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CONOR

“Looks like they’re not coming for a friendly chat, Troy,” Star, the love of my life, hollered at the woman who we were trying to spare from being murdered as she loaded her SMG with a magazine of bullets. “They’re here to silence you. And to be honest, I’m not sure I fucking blame them, you pain in the goddamn ass.”

With Troy’s Range Rover doing a great impression of a burned-out shell, there was no denying the Sparrows had come in guns blazing.

As an Irish mobster who routinely pulled stunts that would give the average citizen nightmares, nothing could’ve readied me for the intensity that had overtaken the three women once Troy’s ride had been hit with an RPG from the highway.

If anyone believed that women were lesser than men, then they needed to see Lodestar, Dead To Me, and Troy gearing up for war while multitasking by bitching at one another.

“I managed to figure that out on my own, Lodestar,” Troy snarled back as she packed the holsters she wore on her hip with spare rounds. “Your digging around is probably the only fucking reason they’re on their way though. I bet Ovianar is dead and Dagda is under goddamn attack because of you.

“This is why I hated you in training. You were such a digger. You could never leave shit alone. See an unturned stone? Not for long. Star just has to overturn it and unleash Ebola on the world!”

“You managed to get those crosshairs on you all by yourself. I don’t think blaming Star when we’re here to save you is fair,” I growled.

“This isn’t helping,” was Dead To Me’s flat response. Her words were bland but her actions weren’t.

Having hauled the duffle bags we’d brought with us from the trunk, she was digging through our gear and kept shoving weapons at the bickering women while checking out the highway for incoming grenades.

Because she was right and because I hadn’t been handed a semi-automatic, I asked, “Where do I go?”

The bickering stopped, and Star’s eyes widened as she turned to me. The deepest welter of regret whispered into being in her expression, so sharp it took me aback, then she stormed over to me, grabbed my shirt, and shook me.

“You get your ass inside. You stay away from windows. You do not leave the building unless I call you. Do you understand?”

Tapping my loaded holster, I frowned at her. “I can shoot, Star. I’m not like you but I can goddamn defend myself and I can help?—”

Troy sniffed. “Pretty boy like you ain’t got nothin’ in him but glittery jizz?—”

My brows lifted at that. “Excuse me? What the fuck is glittery jizz?”

“All sparkly like, to make the bitches ooh and aah.”

“I’ve never made a bitch ooh and ahh?—”

“I disagree,” Star butted in at the same time as Dead To Me snarled:

“We don’t have time for this.” D strapped a shotgun to her shoulder. “Conor, get your glittery jizz inside the goddamn house. This is our territory. I wouldn’t wade into a hacking war. We each have our strengths and there’s no shame in that.

“Plus, if Star thinks you’re wandering around, it’ll distract her and we don’t need her distracted. The three of us need to be hot shit.”

My mouth tightened but I nodded. I didn’t mind admitting that fighting in sieges wasn’t my strength, but… “I don’t have glittery jizz.”

The regret in Star’s eyes had dimmed some. “We can agree you’re a pretty boy, no?”

I sniffed. “If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it worked.”

She grinned, and that was the best thing I’d done the whole fucking day. If this was the last time?—

No.

She wasn’t going to die.

I wasn’t going to die.

Troy rammed me in the side. I scowled at her as I accepted the SMG she handed me. “Glitter, you think you can handle this?”

“I know how to use it, yeah,” I growled. “And it’s aCooooig, thank you very much. If you don’t want me to call you Helen or The Face , then I won’t, but only if you drop this Glitter bullshit.”

It was her turn to sniff. “Don’t go G.I. Joe on us. Just head to the second floor. To the east, there’s a long corridor that leads to a door at the end of the hall. First on the right, that’s where you stand. You stay there. You guard that fucking door with your life, do you hear me?”

“You want me to guard a door ?” This Australian Shepherd shit was coming back to bite me in the ass.

“I do. Got a problem with that, Conor ?”

Pointing the gun at the ground, I stated, “No, I don’t have a problem with that.” Just with her.

Bitch.

She dipped her chin. “Anything happens to us?—”

“It won’t,” Star snapped. “We got shit to do today and dying ain’t on the list.”

“You two have your EarPods, right?” I inserted quickly, ducking into the trunk to collect my laptop.

“We do,” Star confirmed.

“Got them,” Dead To Me asserted.

“I’ll open up a channel.”

“Can you link me in on it?”

Nodding at Troy, I said, “Will do.”

