americans say… a Boy Scout. You play by the rules. And men like me, we make the rules. We always win.”
“How the fuck would you know?” Ciaran shot back. “You never shut up long enough to find out!”
The Russian laughed. “It is a shame to put a bullet in your head. You have a way with words.”
Ciaran didn’t ask him not to. It was clear to both of them that the plan was already locked. “Just fucking get on with it then.”
Loralei felt as if she were underwater. The sounds were muffled. She could barely make out the words through the ringing in her ears, and even when she could, they hardly made sense. Her stomach churned, and the urge to throw up was insistent.
Somehow, with some strength of will she hadn’t known she possessed, she managed to get to her feet. Her eyes burned as she tried to take in the scene before her. The flash of light had been so intense that even know, minutes later, she was still seeing spots and halos.
Only a few feet from her, she could see two figures. There was no discerning who was who for her. Her vision was too distorted to tell them apart, except for one thing.
“High or low?” she demanded.
The Russian’s voice carried, the deep tones penetrating the fog left by the grenade. “You’ve been very difficult to track down, little shop girl.”
“Ciaran,” she said. “High or low?”
“High,” Ciaran finally answered.
Loralei balanced her hands on the counter and squeezed the trigger. The first shot went wide. She knew it instantly. Shifting slightly and planting her feet for stability, she fired again. The dim figure of the man who had been standing jerked backwards, and a word that was clearly a curse, even if she didn’t understand it, escaped him.
Within seconds, she heard another shot, this time fired by someone else. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to assume that Ciaran had finished him off. She wasn’t sorry either.
Loralei sank to the floor and immediately threw up. The dizziness, the unimaginable pain in her head from the flash and concussion of the grenade, was just too much. Added to the fact that she’d just shot a man, and the man she was hopelessly in love with had just killed two men, vomiting and crying seemed like a perfectly legitimate response.
In the distance, the wail of sirens cut through the ringing. “Matt,” she whispered.
“He’s coming,” Ciaran answered. “And you won’t have to hide anymore.”
She didn’t answer, just closed her eyes, pressed her face against the cool wooden boards of the floor, and prayed for the waves of nausea to pass.
8
Loralei eased the tiny hybrid car to a stop in front of the house that was slowly starting to come together again. Ciaran had protested their assistance, but Matt and Grant had insisted. The roof had been patched, the siding replaced, now they were working on rebuilding the porch railings that had been shredded by gunfire.
Had it really only been a week? So much had happened during that time. She’d barely seen Matt until the day before, when he’d shown up on her doorstep exhausted and haggard. But he’d arrived with good news. They’d recovered enough pieces of the grenade canister to trace it back to Jenkins, cementing his ties to the Russians. He was going away for a long time.
She and Ciaran were back on track, as well. It would never be smooth sailing for them entirely. They were both too proud and, she admitted it readily, a little too damaged for that. But she loved him enough to fight for him, and heaven knew he’d proved the same. There was only one tiny piece of the happy ending that still needed work. His family. Once again, she’d taken matters into her own hands.
“I don’t know about this.”
The words spoken from the passenger side of the car didn’t quite penetrate. Loralei had been told there would be no permanent hearing loss from the grenade, but that it could take some time for her hearing to return completely to normal. Turning toward the passenger seat, she took in Mia Darcy’s pale face and put two and two together.
“It will be fine,” Loralei promised.
She was lying through her teeth. Ciaran had proven resistant on the subject of meeting his family, so she’d taken the initiative. She’d driven the short distance to Fontaine, cornered Mia in her office and blurted out, without tact or forethought, hey, you have a half brother.
In retrospect, she thought, it probably hadn’t been the best of plans.
“What if he doesn’t want anything to do with me?” Mia asked. “Let’s face it…we are finding new and twisted ways to be more dysfunctional every day!”
Loralei turned her gaze back to the house. “He’s very proud. And when he went to your father and your father turned him away, it left him with certain ideas about the lot of you. Unfairly, I might add. But he didn’t move halfway across the world to try and connect with his family on a whim. It’s important to him, even if he won’t admit how much just yet.”
“I’m nervous,” Mia admitted.
