Page 3 of Stolen Rival (The Stolen #1)

SORCHA

“I need to get out of here.” I don’t mean to speak out loud, but when Bridie looks at me like I’m a few sandwiches short of a picnic, it’s clear I did.

“Sorcha, love. You need to recover. You just got shot.”

Shaking my head, I force myself to swallow past the lump lodged in the back of my throat.

“Sure, didn’t you say it was just a flesh wound?

Be grand. I need to find my family. I need to go home.

” My voice cracks as another volley of gunfire echoes in my ears.

I need to know for sure that they’re all dead and I’m not overreacting.

I don’t tell Bridie, but it’s time to regroup and figure out what the hell I’m going to do next.

Da has three brothers, two of whom are married with their own kids.

We have a fairly small family by Irish standards, but if push comes to shove, I’ll go visit my Uncle Barry for a while until I’m well enough to think straight.

“Just give me some pain meds and send me on my way. Please?” I implore the woman, giving her my best puppy-dog eyes. Truth is, I’m not sure I want to leave. At least here, I’m safe and can stay in denial for a while longer before figuring out what to do.

But I can’t hide in the hospital forever.

If something’s happened to the rest of my family, I need to check on Cathal.

My baby brother has been in a care home since he was two days old, and at least one of us visits him every single day without fail.

Except Da. He hates Cathal, sees him as the reason Mammy isn’t here.

To Da, Cathal’s not a person, nor a child.

In his eyes, he’s Mammy’s executioner, and Da’s never been able to forgive my brother for it.

The bitter taste in my mouth makes me clench my teeth together. Whoever shot up our house last night better not have gone anywhere near Cathal or, so help me God, they’ll not live to see another day.

Bridie holds my stare for a long moment, her eyes swimming with sadness, sympathy, and a hint of something I can’t place. When she bites her lip, I know I’ve got her on the ropes. Come on, Bridie, just say yes.

I’m already pulling myself upright with a low grunt. I might have oversold the whole “I’ll be fine” thing. It feels like someone’s stuck a hot poker in my gut, and the edges of my vision start to blur with the pain.

“Hit the button, love.”

She gestures to the control in my hand, and I thrash my thumb at it a couple of times, waiting for the blissful warmth of morphine to seep into my body.

“Sure,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’ll be fine.” Another eye roll. “You’re right as rain.”

She must see something on my face that suggests it’s not worth the fight because she’s already pulling the drip out of my arm. “If I didn’t help you with this, you’d rip it out yourself and get blood all over my nice clean floor. I know your sort.” She’s muttering half to herself, half to me.

“I’ll order an Uber.” I open the app on my phone but don’t get very far. Payment method declined. I try another card, and another, but the same error message comes up on the screen every time.

What in the name of all that’s holy? Why don’t my cards work? Even if my family are all dead, how the fuck would the bank know before me?

My stomach dips. This feels calculated.

“What’s the matter?” She jerks her head at my phone.

“None of my bank cards work. And I don’t see my bag.” I give another cursory glance around the room in case I missed it.

“You weren’t brought in with one. The phone was in your pocket.”

“Shit.”

At Bridie’s disapproving eyebrow raise, I wave a hand. “Sorry.”

“I’ll loan you a tenner to get you home, but I want it back. You hear me?”

I can’t help the smile from spreading across my face. I could kiss her. “Bridie, you’re an angel. Has anyone ever told you that?”

She brushes me off with a cluck of her tongue. “Aye. Everyone else who’s robbed me blind.” She winks at me, her voice softening. “Just be careful, okay? I’ll be collecting my tenner in due course.” She pats my arm, and I believe her.

It ends up taking a couple of hours before I can make my great escape from Louth County Hospital.

Bridie gets me a prescription for pain meds, antibiotics, and something to help me sleep from the doctors, and she stands over me to make sure I eat every bite of the disgusting hospital slop they call “ food.”

“You need something in your stomach for all those tablets,” she lectures like she’s my own bloody granny. God rest her soul.

On the way home, I doze against the window, waking when the taxi driver’s gruff voice alerts me at the bottom of our driveway. There’s police caution tape holding the gates closed, and the driver gives me a guarded look in the rearview mirror. “Are ye sure this is the right place?”

Nodding, my stomach somewhere down at my feet, I clutch my paper bag of pills, hand over the money, and grunt my way out of the car.

He’s still waiting behind me as I shuffle to the gate.

Before leaving the hospital, all I wanted was to get home, crawl into my own bed, take a nap, and regroup. But as I fight with the caution tape to get inside, a cold shiver rolls through my bones, and now all I want to do is run.

Once I close the gate behind me, the taxi driver leaves, like he’s done his due diligence, and he can flee. Part of me wants to call him back.

With each slow step toward the house, the more noticeable the smell becomes. The unmistakable metallic tang of blood lingers in the air.

Gripping the handrail leading up to the front door, I close my eyes as another barrage of bullets and screaming assaults my ears.

Hopefully the blood I smell is the bad guys, and once I get down to the safe room, Da and my brothers will be there, alive and well, and we can figure out who the fuck needs to pay for shooting me in the gut.

As though it heard me, my wound starts to throb. Both of them. The one on my head hurts more than my side. Despite having missed all the major organs, my injury is causing much more trouble than I expected. Who knew you used every muscle in your body to even breathe ?

Fuck. This is brutal.

But I don’t think I could stand Bridie’s smugness if I took my arse back to the hospital now and admitted she was right.