Swallowing, Star cupped my face and pressed a hard kiss to my lips. “I love you, Conor O’Donnelly.”

My eyes flared wide. “I want to hear that again when you aren’t trying to convince us we’re not going to die, okay?”

“Okay.”

Another hard kiss and I was dumping my shit on the ground and hauling her into me. I only pulled back long enough to growl, “I love you too, Star Sullivan.”

Jaw tense, eyes cold, she nodded at me. “We will see tomorrow.”

Each syllable was like a bullet, settling into my gut with a centripetal force that left me staggered.

“ We will see tomorrow,” I rumbled back, trying to imbue the words with the faith I had in her. A faith that was absolute. A faith that was founded in us.

She blew out a breath, then the Star I knew was gone, replaced with one I’d only met in passing.

It wasn’t my woman.

It wasn’t the love of my life.

It was the soldier.

Thank fuck for the soldier, though, because I needed Lodestar to bring her A-game.

She rushed over to Dead To Me and started loading up even more gear as I headed toward the house without a backward glance because that would not be the last time I saw her.

I refused to accept that.

So, I did what I did best.

I obeyed the order on where to position myself and considered it fate that, right beside the goddamn door Troy had described, there was an outlet.

Unpacking my computer from its case, I plugged it in, settled the SMG on the floor and, once I piggybacked onto Troy’s Wi-Fi, shot my brothers a warning about Dagda and used the worm Star had given me— seriously, best gift ever —to begin the process of hammering into Troy’s security so that it unlocked for me.

At the same time, I created a channel that would link us all and, once it opened, demanded, “Check in.”

“Here. 1, over.” Star.

“Here. 2, over.” D.

“Here. 3, over.” Troy.

For an answer, I grunted as I focused on my laptop.

With the worm’s help, I was inside her system in less than a minute.

Now able to see each of her (impressive) perimeter alarms, I could also shut off that motherfucking noise that was going to drive me crazy.

The lay of the land was spread out like an open book in front of me. It consisted of a bunch of corn fields, then tilled areas that reminded me of my ma’s flowerbeds with boxes I assumed were beehives dotted into the formation.

Two sets of gates were blown wide, and once I took note of the vehicles, I briefed them, “Two cars approaching from the front gates, one from a back road. Only the one from the back road is speeding.”

“Maybe they do just want to talk?” D asked.

“No. They want answers. If I don’t give them to them, then they’ll kill me,” Troy said, her insipid, bored tone belonging to a Starbucks barista who couldn’t spell Sarah and not a woman who was being targeted by a secret society.

“Answers to which questions?”

“Not worth…” Troy cleared her throat then mumbled something that sounded like, “…my life to discuss them.”

“That’s exactly what’s in the cards here, Troy,” I snapped. “Your life! So maybe share with the class?”

“You guard that fucking door, Conor. Do you hear me?”

“I do. I hear you, Troy.” Hearing the sounds of exerted breathing in my ears and knowing the women were situating themselves in their nests, I peered behind me, wondering what I was guarding. “What am I actually protecting?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Are you aware of how annoying you are?” I queried.

“Yeah, douche.”

“As long as you are.” I rolled my eyes. “Car on the back road is just pulling up. Three men are getting out.”

“Have eyes on them,” Dead To Me bit off, her regular laissez-faire joker self not in attendance.

I knew shit was serious, but that was a massive identifier in and of itself.

“First car contains four guys.”

“Yeah, it looks like they want to talk,” Star grumbled. “Seven men in two cars for one Troy? Those Sparrow fuckers. I can’t wait to tear their world apart.”

“There’s my girl,” I said proudly. “Second car has two men.”

“Nine guys total.”

“Got eyes on those two cars out front, Troy. If you want to…”

Star didn’t get the chance to finish that sentence before bullets were fired. I almost groaned when I saw the gunfire coming from that same fucking tree Troy had stationed herself in before and groaned for real when I saw she’d shot out their goddamn tires.

“You fucking idiot, Troy,” D hissed.

“What did she do?”

“She blew out their tires, Star,” D snarled.

“You moron. Now they can’t tuck tail and run if they want to.”

“I’ve got Lodestar and Dead To Me set up in sniper’s nests on my property,” was Troy’s cool retort. “We’re going to slaughter the lot of them.”

Star growled under her breath. “You leave us no fucking choice but to do that now, especially when we could have interrogated the one in charge.”

As she let off some rounds, D spat, “Idiot, idiot, idiot.”

