“Maybe,” he agreed, using the light to slowly scan the area. But all they could see was grave after grave, crosses and stones, some high, some low, a row of matching flat stones, and a building that looked like a miniature cathedral.
From inside that structure, a soft, pained whimper floated over the air. Not an animal, a person.
The thick ground covering almost tripped Devyn, but Marc caught her and made it to the opening first. He held her back with one hand, aiming a gun at the mini-monument.
Devyn’s heart walloped against her rib cage, her whole body taut.
The structure was virtually open, a half wall about four feet high that was topped with stone columns to support a roof and a life-sized statue of the Madonna rising above it. The name “McGarry” was carved into the stone trim.
He lifted the light, spearing the darkness with a yellow beam that landed on a body, huddled in the corner.
The figure wore a blood-soaked white jacket and didn’t move.
“Is she…” Devyn couldn’t finish the question. It hurt too much to say the word. Had she come all this way to find her birth mother dead?
Motioning for Devyn to stay back, Marc moved stealthily into the structure.
He kneeled next to the body, reaching toward the woman. Devyn approached slowly and dropped to her knees, speechless.
Marc brushed back the woman’s hair, revealing an ashen face. His fingers pressed for a pulse.
“Oh, please don’t be dead,” Devyn whispered. “Please.”
The woman’s mouth twitched, her jaw slackened, and very slowly, she opened her eyes, which were eerily silver and very much alive.
“Rose?” she asked.
A tear rolled down Devyn’s cheek. “Yes,” she rasped. “I’m Rose.”
“I knew you’d come.” With one more breath, she closed her eyes.
“No!” Devyn cried softly. “No, you can’t die!”
“She’s not dead.” Marc carefully lifted the jacket to inspect her wound. “She’s hit in the arm, but it’s not fatal. We need a tourniquet.”
Devyn grabbed her scarf, sliding the silk from around her neck in one easy move. “Use this.”
“Dr. Greenberg.” Marc turned her face gently. “Can you hear me? We’re going to wrap your arm.”
She moaned softly.
Devyn leaned closer, drawn to her mother’s face. “Sharon,” she whispered. “Please talk to me.”
Once again, Sharon’s lids fluttered and opened. “They caught me. Baird’s men… discovered me.”
“You work for the SIS?” Devyn asked while Marc gently took off Sharon’s jacket and wrapped the wound. “You infiltrated their cell, didn’t you?”
She nodded slowly, and Devyn couldn’t resist a look at Marc. “We have to get her out of here.”
“We will,” he said firmly.
Oh, God, her mother was good! Good! The word felt solid and comforting in her heart, infusing her with energy and the will to save this woman and know this woman and, possibly, love this woman.
Of course she was good. How could Devyn have ever doubted it?
“Let’s lay her down,” Marc said.
“Take me,” she muttered as they eased her body straight and covered her in the jacket.
“Shhh.” Devyn soothed her, stroking her hair, cradling her head on her lap.
“Royal… Victoria.”
They looked at each other. “The hospital,” Devyn said. “I saw a sign for it, maybe a mile or two away.”
Sharon nodded with great effort. “I can’t walk.”
“We’ll get you there.” Devyn reached for Marc’s arm. “Please, we have to do this.”
“We can’t go out the way we came in,” he said. “Are you sure you couldn’t walk with help?”
“No, no, hurry. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“Baird.” With superhuman strength, she took a breath and clutched Devyn’s arm. “Don’t leave me, Rose. Please, don’t.”
Her heart folded in half. “I won’t, I promise.”
Sharon managed to shift her attention to Marc. “Do you… have a car?”
“Parked on Crescent,” he said.
“Find Curley’s.”
“The supermarket?” Devyn asked. “We passed it.”
“Park there and in the back… three paths… go up middle one. Will bring you back here. I can make it down that hill.” They lost her again.
“Please, Marc, go,” Devyn urged.
