Page 117 of The Endless Want

In the moment, everything narrows into a single white-hot line: reach her. I tear toward the nearest attacker, the world roaring around me in a mix of engines, shouting, and bullets. The first man doesn’t even see me coming. I grab him by the collar, slam his head into the hood of the closest car hard enough to dent the metal, and steal his weapon as he drops.

The second turns toward me just in time for me to shoot him twice in the chest. Controlled, close-range bursts. Efficient. I barely register the recoil.

The Italians are being shredded. Their formation means nothing under the coordinated strike. Two are already down, bleeding across the road. Another is pinned behind a tire, screaming into a radio that isn’t going to save him.

But I don’t care about them.

I only care about the middle car.

Ailish’s door is open—forced open—and my heart lurches violently as I sprint toward it. A man stands half-inside, dragging someone out by the arm. Her arm. I recognize her coat before I recognize anything else. That pale wool she wore this morning. The one she tugged around her belly absently while mumbling about being too warm and then too cold in the same breath.

I fire. The man jerks, but not enough. He dives behind the car, pulling her with him. She screams my name—“Declan!”—and I swear the sound nearly knocks me to my knees. I push forward, refusing to lose sight of her, but a third attacker steps into my path, raising a rifle.

He doesn’t get a shot off. I lunge, tackling him, slamming him to the pavement. We grapple, rolling across broken glass and damaged asphalt. His elbow cracks against my ribs. I twist, grab his wrist, force the gun sideways, and wrench it out of his grip. A headbutt breaks his nose. A second strike silences him. I don’t even wait for him to stop moving before I get back to my feet.

I see her again—just a flicker—being lifted into the back of one of the black SUVs. Her hands claw at the door frame. She kicks. She fights. Jesus, she fights. But the attacker in the driver’s seat grabs her by the back of her coat and yanks her all the way inside.

“No—Ailish!”

I sprint after the vehicle, shooting until the magazine clicks empty. Bullets ricochet, glass erupts from the back window, but the SUV keeps moving. Another attacker fires in my direction, covering the escape. I dive behind a wrecked car as the street explodes in sparks.

The SUV peels away, tires screaming.

She’s gone.

I force myself up, breath ragged, heart slamming so violently it hurts. The convoy is reduced to smoking metal and bodies. Blood runs toward the gutter in thin red rivers.

A surviving Italian groans somewhere behind me, clutching his shoulder, but his voice sounds distant—unreal—because my entire world is that SUV turning the corner with the woman carrying my child inside it.

I stagger forward, trying to chase even when my legs tremble. But the SUV is gone. And Ailish with it.

For a long moment, I stand in the middle of the destroyed street, unable to breathe, the gun still heavy in my hand. The last echo of the SUV’s engine fades, leaving only the hiss of leaking fluids and the broken moans of the wounded Italians around me.

Smoke curls from the crumpled hoods. The smell of gasoline clings to the air in thick, oily waves. Ailish’s scream—my name—still rings in my head like a bell struck too hard.

Everything inside me spirals around that one sound, replaying it, twisting it, turning it into something unbearable.

I force myself to move. Standing here means failing her.

I walk toward the wrecked middle car and look into the back seat where she was minutes earlier. Her purse is there, the strap half-torn. Her scarf lies rumpled on the floor mat. The sight of it nearly brings me to my knees.

They dragged her out of this car like she weighed nothing. Like she was nothing. And I let her drive away this morning with a kiss and a gut feeling I didn’t act on fast enough.

A hand grabs weakly at my ankle, and I spin, adrenaline punching through my fog. It’s one of the Italians—the mid-level handler assigned to watch her. Blood seeps between his fingers where he holds his side, and his breaths come in sharp, panicked bursts. I crouch beside him, gripping his collar.

“Where are they supposed to take her?”

His eyes flutter. He shakes his head. “We don’t know—wasn’t supposed to be—” His breathing shudders. “They were waiting. They knew the route.”

Of course they did. Someone leaks. Someone tracks them. Someone realizes exactly who is in the middle vehicle.

He coughs, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “Too many. Four SUVs total. They wanted her, not us.”

I don’t need the reminder. I feel it in the precision of the strike, the calculated angles, the way they box in the convoy without firing wild. This isn’t a warning like the alley attack. This isn’t surveillance. This is an extraction. A kidnapping. A message aimed straight at the Irish.

Straight at me.

“Stay alive,” I say, though I know it’s unlikely. “Medics will come.”