The CCTV footage became a blur of action as men attempted to creep out of their vehicles, guns locked onto targets as they tried to shoot at the nests where the women had established themselves.

Within a matter of five minutes, Star had picked off the guys at the back and had joined D and Troy out front.

The Tarantino fan in me was beyond impressed at how she’d blown one of their heads off and had gone for gut shots that left them incapacitated on the ground to die a slow, painful death when help didn’t come—I felt that.

Actual Sparrows.

In a siege.

What better opportunity than now to burn off past resentments with skillful shots that left the lasting impression of ‘til death do us part?

“We just want to talk to you!” a Sparrow shouted.

“Yeah, I bet,” Troy roared, taking aim at one of the guys from the second car who’d spent his time crouched behind the vehicle, using it as a shield. “You want to talk to me, but you send in nine guys to make sure I can’t get away? I don’t think so.” She punctuated that by tearing someone’s throat apart with a bullet.

With Dead To Me and Star firing as well, the only thing that was slow about this was how the remaining guards were pinned down, only popping up rarely to lessen how often they could get hit.

But, like whack-a-mole, the snipers took them out, and while they were easy prey in the grand scheme of things, that didn’t take away from the odds of three against nine.

When the only men remaining were the two from the second car, Star called, “Maybe you should ask your questions now that you’re the ones who are outnumbered?”

My lips cocked up in a grin. The nerves of earlier were gone, and it registered then that she hadn’t been scared for herself, just for me.

For our tomorrow .

God, I was going to kiss the fuck out of her when I got my hands on her.

Did she even know how hot she was?

“We came here for the girl.”

“The girl?” D muttered.

“You can’t have the girl,” Troy spat. “Not only because I ain’t got one, but even if I did, she wouldn’t be yours to have.”

“She’s an active member in an investigation?—”

Star hooted. “Because each of you belongs to the Connecticut State Police, don’t you?”

“We’re satellite officers?—”

Three women started cackling in my ear at that.

“Yeah, okay,” D shouted. “I’ll believe you when thousands wouldn’t.”

“What investigation?” Star shouted around her giggle-snorts.

“Into her parents’ murders.”

I zoomed in on the car, trying to see if I could figure out what the pair were doing from behind the shield.

Both cars had been parked at an odd angle, so I attempted to use the reflection from the other vehicle’s bodywork to see what was happening.

My eyes flared when, after zooming in, I saw that one of the guys had a hand grenade in his palm.

“They’ve got more grenades,” I snapped.

There was silence on the other end of the line, silence from all quarters.

Then:

“They lob that and one of us could be fucked.” D.

“We’re fucked if we try to pick them off.” Star.

“You got any grenades, Troy?”

“I got a flame thrower, D.”

My eyes widened. “You have a fucking flame thrower in your tree ? You know they’re flammable .”

“I’d prefer to burn than for these pricks to get their hands on me.”

“Tell me you’re insane without telling me you’re insane,” I muttered under my breath.

“No, Conor, she’s right. She knows what they’re capable of. I’d have preferred to burn to death too than deal with what happened to me in Lebanon.”

Her words slayed me because Star was a fighter and it…

I released a breath.

“We’ll make them burn , Star,” I vowed.

A soft chuckle sounded in my ear. “I like you, Glitter.”

“Don’t start, D, and don’t use that fucking name or I’ll call you Lucinda.”

“Children, less bickering,” Troy rumbled, but she sounded amused.

These women.

“They’re not going to blow us up yet. Not until they think they can get the answers they need,” Star mused.

“So we get to them first?” D questioned.

“We need a distraction,” I stated. “So that Troy can get down and can use the flame thrower without self-immolating in the process.”

This was turning into a game of Grand Theft Auto and I wasn’t happy about it.

“What kind of magic can you do for us, Conor?” D chirped.

As I riffled through the bag of tricks that was Troy’s security, I hummed. “Get ready for your ears to feel like they’re going to burst.”

Troy cackled so she knew where I was going with this, but she cursed with the rest of us as a high-pitched siren flooded the air, horrific enough to make ears bleed. The noise-canceling feature on our EarPods likely wouldn’t protect us for long though.

Into the melee, Star and Dead To Me fired rounds at the car, battering it until it looked like an oversized cheese grater. Into that chaos, I saw Troy climb down from her nest, a flame thrower in her hands.

Studying her position, I watched as she neared their vehicle, and then, and only then, did I disconnect the alarm.

And I watched her roast some Sparrows for dinner.