Page 92 of Irish Fury
Several tense minutes later, he stumbled out of the doorway and kept walking even as paramedics came at him.
“We’ve got her, sir,” one woman urged as he found fresher air for Mags. “Place her on the gurney.”
For a moment, he felt like his arms wouldn’t, couldn’t release her, but she needed to be checked out. A figure emerged at his shoulder. Eze.
“Let them have her, Jon. We will follow the ambulance to the hospital.”
He finally let her go, looking at her soot-smudged and bruised face. He ripped the shirt from around his head, and before the medics could wheel her to the ambulance, he bent and kissed her. “I’ll be right behind you, Mags. I love you.”
He stood there for a moment, feeling lost as men and women in uniform rushed toward the building, firehoses stretched between them.
Eze’s palm landed on his shoulder. “Come on, my brother. Nasir will drive your car.”
Thankful for the direction, Jonathan nodded and followed Mags’ good friend, his as well now, he supposed.
On the trip following the ambulance, Jonathan’s brain finally started working past finding Mags alive but unconscious.
“How did you know to be there? I didn’t even have a chance to call my family. I was on the phone with Coll—” he stopped speaking, pieces of the puzzle clicking together. “Coll Barr. I was on the phone with him. My thinking’s jacked right now.”
“Barr called Nasir earlier while they were questioning,” Eze’s lip curled in distaste, “that woman. She mentioned things that didn’t make sense. Nasir was able to illuminate their meaning. While on the phone, the woman insinuated that she knew Margaret was dead.
“She mentioned a bomb and thought that was why she was picked up. Since we were on the phone when she admitted that, Nasir and I immediately set out. Neither you nor Margaret was answering, and then you called Barr.”
Eze shrugged, but it was clear that he was as shaken as Jonathan. “Her heartbeat was strong.” Eze nodded, but they lapsed into silence until the hospital came into view.
Jonathan was out of the car door and running to the ambulance as they were unloading Mags from the back. She looked so pale and fragile.
He didn’t know anyone with more life in them than Margaret Morrow except right now she looked…peaceful, not at all the berserker he knew she could be.
Where was the girl who’d put a laxative in his and Daniel’s hot chocolate when they hadn’t let her and Bébhinn go camping with them? Where was the woman who interrupted his dates and then ate their food when they left in a huff? Where was the woman who could look at him and grin, and his whole world became brighter?
She was still and quiet. She was not his Mags, and it was killing him to stand back and do nothing.
As they wheeled her away, Jonathan shook out the filthy shirt that he’d still been gripping and put it on, not realizing until they walked into the waiting room that he was still shirtless.
Nasir interrupted his bleak thoughts. “Excuse me, Mr. O’Faolain,” he said as he handed him his phone. “I found this in your car.”
“Oh, right. Good.” He didn’t bother scrolling through his missed calls and texts, dialing Charles Morrow instead.
“Jonathan. Thank God. Aileen, it’s Jon. I’m putting you on speaker. We’re in Jo’s family’s plane. We’re all here.”
“We’re at the hospital and they’ve taken Mags back, but they wouldn’t let me go with her.”
“How is she? How bad is it?” Aileen, Mags’ mother, asked, tears in her voice.
“She’s banged up and bruised, but—” he hesitated.
“But what?” Charles asked impatiently.
“She was unconscious when I found her on the stairwell, and she still is. I don’t know anything, but I swear the moment I do, I’ll call.”
“Is your family there yet?” Thomas MacGregor must have been close to the phone because the scowl in his gravelly voice sounded like he was standing in the waiting room.
“No. I haven’t called…wait, what the,” he stuttered as every family member in Dublin, including Dagr’s father, Ulf, and Ciar’s father, Ciaran, were stampeding past the hospital staff.
“They are now.”
“Good. Call me the second you know anything.” MacGregor ended the call.
