Page 55 of Irish Oath
"I need to go to Galway," she said. "Soon."
"Tomorrow. If you're willing."
"As Claire Byrne."
"As whoever you need to be. The solicitor will have instructions about who can access the records. If Claire Byrne isn't enough to satisfy them, then she isn't."
"I know what it takes," she said. She looked at her hands. "I know."
She sat there with the lamp on and the gun within reach and her hands folded on the blanket, and I watched her do the thing she always did. Take the hit, set it down, stay upright. She'd been doing it alone since the night she ran. That was the part I couldn't stand. Not that she could carry it. That she'd never once had someone in the room when she did.
She was not alone anymore. I needed her to understand that.
Her name was sitting behind my teeth again, the way it had since Chicago. I didn't let it out. The first time I said it aloud, I wanted it to be a good moment. Not this one.
"Look at me," I said.
She did.
"We're not going to let anything happen to you. I want that clear. Whatever this is, wherever it leads, you're not going through it alone. Not anymore."
She held my gaze a long moment. "You can't promise that."
"I know," I said. "I'm promising it anyway."
Something surfaced she didn't fully catch. It was there for a second, raw and unguarded and very young, the look of a person who hadn't been promised anything in a long time and didn't quite know what to do with being promised something now.
Then it was gone, and she was herself again.
"Get some sleep," she said.
"You too."
I stood.
"Ronan."
I stopped.
"The northeast wall. Can we put more coverage there?"
"Cormac's already on it."
She nodded once. "Good. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
I pulled the door closed and stood in the corridor a moment, my fist against the wall, breathing through the fact of someone standing at the edge of everything I'd built to keep her safe, and the fact that they'd been standing there longer than I'd known.
I went back down.
I didn't sleep. I sat in the study and watched the camera feeds until the gray Dunraven morning came up in the window, and the feeds stayed clear. The northeast wall held nothing but stone and dark and the sea moving steady beyond it.
But I watched anyway.
Because some things you don't stop watching just because they look safe.
Some things you watch precisely because they look safe.