He nodded, standing. “Stay in here, down behind this wall. Don’t make a sound. Give me your gun and I’ll rack it for you. If someone comes near you, fire. Don’t ask questions, just fire.”
She handed him the pistol and he pulled back the slide, then set it right next to her. “Not a sound, not a move. Don’t even talk, no matter how much you want to.”
“I promise.”
And he was gone, silently disappearing into the graveyard.
Very slowly, Sharon’s eyes opened and she looked up at Devyn.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Devyn just smiled, finally understanding the meaning of a consolation prize. She was completely… consoled.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “You can tell me later. Rest and conserve your strength.”
“Rosie Mulvaney.” She said the name like a sigh, a whisper, and for a moment, it sounded just lovely to Devyn’s ear. The right name. Her real name. “You’re just perfect.”
“Don’t talk, Sharon,” she said softly, unable to fight the smile that pulled at her mouth. “We can talk later.”
“So much to say.”
Oh, God, there was. Tears threatened and her throat closed.
“Rosie Mulvaney,” Sharon repeated. “Will… take… a long time to find you.”
It did take a long time, Devyn thought, but didn’t correct the poor woman. Instead she let the name play in her head.
Rose Mulvaney. Should she change her name to that? Because that’s who she was, Rose Mulvaney. Daughter of a brave, heroic woman who risked her life to save others.
Devyn leaned back against the cool stone wall and closed her eyes, letting the sensation of warm contentment roll over her. Marc would be back, they would get Sharon to the hospital, and when this was over, she’d go home with a small, but real, family.
Finally, after a lifetime of—
“Salam.”
Devyn jumped at the sound, her eyes popping open to stare into a pair of sharp and silvery ones, right over the barrel of the gun. For a second, nothing processed.
Sharon. Standing. Aiming.
The other hand—with the wounded arm—to her ear with a phone.
What was she doing?
“All right, we can get this done now.” Her voice was strong, clear, and directed into the phone. “It’s a scrape. I can meet you in ten minutes and deliver the very last thing you need, Malik. An American hostage.”
Icy fear and shock washed all Devyn’s warmth away. She just blinked in disbelief, sending a tear that had just formed in happiness rolling down her cheek for a completely different reason. “Sharon, what are—”
“I had no intention of dying, Malik. But this person is totally expendable and impossible to trace. Frankly, she’s perfect.”
Perfect. Devyn’s stomach turned.
“By the time they figure out who you have, you’ll be halfway home.” Sharon’s gaze cut across Devyn, cold, mean, and heartless. “Name’s Rose Mulvaney. Oh, and get someone over to Curley’s. A guy will be coming into the back parking lot in, oh, about seven or eight minutes. He’ll be looking for a path that doesn’t exist. Take him down, and make it look political.”
Devyn tried to speak, but nothing came out. She felt pain. Searing, black, aching disbelief and pain.
Sharon winced as she stashed the phone into her pocket. “Let’s go.”
“How can you do this?” The words were barely a whisper. “I’m your daughter.”
“You’re a mistake I made. Get up.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m completing my suicide mission.” The barrel of her gun settled on Devyn’s forehead. “Only the suicide is going to be yours. Move it, Rose.”
CHAPTER 26
Marc squealed into the entrance of the deserted supermarket, pushing the little Ford Focus well beyond what the rental car was meant to do. There were two cars in the lot, both dark, a few shopping carts, and no lights anywhere in the store. He zipped to one side, his lights landing on a row of Dumpsters as he careened toward the back.
The grounds of the cemetery ended at a narrow alley behind the store, a nine-foot chain-link fence completely blocking access.
Where the fuck were the three paths?
Maybe there were no paths. Maybe she was delirious. Maybe she was mistaken.
Maybe she was Liam Baird’s lying little puppet. That gunshot wound wasn’t so serious.
He’d had no choice but to take the chance. Devyn wasn’t going to end her tearful reunion with a woman who’d been shot and abandoned, so the only thing he could do was look for a way to get her out of there and to the hospital.
