AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A scream that had been burned into my brain over the last two weeks.
Clover.
My heart thundered as I spun around, my senses reaching out in all directions. I scanned every building, every burned-out car, looking for movement, a flash of auburn hair, but it wasn’t until she screamed again that I zeroed in on her location. Almost a block away, up Aston Quay, a Russian soldier was marching over the piles of rubble in the street, dragging a woman with a bag over her head by the arm.
And sticking out the bottom of that bag was a curtain of dark red hair.
“Clo!” I shouted, bounding down the steps and taking off after them.
“Damien, wait!” Jack hissed from the tunnel, trying not to blow her cover, but I was already gone.
Bricks and plaster flew behind me as I charged up Aston Quay.
Clover’s thrashing slowed them down, allowing me to gain on them, and the sounds of her struggle only pushed me to run faster.
Crossing O’Connell Street, she was finally able to get her footing and pulled away from the fucker completely before being tackled to the ground.
“Clo!” I shouted again, a hill of debris crumbling out from under my feet as I fought to get over to her.
“Damien!” Jack called from behind me. “Come back, goddamn it!”
When I finally crested the hill and glanced up, Clover’s kicking, screaming body was draped over her captor’s shoulder as he disappeared into the building on the corner through a broken glass door.
“Fuck!”
The O’Connell Bridge House was easily two or three times taller than the other buildings in that area, and it was still perfectly intact. It could take hours to find her in there.
If they didn’t find me first.
No.
I would find her. As long as I could hear her, I could find her. And I could hear her panicked squeals and grunts of frustration loud and fucking clear as I pulled the knife from my boot and charged in through a hole in the shattered glass.
The moment my feet hit the tiled floor of the lobby, two pairs of arms grabbed both of mine, jerking them behind my back as an unseen foot kicked the back of my knees, sending me to the floor. I managed to hold on to my knife, but it didn’t matter. I was completely immobilized and surrounded by at least twenty Russian soldiers as I stared up at the motherfucker who’d dared to put his hands on my girl. The bastard was grinning from ear to ear as he held the back of Clo’s thighs with one hand and a small black device with the other.
“Put her down,” I snarled in Russian. “That is an order from your vice president!”
The arsehole complied, but he did it with a smirk that made my blood run cold.
Spinning her around, he then yanked the bag off her head.
And her long auburn hair came off with it.
A terrified brunette teenager cowered before me as he pressed a button on the device in his hand, filling the room with the sound of Clo’s whimpers and screams. Then, it was filled with the laughter of every man in that room.
Drone footage. That was the only explanation. Clo had had multiple run-ins with the drones in Howth. They must have extracted the audio of her voice and used it to lure me into their hive.
Jack had been right. It was a—
Jack!
Fuck!
I turned and looked over my shoulder just in time to see Jack’s sweat-drenched face as she lifted the Russian machine gun to her shoulder and took aim. Throwing myself forward, I managed to duck just before a hail of bullets sprayed into the building, tearing into a quarter of the soldiers in the room before a sickening click sounded behind me.
No.
The bullets stopped.
