“As I was driving towards you, I saw the big guy go nuts on everyone and start shooting like a maniac. I saw you standing only a few feet away. You were exposed.”
“So…”
I trail off as the memory is forced to the surface.
I remember the way the car had lurched and bucked as I hit his body.
The way he flopped like a fish out of water, as if he had no bones at all.
The sound his neck made when it cracked.
Cillian puts his hand on my shoulder and I cringe instinctively, still deep in the memory. “Sorry,” I stammer, “I just…”
“I know,” Cillian replies. “The first kill is always hard.”
“First and last,” I insist. “I didn’t even mean to kill him. I just wanted to stop him.”
“Sometimes, one thing requires the other.”
I shake my head. “What happened after that?”
“My men managed to take care of the rest of the Kinahans. After you crashed into the shooter, they were on the run anyway. Once those loose ends were tied up, my men got into their vehicle and drove to another safehouse. I brought you here.”
“Here,” I repeat, looking around in awe. “Where exactly is that?”
He smiles at the expression on my face. “We’re in Crannagogue.”
“Crannagogue,” I repeat. “Why does that sound familiar? And why does it look like a castle?”
He smiles. “Well, I suppose it kinda is a castle.”
My eyes go wide with shock. “You brought me to a literal castle?”
“Something like that,” he says with a nonchalant shrug.
“Don’t you think you’re taking this whole ‘knight in shining armor’ thing a little too seriously?”
He bursts into laughter. At the sound of it, I feel the tension I didn’t know I was still carrying in my shoulders release a little.
“Actually, you were the knight in shining armor in this case,” he points out. “You did save me back there, Saoirse. Even though you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“I couldn’t just sit around and wait for you to come back,” I tell him. “I feel like I’ve spent my entire life waiting...”
He raises his eyebrows as though waiting for me to explain that.
But I don’t. I’m not entirely sure I should have said it in the first place.
“You could have been killed,” he says when I trail off.
I shrug. “Death doesn’t really scare me.”
“Maybe not. But your death scares me,” he says. “And not very many things do.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything at all.
“Why’d you bring me here?” I ask instead.
He shrugs. “Because we’ll be safe here. Because we need to lie low for a while. And because it’s beautiful.”