Shiver of Fear (22 page)

The
wrong
woman who looked very, very
right
in a short black dress, a deep V at the neckline, the waist tapered to show the curves of her narrow frame.

The memories of the woman he’d married—last seen by Marc on her way to prison—faded instantly. “We’ll dance right out the
door and to the balcony if your plan works.”

“It’ll work. It has to.” Her whole face lit with a renewed spark for her not-so-secret fantasy for a mother-daughter connection
that would erase the pain he sometimes saw in her eyes.

He wasn’t going to be the one easing that pain, not in any permanent way. He had to remember that.

No matter how much he wanted to.

“I have an idea about our bags,” he said. “Let’s stash what we absolutely need into that small carry-on, and I’ll just tote
it over my shoulder like a camera bag or something. It’s not that noticeable.”

“And the laptop?” she asked.

“I downloaded everything we might need onto a jump drive and deleted the rest. We’ll just leave everything here in the room
safe, not that it’s any guarantee of safety. Just pack very light. Like, almost nothing.”

He indicated her suitcase and went into the bathroom to let her have privacy. Whatever she was hiding in there—her clue to
finding Finn—would be going with them to Enniskillen, he supposed. “Just take what’s mission critical, Dev.”

When he came back out, she was waiting, the little bag zipped up. He took the rest of their stuff and pushed
it deep under the bed, although he wouldn’t be surprised if it was all gone when they got back. Nothing of earth-shattering
value there anyway.

A few minutes later, they were waiting at the service elevator in an empty hallway, to all appearances a couple on their way
out for the evening. When the elevator doors opened, the car was empty. Inside, alone, they shared a look.

“Step two accomplished,” she said.

He frowned at her. “What was step one?”

“Getting you to agree to this.”

With a whisper of a smile, he leaned closer and put a kiss on her forehead. “Evidently I can’t say no to you.”

“That makes two of us,” she said. “Sorry we got so carried away before.”

“I’m not.” He slipped his free hand into hers. “Listen, don’t leave me, not for one millisecond. Is that clear?”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Do exactly as we planned. Stay to the outside perimeter of the room and keep talking to me or listening. Just fake like we
are in the deepest, most riveting conversation of our lives. We don’t want to talk to anyone else, and our goal is to get
in and out as fast as possible.”

“What if someone questions us? Or chases us?”

“Just follow my lead.” He added a squeeze to her hand. “Don’t question, don’t argue, don’t act suddenly with a better idea.
One of us is in charge, and it’s me.”

The elevator doors opened to a crowded hall full of wedding guests who had spilled out of the ballroom, which was already
noisy from the effects of an open bar, the music in the main room loud enough to make talking out here difficult.

As she scanned the crowd, her gaze stopped at a man standing at the large double doors outside of the ballroom, looking in
as he talked on a cell phone.

“Oh my God, Marc, it’s—”

Before she had the name out, Marc whipped her in the opposite direction, blocked her with his body, and pushed her into the
crowd. “Move!”

I
got ’em,” Padraig Fallon whispered into his cell phone. “They just got off the elevator, dressed for the wedding.”

“The wedding? What the hell for?”

“Blend in, I guess. And they—shit—spotted me. He’s taking her farther away.”

“That’s not a problem, is it?”

The truth was, he wanted them to see him. “Not if they’re going to Enniskillen, it isn’t. If they go there, stay there, and
get lost there, everyone’s going to be fine.” He scanned the faces again, none familiar, none threatening. “Anyway, I don’t
care if they see me. It’s the others I’m worried about.”

And he hadn’t been smart enough to dress to fit in, as they had. He’d already gotten some sideways glances from other guests,
but no one had spoken to him.

“Are they going outside yet?”

“It’s a long way to the parking lot door,” he said.
“They’ve gone into the ballroom, staying at the edge. Probably working their way toward the back balcony.” Smart again. If
someone was going to take them out right here and now, they’d most likely not be in this wedding room.

