Page 32 of The Twins

“So what?” He frowned at me. “And who the fuck have you been speaking to about that?”

“Doesn’t really matter.” My finger tightened on the trigger, just a little. Any moment now, Andrew would give the signal. We had the remorseless fucker, and he’d admitted it.

Suddenly, Archie swung his hand up, grabbing Andrew’s gun. It was a slick, fast movement that ended with the gun aimed at Cillian.

“Think you’re so fucking hard, huh?” Archie's eyes flashed with madness.

Fear gripped me.

Fury stormed through my body.

I pulled the trigger.

My bullet hit Archie’s temple, spraying his brains onto the wall.

“Fuck.” Andrew caught his gun as it fell from Archie’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

Cillian swallowed, his eyes were wide.

“Hey, mate.” I squeezed his shoulder. “Come on.”

“I froze.”

“No you didn’t, I just reacted quicker.” I shoved him toward the door. “Come on.”

To my relief, he followed Andrew. I turned and grabbed the wads of cash on the bedside table—it’d come in useful in funding Rose Cottage—then I raced down the stairs.

“We gotta go before someone comes to see who’s been shot,” Andrew said, then leaped the fence, adrenaline clearly giving him a boost. “That’ll have been heard.”

Cillian and I raced outside, bandanas still in place. We didn’t go the way we’d come, we shot down an alley, leaping over an old supermarket trolley, and out toward the river.

The path was heavy with weeds, the river thick with bulrushes, and we kept our bandanas up until we saw some fishermen, then we passed them at a walk, heads turned away. Three guys wearing masks would stick in their memory, three silent walkers, not so much.

“Fucking hell,” Andrew said, “did you see the slippery bastard move?”

“Yeah, he was going to have a go, that’s for sure.”

“Asshole,” Cillian muttered.

We passed a moored boat and then a pair of swans.

“I got this, though.” I flashed one of the wads of cash.

“Good move,” Andrew said. “We owe Jamie some, he overpaid last month, and the new girl, Lizzie, was talking about doing a computer course, that will pay for that.”

“Yeah, Grant will be pleased to balance the books.”

Cillian nodded. “All in a good morning’s work, right.”

“Always when the scales of justice are balanced. That asshole didn’t deserve to live another day,” I said. “And it’s fucking fate we found out about him.”

“I agree,” Andrew said. “And the rest of Galahad will too.”

* * * *

An hour later, we were back in the kitchen at Rose Cottage. Jamie had turned up and was sitting with Phil and Grant. Jamie was the posh one of the group, private education, wealthy father, massive villas all over the place. He was a great guy, moral compass due north, well, if you didn’t count the fact he was a great hacker and happy to syphon some of Daddy’s cash our way.

Grant was a bank manager, took care of our finances, and was someone I could rely on big time when the shit hit the fan. He’d had a spat with Andrew recently, had to step up after a job went wrong, but thankfully, that seemed to be history now and he was well and truly back at the table.