“You’re shacking up with a man your father hates. The entire county is talking about you and this tragic, modern day, star-crossed lovers bit…and you’re worried about meeting a half brother?”
Mia rolled her eyes. “When you put it like that…”
Loralei grasped the door handle to get out of the car and made another promise she wasn't sure she’d be able to keep. “Come on. I’ll introduce you. It will be fine.”
Ciaran was carting away another load of shredded drywall. It was an unending task. Somehow, those fuckers hadn’t left a wall in the place untouched. Between plumbing, electrical, and structural repairs, he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t have been cheaper to just build a new house.
He reached the living room, now bare of any furniture as it too had been destroyed in a hail of bullets, and stopped in his tracks. Loralei had let herself in with the key he’d given her. It was a symbolic gesture, as there had been holes in the wall he could have driven a truck through at the time.
It was the woman who entered behind Loralei that had him tongue-tied. It was the first time he’d been face to face with his half sister. Unexpected, terrifying, and more than a little infuriating, he turned to Loralei and threw his hands up in the air. The universal symbol for “what the fuck” only prompted a shrug from her.
“I thought,” she finally replied, “that it was time you met your sister. Mia Darcy meet Ciaran Darcy, your half brother and generally the most sullen man I’ve ever met.”
He said nothing at Loralei’s less than gracious introduction, but instead watched the slow smile spread over the other woman’s face. It was beautiful and welcoming. It terrified him.
“You must take that after Quentin,” she said softly. “He’s the middle child, and he acts it in every regard.”
“I don’t know much about him,” he replied cagily. He was trying not to be rude, because if he was, Loralei would make him pay for it. Also, in spite of how off-kilter he felt and how blindsided by her drop-in visit, he was actually incredibly pleased to see someone who shared his DNA and didn’t hate him on sight.
“You wouldn’t…mostly because our father is a gigantic, raging asshole. We don’t have much to do with him. Ever. At all, if it can be avoided, honestly. He’s sort of like a contagion,” Mia answered.
“You’re babbling,” Loralei pointed out.
“I do that when I’m nervous,” she snapped back.
“According to her, I do it all the time,” Ciaran replied. “But, that and being Irish go hand in hand a bit. We like to talk.”
Mia nodded. “Right…I know you haven’t been here that long, and this is probably new for you, but I’d really like it if you came to Thanksgiving dinner.”
Ciaran blinked at her. “I think that might be pushing it a little.”
“No,” she answered. “Thanksgiving dinner this year is going to be strange and all kinds of awkward. It’ll be the Darcys and the Hayeses all under one roof…Because I’m apparent
ly completely insane. We’ll need you there. They outnumber us.”
Ciaran considered it for a moment. “Do your older brothers know about this invitation?”
She blushed. “They don’t actually even know about you yet.”
“It’s a bad idea,” he said again. “Talk to them, and if you still want me to be there, I will…but only if all three of you are in agreement. I’ll not be thrown out on my arse again.”
Mia nodded. “I will. In fact, I’m going to go out to the car now and call them so I can meet with both of them tonight…and I’ll just do that now so you and Loralei can fight about whatever it is you look ready to fight about.”
The door closed softly behind her, and Ciaran found himself looking at the woman who had turned his life and his house upside down. “You can’t ever leave well enough alone, can you?”
“Was it?”
“Was it what?” he asked sharply.
“Well enough,” she replied as if he were an idiot.
He couldn’t bring himself to lie and say yes. Instead he just moved toward her and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her with a wicked intent, pressing her back against the door until they were chest to chest and hip to hip. When he broke the kiss, drawing back from her slowly and reluctantly, he said, “Sometimes, Loralei, a man likes to make his own decisions.”
“And sometimes, when an intelligent and capable woman loves a man who is behaving like an idiot, she has to save him from his own decisions,” she retorted. The reply lost some of its heat since she was breathless from the kiss.
“Is that why you did it? Because you love me?” he demanded.
“That’s why I do pretty much everything,” she admitted. “I know I meddled. I know I went behind your back…but if I hadn’t, you’d be spending Thanksgiving alone, or God help us both, at my mother’s house.”
Ciaran (Bourbon & Blood) Page 7