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The last thing I heard before I ducked beneath Eamonn’s hospital bed and covered my head was the high-pitched scream of a rocket barreling straight toward us. I didn’t look out the window for confirmation—I didn’t need to. That sound was carved into the very fiber of my soul like the grooves of a record, a trauma that I was destined to replay over and over and over again.
Just like my life with Kellen.
CHAPTER 39
DAMIEN
It looked like it was snowing.
Smoke and ash and bits of plaster floated down from the sky in slow motion as I ran toward the rubble that, just seconds ago, had felt like an oasis of hope. The building moaned in agony as structures cracked and broke off, shattering on the jagged debris below. And something inside of me shut off. It was as if all access to my emotions had been severed. Logic. Sensory input. Alertness. Planning. That was all that was left. A machine on a mission.
The side of the building closest to me had been destroyed, but the far side was still intact, as well as the main entrance. The only people streaming out of the hospital were in uniform, which meant that the patients were most likely on lockdown. And because Clo wasn’t among them, it meant that she was either trapped in the rubble or she was trapped inside a padded cell with this Eamonn fucker.
Grabbing every shell-shocked arsehole I could get my hands on, I asked each one if they’d seen a pretty redhead looking for Eamonn O’Toole. I was met with blank stares or tears or slack-jawed head shaking, but one employee, a middle-aged woman with deep hollows under her eyes, simply lifted a finger and pointed behind me.
I turned my head, expecting to see Clo’s big green eyes shimmering with relief as she came bounding toward me, but instead, I found myself staring at a mountain of rubble being torn apart by a dozen frantic people wearing hospital uniforms.
Adrenaline exploded through my bloodstream as I descended on that fucking hellscape like a man possessed. I didn’t feel the strain of my muscles as I yanked chunks of metal and concrete and wood the size of cars off the pile. Didn’t feel the burning of my lungs or the slicing of my hands as I tossed granite bricks over my shoulder by the dozens. But when I broke through the exterior debris and found a pocket of air under a hospital bed, I felt every sensation in my body all at once.
Excruciating pain.
Paralyzing panic.
Blinding terror.
Murderous rage.
Because lying in a heap, covered in ash and bricks and crumbled plaster, was the body of a woman with long auburn hair.
Wearing a black flight jacket.
I pulled her from the wreckage as gently as I could and ran straight back to Heuston Station with her limp body cradled in my arms. I didn’t check to see if she was alive or dead. I didn’t even look at her face. I couldn’t.
I was just going to hold her until she woke up.
Because she was going to wake up.
She fucking had to wake up.
I knew every soldier on that island was probably looking for a couple matching our description, but with both of us caked in white plaster dust, I was willing to risk being seen by the soldiers at Heuston Station. I was willing to do anything to get Clover the fuck off that island.
But just in case, I entered through the opposite side of the building. My hunch paid off. There were no soldiers on that side, and I nearly wept as I stepped through the free-spinning turnstile and carried Clo’s limp body to the westbound platform.
Where a digital sign showed that the next train was twenty-eight minutes away.
Fuck.
There was an empty bench, but I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t stand. All I could do was pace and hyperventilate and listen for any signs of life.
Because I couldn’t fucking bring myself to look.
Twenty-seven minutes.
If her heart was beating, if she was breathing, if she was cold, I couldn’t feel it through Kellen’s jacket. I couldn’t fucking feel it. And that was what scared me the most.
Twenty-six.
My pacing grew faster, my steps larger, my turns sharper. A few of the St. Patrick’s staff members joined me on the platform. But they didn’t pace. They simply stood and stared at nothing, their shock as potent as my agony.
