Page 85 of Crown of Thorns

Someone screams. Mrs. Murphy maybe. I'm already moving the serving station, sliding between the counter and the wall, toward the supply closet. The angle is bad. Too exposed still. But it's movement, and movement is life.

The second shot cracks the tile. Close. Close enough to feel the percussion.

My hands are shaking and I hate that they're shaking. I'm a veterinarian. I've sewn wounds and set broken bones and held animals while they died. I'm used to blood and crisis. This is different because the crisis is mine. Because I can be erased and the erasure will be total.

The supply closet is locked. Of course it's locked.

My breath comes in short, controlled spikes. This is what happens when training meets instinct. My body is ice. My hands are steady. The fear is there, but it's boxed, compartmentalized, something I'll deal with later. If there is a later.

I think of Lorcan's men. I think about the fact that they're always present—always waiting in the periphery of my carefully normal life. Cillian will be near. Donovan maybe. They're security, dressed as volunteers, watching the kitchen from the dining room.

But that depends on them being positioned correctly. That depends on them seeing the threat. That depends on them moving faster than professional murderers.

I turn instead toward the internal door—the one that leads to the hallway, to the main community center, to people and chaos that might be safer than this kitchen. The man with the gun is turning. He's searching. His eyes move across the kitchen with the systematic intensity of a man who knows exactly what he's looking for. They pass over the serving station. My hands are on the counter. Then his eyes snap back. He's found me.

The moment stretches. I'm looking at death. Real, immediate, professional death. This man came here with a purpose and I'm the target.

My body reacts—I duck and pivot, sliding behind the counter, the movement born from months of Lorcan's training. It bypasses thought entirely. The gun follows. The shot explodes into the cabinet behind where my head was a second before. Wood splinters against the cabinet. The sound is wrong, all of it wrong.

The hallway is dark. I move into it anyway, pulling the door half-closed behind me. My heart is in my throat. My hands are cold despite the adrenaline.

The main room erupts. Shouting. Lorcan's men, I realize distantly. They're here. They're always here, even when I forget they're here. Two of them in the main doorway. Two more coming from the parking lot entrance. They move like a school of fish—organized, purposeful, violent.

The first one, Cillian, has his gun out. He doesn't hesitate. The crack of gunfire in an enclosed space is worse than in the kitchen. It echoes. It multiplies.

I'm pressed against the hallway wall, my breath coming in shallow spikes. The supply closet lock is broken now, one of Lorcan's men shot it open. But the second shooter is already down. Three shots. No hesitation. No mercy.

The first shooter staggers backward. He's bleeding from his shoulder. His gun wavers. Cillian moves, just moves forward with the calm of a man who knows exactly what he's doing. There's a third shot, and the man falls.

The community center is screaming. But it's not gunfire screaming. It's people screaming.

I push off the wall. My legs are functional. I move back into the main room where the chaos is settling into something organized. Lorcan's men are checking bodies. Checking the room. Checking for more.

The community center looks like a crime scene. Because it is a crime scene. The dining area is scattered with abandoned bowls, benches pushed back where people ran. Blood pools in geometric patterns on the tile. The second shooter is motionless by the serving window, his chest isn't moving anymore.

Mrs. Murphy stumbles out of the kitchen, her cardigan torn. She's not shot. Her eyes find mine and I watch her register the relief, she's not shot, and neither am I. The adrenaline is starting to wear off and it's being replaced by something worse: the knowledge of how close I came.

But Father Eamon is bleeding from his arm. And the volunteer coordinator has a graze wound on her temple. And there are at least four civilians on the floor, some crying, some silent in that shock-stunned way that precedes real panic.

I walk toward Father Eamon. My legs feel distant, like they belong to someone else. My hands are shaking now, really shaking, the tremor starting in my palms and moving up my arms. The adrenaline crash is coming. I can feel it waiting.

I'm pulling my cardigan off, wrapping his arm with the clinical precision that's been drilled into me. The blood is warm and the warmth is wrong. It should be cold. He should be cold. Instead his arm is warm from life, from the fact that he's still alive.

"You're alright," I tell him. "It's not deep. The artery's intact." My voice is steady. It's a voice that belongs to a veterinarian who's sutured wounds and set broken bones and maintained composure while animals died under her hands. "You're going to be alright."

The words are automatic. They're what I'm trained for, the stabilization, the calm, the clinical assessment. But underneath the words, I'm calculating. I'm thinking about how close that shot came. How professional. How orchestrated.

His hand is shaking in mine. I hold it steady.

But inside my skull, I'm doing math.

The timing of this is wrong. Lorcan pulled security yesterday for a shipment routing through Waterford. I know because I asked why the interior detail was smaller, and he told me, trusting me with operational knowledge because he's trying to stitch us back together by showing me his hands. Showing me there's nothing hidden in the folds. He's been opening his books to me for weeks now. Every decision, every route, every alliance. Demonstrating that the lie about Padraig was singular, compartmentalized, not rot through the whole structure.

The timing is too perfect to be chance.

The community center wasn't random. I volunteer here every third Thursday. It's documented, scheduled, predictable. For someone with inside intelligence, I might as well be wearing a target.

Shay. The thought arrives like a bullet. Shay, who's been visible and invisible simultaneously. Shay, who smiled at me two days ago with something that looked like pity in his eyes. Shay, who would know exactly when Lorcan's focus was split because Shay watches. Because Shay's been positioning himself for months, offering counsel, supporting decisions, being the steady hand while Lorcan spiraled into his confession and his grief.