The only way is forward.

There’s more caution tape over the front door. I rip it down on both sides and let it float to the ground. This is my house. I don’t need fucking caution to enter my own home. A shudder rolls through my bones telling me otherwise.

I’ve never really believed in the paranormal, but as I’m staring down the door of my childhood house, I don’t feel alone. At the same time, I don’t feel under threat. It’s as though I’m surrounded by people who know and love me, even if I can’t see them.

Hot tears spring to my eyes. I’m imagining things, jumping to the worst-case scenario. There’s a rational, logical reason why none of my immediate family are answering their phones. Once I walk through this door, it’ll all be fine.

Except it’s not fine.

I’ve never seen so much blood in my whole twenty years of being on this earth.

The horror takes my breath away, and the twisted beauty of how the blood makes patterns on the walls churns my stomach.

Who knew blood started to smell after only twenty-four hours?

I’m learning all kinds of things on this fucked up journey of mine.

Shuffling farther into the house calling out my family members’ names does nothing. The safe room isn’t just empty. The door is open and has an angry red handprint on it with an aggressive sweep of blood, like someone clung to the door but was pulled away.

Another shudder rolls through me.

I could try to convince myself it’s not my family’s blood, but my gut knows better.

My family is dead.

Panic scorches through me like hellfire. Did they get to Cathal in the care home?

Closing my eyes again, I take some slow breaths, finally allowing my heavy, hot tears to stream down my face.

Five minutes.

I’ll let myself cry for five minutes.

Once those five minutes are up, I’ll go into the laundry room and grab my go bag, a car key, and call Uncle Barry.

Da might have kept me out of the business side of his life, but he always made sure the whole family had bags ready to go in case of an emergency.

And that we kept them up to date. Passports, important paperwork, a cash float, a few days’ worth of clothes.

Even though it was annoying at the time, I’m grateful that Da had us update them every few months.

It means I don’t have to rely on my obsession with true crime and suspense novels, or the internet to get me through figuring out a bag at this moment.

After that, I’ll get in the car, play some boss-bitch music, and figure out who the fuck I need to destroy. Because between my sobs of grief, flickers of white-hot rage vibrate inside my body.

Someone’s going to pay for this.

But first, I need to cry. I wish my bestie was here to hold the fractured pieces of me together, but I can’t call her.

Not until I’m somewhere safe. I know Eabha.

She’ll race round here with her hair on fire, not a single thought for her safety.

I refuse to put anyone else in danger. When I reach Uncle Barry’s place, I’ll call her then.

When my five-minute timer goes off, it’s not nearly enough. But it has to be.

I find my backpack and give it a once-over. With my cards not working, I grab the extra cash from my family’s bags and swipe the passports from my brothers—we look similar enough that I can cut my hair and pass for them in a pinch.

That’s a hundred and fifty thousand euros.

It’ll keep me going for long enough to figure out how to get my cards replaced.

Hopefully Da wasn’t so vengeful against Cathal that he refused to provide for him in case of an emergency like this, but I can’t count on that right now.

I need to figure out a way to access the cash in his accounts and front-load Cathal’s care, too.

I tuck some money into my bra, and my shoe, in case I somehow get separated from my bag.

Be prepared for anything. Only pack what you can carry. Da’s voice is as clear in my mind as the bells pealing on a Sunday morning at the parish church. There’s a temptation to pack a suitcase, to go upstairs and take all my earthly belongings, but I can’t.

One, that would take precious time I might not have. I need to lie down, and soon, which means getting the hell out of this haunted house of horrors.

Two, if whoever killed my family hunts me down, traveling lighter is better.

And three, my body hurts so bad, I’m not sure even sheer determination could pull that damn shoe collection behind me in a suitcase. Instead, I grab Tiernan’s gun and some extra ammo even though I have no fucking clue how to use it. I hope it’s a point-and-shoot kind of deal or I’m screwed.

If I’m trying to stay under the radar, there’s no use in driving something flashy. According to Tiernan, Mammy made sure Da’s midlife crisis didn’t take over the family’s car collection entirely before she died. Apparently, his taste went a little off the wall after she passed.

I try Uncle Barry’s phone while I stew over the remaining car keys on the hooks next to the door.

When he doesn’t answer, a warning pings deep in my brain, but I push it down.

It’s a coincidence, not correlation. He’s busy, or sleeping, or eating, or doing thirteen million other things that means he can’t come to the phone right now.

Hell, maybe he left the phone he loves-to-hate out in the pig pen again.

Aunt Hazel’s phone rings off as well, and I leave her a message telling her I’ll be leaving Leixlip shortly and heading their way as soon as I can.

It’s a five-hour drive to their house, so I grab a second bag full of snacks and drinks from the kitchen, settle on a comfortable, fully fueled Audi A4, snatch the key, and take one last look around my childhood home.

Tears threaten again, but I shake my head. I don’t have time for grief. I don’t have time for anything but getting to safety, regrouping, and exacting revenge.

I have plenty of time for that.

Steeling my spine, I loosen my shoulders and slip the backpack strap on my shoulder before picking up the grocery bag of food. I refuse to make two trips to the car, even when I’m injured.

With one last, shaky breath, I pull open the door. The snack supply drops to my feet on a gasp.

A man stands on my porch. He has a face like thunder, and he’s clearly not here for a social call. His arm is outstretched and steady, his eyes cold, hard and fixed on me.

His hand is wrapped around the grip of a gun.

And it’s pointed right at me.