“Patrick,” I shout. “You’re out of road.”
“You said that ten years ago,” he throws back.
The catwalk shudders under our weight. Wind drives grit through the steel and the old structure groans around us. He kicks a crate into our path, Conall takes it in the thigh and stumbles, and Patrick cuts into the old control room at the end of the sorting platform.
I hit the door a second behind him.
Broken glass. Dead monitors. Open panels. Patrick at the far window trying to force it with one hand and holding a pistol in the other.
“Done,” I say.
He turns and fires. I move right, the shot tears into a panel, and Conall comes through low. Patrick pivots toward him, and I close the distance, catch his gun wrist, and drive him into the console. The pistol goes off into the ceiling. He is filthy in theclinch, thumb for my eye, knee for my groin, elbow for my ribs, and he reaches for a boot knife when Conall strips the gun.
I grab his knife wrist and take the blade across my palm. Pain flashes hot. I punch him in the throat, then the gut, and Conall slams him face-first onto the console and wrenches both arms behind him.
“Cuffs,” I say.
Steel clicks shut.
Nikolas appears in the doorway with two men. “Perimeter secure. Two runners down by the ridge. This is the last one moving.”
Patrick coughs, spits blood, and still manages a smile. “You think catching me ends what I built?”
“No,” I say, wrapping my bleeding hand in the cloth Conall throws me. “Killing the story does.”
He looks at me through blood and sweat and says the one thing he still thinks can reach me. “Then let the girl do it.”
I hold his stare for a second, then nod. “Exactly.”
We drag him down the stairs and into the yard. Gavin is on his knees by the tanker with Sten behind him, and when he sees Patrick in cuffs, his face goes gray. Patrick stops dead for the first time all night.
“Gavin,” he says.
Gavin gives him a broken laugh. “Told you he’d get lucky.”
Patrick’s expression closes like a door.
We load them into separate restraints in the rear SUV and turn back for the coast. The convoy runs dark until the house lights come into view, perimeter doubled, chapel dark except for work lamps where men clear glass from the floor we were married on an hour earlier.
Saoirse is in the drawing room when we bring them in, changed into one of Maeve’s dresses, hair re-pinned, face pale and composed. Maeve stands at her shoulder. My mother sits by the hearth with the priest, and Declan waits by the door with his arms folded.
Saoirse looks at Gavin first, then Patrick.
Nothing in her face moves.
I cross to her and let her see the fresh bandage on my hand before I speak. “We got him.”
Her eyes flick to my hand, then back to mine. I turn, and Murphy shoves Patrick one step into the center of the room, chains tight, boots leaving quarry mud on my mother’s floor. Gavin stays back with Sten, suddenly small without his swagger.
Patrick lifts his chin and tries to summon the old voice. “Daughter.”
Maeve’s hand comes down on the chair back hard enough to creak wood. Saoirse does not flinch.
I move to her side and keep my voice low, for her and for everyone listening.
“He’s yours now,” I say. “Tell me what you want done.”
24