He threw the car into park, racked his pistol, and jumped out, peering into the shadows for a break in the fencing but seeing nothing. Hustling into the darkness, he grabbed the metal and shook it as he ran, peering up the hill behind it. Jesus, there were more graves there, as though they had to use every inch.
An engine rumbled in the front lot, getting closer. He stepped back into a recess of the building, flattening himself against the side.
The car got closer, the lights shining across the lot; then they cut off and the car screeched to a halt. He inched forward to see the car had blocked his exit, and his Ford Focus blocked the other one.
A car door slammed, then another. At least two of them, then. He backed up again, slowly lifting his gun, perfectly still and silent.
But his head was screaming. Sharon Greenberg sent someone after me. She had to have—that was the only explanation.
Which meant Devyn wasn’t safe at all with her.
Clenching his teeth, he listened to the footsteps, heard a murmur of words. One set of footsteps broke into a run, coming toward him. Marc backed up, ready to shoot the instant his target passed.
He was ten feet away, five, two. He fired the second a shadow passed his hiding place, and the man fell with a thud. Marc jumped out and spun to fire on the next guy, who’d already pivoted and was running back to his car.
Marc vaulted toward him and aimed low, wanting to bring him down, but still get information out of him. He hit his leg, and the man buckled and fell. As Marc neared him, a shot whizzed by his head, fired from his first victim.
Pouncing on the runner, he looked over his shoulder and got off another shot into the shadows, eliciting a grunt of pain from his target.
“What the fuck do you want?” Marc demanded, flipping the guy onto his back and holding him down with a knee and the gun. And a prayer that the one behind him was dead.
Marc ducked as another bullet buzzed by his head. He lifted his hand and slammed his gun against the guy’s temple, turning just enough to gauge the position of number one.
He was flat on the ground, pistol in hand, using his last breaths to try and kill Marc. Closing one eye, Marc aimed for a kill and pulled the trigger, the shot echoing through the alley, no doubt about to bring the Irish police.
And Christ only knew who paid them.
He turned back to the man pinned under him. “Who sent you?”
The guy narrowed deep blue eyes, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Fuck you. You’re in the wrong place,” the man said. “We kill fucking Republicans over here for sport.”
“I’m not even Irish.”
He got a tight smile. “But you’ll die like one and those are my… orders.” On the last word, he got in a sucker punch to Marc’s face, the blow just hard enough to give the other man a momentary upper hand. They rolled again, Marc flipping onto his back.
As he did, he got off a shot, which grazed the man’s stomach, but the bullet bounced off the bricks of the supermarket. It weakened him, though, and he lost enough power for Marc to crack the pistol over his face again, needing information more than he needed the guy dead.
“Whose orders?” he demanded.
But the guy just groaned as blood oozed out of his wound at the waist, soaking Marc’s knees. “Who?” Marc aimed directly at his heart. “Tell me who the hell sent you and how I can find him.”
He didn’t move, clenching his jaw, fighting pain and the will to live. “At the shipyard. Malik’s getting there early.”
“And Sharon Greenberg?”
He frowned. “They need a hostage to hold off American fire. She’s doing it… for Malik.”
For a second, that made absolutely no sense—unless the Pakistanis knew there’d be a raid. Dr. Greenberg wasn’t working for Baird. She wasn’t working for the SIS. She was a fucking double agent for the Pakistanis.
And no doubt part of her deal with the Pakis was to either act as or be a female hostage so they could escape after picking up Liam Baird’s delivery of botulism spores.
Unless she could get a stand-in as a hostage.
He glanced at the cemetery behind the fence. No use going back there now. Either Devyn got away or her birth mother was handing her over to a terrorist right now.
Marc pushed himself off the other man and aimed his gun at his face. “Give me your keys.”
The man turned his head, writhing in pain. “He has them.”
Marc shot his leg and the man jumped and howled, then reached into his pocket and threw a set of keys at Marc.
Hanging on to a hell of a lot of hope, Marc ran to the other car and jumped in, leaving one man near dead and the other unable to go anywhere.
