Page 27 of Destroy Me
After ending the call, he walked back into the hospital. The crowds sent anxiety crawling along his skin, the knowledge that anyone could be hidden and he wouldn’t know it, but there’d been no alternative. Both Sean and Lyse had been shot, and his mam had a scalp laceration from hitting the gravel with her forehead.
Mack entered one side of the atrium, escorting Siobhan. A large white bandage covered the cut on her head, but her eyes were clear and she walked easily enough wrapped in Mack’s arm. Probably no concussion then. Relief hit Fionn like a tank.
“All’s fine,” Siobhan said. She didn’t smile; being targeted by four gunmen, watching people you cared about get shot tended to smother your smiles a bit. She grasped Mack’s shirt tightly as if afraid he’d be taken from her. “Lyse?”
Fionn nodded toward the hall they’d just come from, the same hall Lyse had been wheeled down earlier. “No word yet.”
“I’m needing to get to the station,” Mack said. “My inspector allowed me to bring Siobhan in, but he’ll be wanting my report.”
“Will they let you question the bastard?” Fionn asked. Two of the gunmen hadn’t survived the fightin’—one shot in the chest, the other in the femoral artery. A third was in surgery upstairs, but the one who’d surrendered was with the local garda. He was also their least likely source of information. The higher your rank in an organization like the Irish Cartel, the more intel you had and the bigger your balls; this guy had none.
“They will.”
“Can you trust them?” Siobhan asked, her voice low, keeping the words between them.
Mack’s face tightened. “I’ve known my inspector for years; I’ve trusted him.” He pressed Siobhan more firmly to his side. “It could be anyone.” He brushed a kiss against her forehead, right near the bandage. “I won’t be takin’ any chances,acushla.”
Mack’s gaze met his over Siobhan’s head, and Fionn could see the steel in the man’s eyes. He’d find their traitor, and they’d be regretting their decisions soon after.
“Watch yourself,” Fionn told him. “I’ll text when we finish here. You’ll be coming back to the house tonight?”
“In a few hours. Deacon on his way?” Mack asked.
“As soon as he can.”
Mack kissed the side of Siobhan’s head again, lingering this time. “Do whatever Fionn tells you to, yeah? I’m needing to know you’re safe.”
Siobhan cupped his cheek, her fingers stroking the stubble there intimately. “I will. Go do what you need to.”
Mack shook Fionn’s hand, his dark eyes drilling into Fionn’s. “I’m trustin’ ya. Keep her safe.”
“Always.” He’d given up his identity to do just that; he wouldn’t be stopping now. “We’ll head on to the house as soon as Lyse is released.”
The nurse came for them shortly after. “The bullet grazed her side. No major damage, but she’ll need to keep the bandage dry, changing it regularly.” She passed a paper to Siobhan, a hint of a smile teasing her mouth. “She can take this for pain, although she might need to half the dosage if you’re wanting her to be coherent. She’s a wee thing, and sensitive.”
That smile had him wonderin’. When the nurse escorted them back to sit with Lyse while she prepared the discharge papers, Lyse was lying on her side in the narrow hospital bed, her eyes glazed. Siobhan went right to her and laid a hand on her forehead. Fionn remembered his mam doing that when he was a little boy, checking for a fever even if he’d only skinned his knee. The memories eased the tension still vibrating through his body.
“Siobhan?” Lyse reached for his mam’s hand, missing a couple of times before finally connecting
Siobhan squatted a bit to look into Lyse’s eyes. “How much medicine did they give you, dear?”
Fionn glanced at the prescription the nurse had passed them. “Not so much, from the look of it.”
His mother chuckled. “I bet you can’t hold your liquor either, can you?” she asked Lyse.
“What?” Lyse’s eyelids drifted down in long sweeps. “Where’s Sean?”
“He’s in surgery,” Siobhan told her. “I called Cathal, so don’t be worryin’ about that. He’s upstairs in the waiting room. He’ll call us as soon as Sean is in recovery, let us know how he’s doing.”
Tears gathered in Lyse’s eyes. “He’ll be okay?”
It was odd, seeing her concern. As if Sean were her brother. Fionn hadn’t seen her with family. Her parents had never visited her that he knew of, and her only brother had died a couple years ago. She was the lone girl behind her computers, no connections or entanglements.
Just those wide, innocent eyes staring up at him with adoration.
He wanted to forget the way she’d looked at him back then, the way she looked now, about to cry over Sean, because without those connections it was easy to be seeing Lyse in one dimension, just the woman who’d betrayed him, not the woman who, right now, stood to lose someone she cared about. That fear changed her in his eyes, and he wasn’t liking it.
“His heart didn’t stop,” he pointed out. “I’d take that as a good sign the bullet missed it.” What it had hit, they wouldn’t know till after the surgery, but that was a definite positive.
