Page 254 of Lodestar

“Fuck,” he hissed.

“We think the Sparrows are cleaning house. There might be someone on their way?—”

“They’re not on their way, O’Donnelly. They’re fucking here. I’m going underc?—”

The blast of another bullet had me looking up, thinking it was Troy again—it wasn’t.

It had been in my ear.

“Dagda?” I demanded. “Are you there?”

Dead air.

“Fuck.”

“Dagda? You’re talking to Dagda?” Troy hollered, suddenly leaping from the tree she’d been hiding in and striding over to us like she hadn’t been letting off bullets to see us dance to her tune a couple minutes ago.

She wore camouflage, her face was painted, and she’d have made G.I. Joe seem underdressed—she was prepared for an ambush.

“His line just went dead. He said they were there already,” I informed Star.

“Holy fuck,” Dead To Me blurted, eyes wide with disconcertion. “This is a coordinated effort.” She turned to Troy. “Have you been threatened? You must have been to get dolled up like that. What happened?”

Before she could answer, an alarm sounded from within the house. It echoed around the barren fields, seeming to grow in volume with every pounding beat of my heart.

Troy, wearing an eyepatch like a boss-ass bitch, gritted her teeth as her head whipped to the side to study her house. “That’s my perimeter alarm.” Another alarm blared. “The rear gates.”

As one, Dead To Me, Star, and I rasped the same goddamn words:

“They’re here.”

That was when a ball of fire surged toward us from the highway.

BOOM.

FILTHY TRUTH

PART 1

If you simply can’t understand why someone is grieving so much, for so long, then consider yourself fortunate that you do not understand.

- Joanne Cacciatore

1

CONOR

“Lookslike they’re not coming for a friendly chat, Troy,” Star, the love of my life, hollered at the woman who we were trying to spare from being murdered as she loaded her SMG with a magazine of bullets. “They’re here tosilenceyou. And to be honest, I’m not sure I fucking blame them, you pain in the goddamn ass.”

With Troy’s Range Rover doing a great impression of a burned-out shell, there was no denying the Sparrows had come in guns blazing.

As an Irish mobster who routinely pulled stunts that would give the average citizen nightmares, nothing could’ve readied me for the intensity that had overtaken the three women once Troy’s ride had been hit with an RPG from the highway.

If anyone believed that women were lesser than men, then they needed to see Lodestar, Dead To Me, and Troy gearing up for war while multitasking by bitching at one another.

“I managed to figure that out on my own, Lodestar,” Troy snarled back as she packed the holsters she wore on her hip with spare rounds. “Your digging around is probably the only fuckingreason they’re on their way though. I bet Ovianar is dead and Dagda is under goddamn attack because of you.

“This is why I hated you in training. You were such a digger. You could never leave shit alone. See an unturned stone? Not for long. Star just has to overturn it and unleash Ebola on the world!”

---