He had to get to the shipyard, before Devyn became a human shield.
Devyn didn’t dare stumble, or stall, or even talk.
Her captor, despite her injury, used the gun Marc had left to jab Devyn’s back and silently keep her almost at a run. They tore through another unfamiliar section of the cemetery, down a set of stone stairs, around another monument, and through a fence to a side street.
There, they ran to a car, which Sharon made Devyn drive.
Somehow, hands trembling, heart breaking, questions reverberating, she did. When they cruised past the hospital, Devyn started looking hard for a possible escape route.
She slid a glance at the woman, at… her mother. Anything that might have felt like a connection turned to stone.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sharon said, wincing again and gingerly moving her arm. “I can drive with you dead.”
“I’ve made a mistake, haven’t I?” Devyn asked.
“If you mean by trusting me, yes. But you aren’t the first.” Sharon’s pale gray eyes were locked on her, the gun unwavering in its aim toward Devyn’s head.
“You can’t really be my birth mother.”
She snorted softly. “You can pick your friends, but… You know the rest.”
Her stomach turned. This was worse than her worst nightmare. “You sent that picture of me.”
“You? No, sorry, that wasn’t you. That was just some baby picture the housekeeper where I was staying had in her wallet.”
No. She wanted to scream but kept her voice steady. “I found a picture of me at your house.” That wasn’t the housekeeper’s picture. That was her.
She let out a put-upon sigh. “Finn MacCauley had pictures of you, not me. I never even knew who adopted you, and I didn’t care.”
Devyn closed her eyes like she’d been hit. “But Finn did?”
“Evidently. For a man in hiding, he certainly managed to sneak into every public event where you’d be present. Recitals, graduation—good heavens, he even got shots of your wedding.”
“He was there?” The words trapped in her throat. Was that possible?
“That’s what he says.”
She cruised throug
h an intersection, looking for anyone who could help. But Belfast was quiet at this hour. Maybe she could find a CCTV camera and stop in front of one. At least someone, somewhere, would know where she was.
Marc. Another stab to her chest.
“Why did Finn send you pictures if you don’t care about me?”
Sharon exhaled again, rubbing the dried blood on her lab coat. “He thought I did. I guess because he did. And he wanted something from me.” She smiled, a dry, heartless smile. “I knew he would eventually. It just took a damn long time. Turn at the next street, head toward the cranes, past the airport. We’re going to the shipyards.”
“What did he want from you?”
“Oh, his second chance.” She choked softly. “Finn wants redemption, don’t you know?” There was an ugly note of hatred in her voice. “He wants his freedom. So, he came to me to help him buy it.”
Devyn frowned. “How?”
“He thought he was so smart arranging this.” She waved the gun like all of Belfast encompassed “this.” “He worked with the FBI and the CIA and the SIS and God knows who to frame that idiot Liam Baird. He thought if he brought me and my expertise in on it, they really could get Baird. And, of course, through Baird, they could get Malik.” She chuckled. “Nobody gets Malik.”
Devyn made the turn she indicated, using the excuse to look at Sharon again, the headlights shining just enough to emphasize the wrinkles in her sallow skin, the shadows under her eyes. The wound may be superficial, but the blood loss was taking its toll. She could escape… eventually.
If she stayed alive.
“So you don’t work for Liam Baird or the SIS?”
“No, I don’t. They both just think I work for them.”
“Who do you work for?”
Sharon laughed. “What makes you think this is work? Screwing Finn MacCauley is my lifelong dream, kid. Ever since the day he used me and left me high and dry, I’ve been waiting for this.”
High and dry? “He left you with me.”
Sharon sighed, shaking her head. “I didn’t want you.”
Oh. Devyn swallowed the lump that strangled her throat, cutting off air, her arms and legs tingling with the heat of adrenaline and agony.
“Sorry,” Sharon said with a shrug. “I’m not going to lie. I could have had an abortion, you know. I didn’t.”