Page 2 of The Chief's Captive

"Get him in the back."

"I'm on it."

"Someone fucking drive."

"Fuck, I'm gonna kill Eamon, that sick fuck."

Their words swirl around me as my head spins. I could die. This could be my last night on Earth and I might never live my father's legacy.

"Walsh," I mutter again. Her name is stuck in my head, my lifeline, the source of rescue. The contingency.

"Yeah, Boss. Don't talk. We'll get her." Finn is here, pushing on my body now, pressing into the wounds that are already searing.

I scream in pain and feel the van rocking.

"Get that doctor now. Fuck's sake. There's blood everywhere." Finn sounds panicked. It has to be bad.

I lift my head, but I can't see my own body. I'm weak. My vision threatens to go dark. I rest my head back on the cool, hard metal of the van floor.

"Shit…" This time, it's Declan hovering over me. "Ro, we're gonna fix this. Eamon is gonna pay. If you don't make it, just know we're fighting…"

I let my eyes fall shut, but I can hear them. They're making promises as if this were my death bed, which tells me it's really bad. I don't know where the pain is in my chest, but it's not a good place to be shot. My life is flashing before me—Dad's wake only yesterday, his last words to me, "I'm proud of you, Son." And then there's Abigail's face that will forever haunt me. We were children, but I couldn't save her. She drowned, and it was my lips attempting to breathe life into her when the paramedics pulled me off. I watched her die because I didn’t watch her swim.

"Here… there!" I hear Finn screaming, and then I'm being hauled upward.

Someone has my feet, someone else my arms. My body hangs limp, my mind on the edge of consciousness. I feel distant, like I'm hovering over myself in a bad dream. The night air chills me to my core. They struggle, almost dropping me.

"Fuck's sake. Get in that door." I hear banging, and I hear the rustling of weapons.

My eyes creak open to see the moonlight and overhead streetlights vanish as I'm swept inside, and then I hear a round being chambered.

"Dr. Maeve Walsh, we need your help." Lochlan isn't playing around. His weapon is aimed at a heavenly vision. My savior.

She's stunning, a sight more angelic than anything I've ever seen, with mussed red hair and a white nightgown with a matching night robe. She's frightened and she has her phone, but she won't resist us. I can see it in her eyes.

"Help," I squeak out, and then my vision fails me. My eyes shut, and blackness swallows me whole. The last thing I see is Finn taking the phone from her hand, and then I'm gone, lost to unconsciousness.

Maeve Walsh will either save me or this is it.

2

MAEVE

Anoise startles me awake, but that's nothing new. I'm used to being awakened in the middle of the night by one thing or another. Living in Dublin has its drawbacks, though the row of Georgian townhouses promised to be a quieter strip of housing than some of the other places I looked at when attempting to buy a home. I roll to my back and stare up at the ceiling wondering what the noise was when I hear another noise, a banging.

I don't scare easily, besides the fact that when you live in row housing, something your neighbor does might sound like a freight train running over your head. Last week, they decided hanging family portraits at one in the morning was a good idea. I had to knock on their door and remind them that I’m a trauma surgeon who works first shift and if I don’t get good sleep, my patients could die. They quieted down, but not until after a screaming match—he was upset, she was understanding.

The noise continues, and I sigh in frustration. "Fuck's sake." The tiny grunt I make as I escape the bed is about the only verbal show of anger I will muster. I'm a lamb, not prone to fighting,but if these creeps can't learn that I need sleep, I'm going to have to get the garda (the Irish police force) involved. I never thought that as a homeowner, I'd have to deal with this, but here I am.

I sit up and let my feet dangle over the side of my bed. The cold wood floor greets my toes as I wiggle my feet around searching for my slippers, and as I pass the foot of my bed with my phone in hand, I snag my house coat and put it on. For now, the banging is silent, but a cursory glance at my phone shows the time is nearing four in the morning. I'd be waking up soon, anyway, which means coffee and my morning workout.

But when I walk into the kitchen, I freeze in place. The first thing I see is the blood. It's everywhere, dripping from the man who hangs limp between two much larger men, also caked in blood.

"Dr. Maeve Walsh, we need your help." One of the men, a muscled ogre with dark, stormy eyes, is speaking to me. He knows my name, and before I can even think of dialing emergency, another man, this one with a large gun in hand, plucks it from my grasp.

"Help," the bleeding man squeaks, and all of my instincts kick in. I want to scream, to throw them out and to call for help, but I'm a surgeon and I can see, based on this man's state and the amount of blood soaking their clothing, that if he doesn’t get help, he'll die.

"Oh, fuck," I whisper before moving quickly to my kitchen island.

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