Padraig wasn’t in the ballroom, and he couldn’t bloody well walk in there, either. A cheer went up from the crowd inside as
a groomsman took the mike and the dreadful music finally died down. Toast time. A few guests hurried by him to get back inside
for the speech, giving Padraig an opportunity to reposition himself and see his targets.

“Okay,” he reported. “They’re way in the back of the room, slowly working their way past one of the bars. No one seems to
have noticed them.”

“Can they get to the parking lot from there?”

“The ballroom leads to an aboveground terrace. There are stairs that go down to the side, then around to the lot. Not the
easiest way, but smarter for them.”

“So he knows what he’s doing.”

“He’s well trained,” Padraig agreed. “Former FBI. I surely hope he knows what he’s doing.”

In his ear, a soft snort. “Now where are they?”

“Still walking… Oh, fuck.”

“What is it?”

“Trouble.”

A man had risen from one of the tables and kept his head down as he walked to the back of the room, but Padraig recognized
the profile.

“What kind of trouble?”

“The kind we don’t want.”

But the wrong person had his young couple on the
radar, and although they were getting close to the wall of doors that led to the terrace, they might not be fast enough. Padraig
had two choices—run into the ballroom, in the middle of the best man’s droning toast, and swing all of the attention to him
and off them, or haul ass out the back, run around the backside of the building, and somehow get them first.

With no more than a split-second deliberation, he bolted down the hall, thrusting the phone into his pocket without bothering
to end the call. He had to sidestep a few surprised guests, but he still had that low-to-the-ground speed that had saved his
life on many occasions, in the field and in the boxing ring.

They could have taken this route, but the wedding path was so much smarter and safer, moving through innocent guests instead
of by a gunman who could be waiting to take them down. Padraig moved as though a bullet could hit him at any second, because
it could.

Using his full body weight, he threw the back doors open, whipping around to the right, and running down the hill behind the
hotel, reaching the bottom in seconds, surrounded by Dumpsters and the employee parking lot. The steps that led from the ballroom
terrace to the hotel guest lot were thirty feet away, an eternity, even with how fast he was running.

As he ran, he looked up at the railing along the balcony, catching a glimpse of couples leaning over, a few smokers strewn
about, no sign of the two he wanted or the man he was relatively certain had them in his sights as well.

He reached the stairs and hesitated in the shadows, hoping he’d see them hustling down, their plan to sneak
out executed without a flaw. But no one ran toward him. No one even walked down the stairs.

Enough doors were open to the ballroom that he could hear an outburst of laughter, then applause. Some more talking and another
round of applause.

They couldn’t have gotten by him, could they? Marc Rossi wasn’t
that
good, was he? He couldn’t outsmart a guy like Padraig—

The kick from behind hit his kidney at the same moment an arm looped around his neck, cracking it to the right. Fuck.

“What are you doing here?”

Evidently, he
was
that good. “Just making sure you got the message, mate.”

“Who are you?”

“Padraig Fallon,” he said, the pressure of a pistol at his back replacing the knee.

“Ask him!” The female voice was more distant, even deeper in the shadows, as though Rossi had made her stay back while he
did the dirty work.

“How do you know Devyn?” he demanded. “How do you know so much about her?”

Padraig managed to get a look up the stairs and saw movement. Or at least he thought he did. Had Rossi seen it?

“You better get the fuck out of here, lad,” he warned.

“Not without answers. You think I’m stupid enough to go exactly where you want us to go without knowing why, who you are,
or who you work for?” He yanked Padraig’s head farther to the side and jabbed the gun barrel into him. “Let’s go. We’re gonna
talk.”

Definitely someone at the top of the stairs. Listening… about to take aim… about to fire.

“You want her to live?” he asked.

Rossi slid his hand around Padraig’s throat, curling a finger into the chain around his neck and twisting it like a noose.
“You are in no position to bargain, Fallon. I want answers, and I want them now.”

The chain snapped and his medal spit off to the side, clunking to the ground. “Someone’s about to shoot her.”

“And that’s why you’re sending us to some obscure town across the country?”

“That’s why—”

A shot exploded, noise and white light and the whiz of a bullet right next to them. Instantly, Marc thrust him away, so hard
Padraig stumbled to the ground, hitting his hip with a bone-jolting smack.

Rossi flipped around, using his body to shield the woman and turning his Glock toward the top of the stairs to take aim. But
another bullet whizzed by, the flash showing them the shooter had made it halfway down the stairs.

Rossi was already pushing the woman in the other direction, trying to get her out.

“Padraig, what the hell is going on?” The voice came from the phone in his pocket, still on. He ignored the plea, reaching
instead for his weapon, getting it out just as the man on the stairs took another shot at the couple running away.

He could stop this. He could save them, or he could roll into the darkness under the stairs and let them make it on their
own. The shooter reached the bottom of the stairs, possibly still unaware of Padraig. He could get one shot,
take this bastard down, let the couple get away where they could do no harm.

If he missed, he’d be dead.

He lifted his gun and steadied his arm, waiting for the man to come two feet closer, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went
right past the bastard.

Already there were thunderous footsteps as people ran out of the ballroom, some screaming at the gunshots. But right above
him, his target, still damn whole, stopped and looked down, recognition darkening his features.

“What the fuck, Padraig Fallon?” He pointed his gun at Padraig’s face.

Now he had to kill the guy, no matter what. He shot point-blank, rolling away as he did, catching a glimpse of the former
FBI agent looking back from the parking lot to which he’d escaped, just in time to see it all happen.

In front of him, the man slumped to his knees, swearing, as blood gurgled out of his belly.

“You fucker, Fallon,” he mumbled, falling facedown. “You fucking bastard.”

Padraig ran, knowing that even if he was arrested, it would only mean he’d be detained, not held. He had more clout than all
of the police in Belfast.

And he’d done his job—they were off to Enniskillen.

A1 to the M1 to the A4. Marc had memorized the directions and used every brain cell to focus on getting their little rental
through traffic, away from any threats, and on to those roads.

Devyn hardly spoke, as if she were in tune with his
bone-deep need to concentrate on the wrong-side driving, the foreign roads, the determination to get the hell out of Belfast.

Sailing along the M1 at top speed and a half hour into the country west of Belfast, they still hadn’t discussed what had happened
in the shadows of the hotel parking lot. Marc was replaying the scenario in his mind, trying to piece together what didn’t
fit.

And what didn’t fit is that someone tried to kill them, and instead of aiding and abetting that effort, Padraig Fallon shot
the assailant and gave them a chance to run. Based on that, and only on that, Marc agreed to follow the man’s directions.

“The question is,” he mused aloud, finally ready to break the silence, “who’s after you, and why?”

“No,” she countered. “The question is who’s got Sharon, and why does she need my help?”

“We’re coming at this from two different angles,” he said. “And it makes me wonder if there aren’t two different angles.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer right away, still mulling it over. “That maybe more than one party is threatening you. Maybe you’ve walked
into the middle of some kind of… turf war.”

“I don’t know,” she said, exhaustion coloring her tone. “I’m sorry I convinced you to jump him for answers.”

“I’m not.” She’d made a compelling argument as they’d worked their way across the ballroom. “Fallon has to know something,
and if someone else hadn’t tried to shoot at us, I might have gotten the old guy to talk.”

“Do you think Fallon was shot?”

“I don’t think so, but someone was,” he said. “There were, what, two shots?” Then a lot of chaos and Marc had moved on instinct,
getting Devyn away from the bullets. “The guy at the top of the stairs was toast at that range.”

“Was that the same guy you fought in the stairwell?”

“I didn’t get a chance to see. Before we left, I sent a message to Boston asking for a background check on Fallon and a check
of the numbers called on the phone I took from the guy who tried to get into our room.”

“Maybe we can take a picture of this,” she said, holding out her hand and opening her fingers to reveal a small orange and
silver medal. “And find out what the symbol means.”

“Where did you get that?”

“When you throttled Padraig,” she said. “It popped off and I grabbed it.”

“Let me see it.” Taking it, he glanced at the cross, then back to the road before returning it to her. “He’s Protestant—that
much is clear.”