“The backup generator kicked in,” Will explained. “They obviously didn’t know about it.”
Backup generators and safe rooms weren’t a part of any home I’d ever been in before. “You have an impressive setup here. Do things like this happen a lot?”
Emily shook her head. “No, we’ve never been attacked at home before.”
“But you have been attacked?”
“I haven’t.” Emily glanced at Will, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Clearly, this wasn’t a line of conversation he was going to allow.
As I scanned the security monitors, something caught my eye. I sat forward as the front door opened. Expecting Ciaran, I was surprised to see a young woman with long brown hair coming into the house.
“Who’s that?” I asked, nodding toward the monitor.
“Shit!” Will slapped his hand against the wall. “What the fuck is Erin doing here?”
Emily groaned. “She said she wanted to meet Annie. I didn’t think she’d just show up here without telling anyone.”
“Fuck! Where’s Vincent? He’s not meant to leave her side.”
“She probably gave him the slip. You know how she feels about being shadowed.”
We all watched on screen as Erin got down on the floor and crawled under the hall table. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but when she emerged, she had a gun in her hand.
“What’s she doing?” I asked.
“She must know there’s someone in the house,” Will replied. “She needs to go and hide.”
Unfortunately, that’s not what she did. She crept along the corridor, peering through open doors as she went. My heart almost stopped as she reached the kitchen, where one man was searching for us. Erin raised her gun. I held my breath as she fired, and the man went down.
“Now come down here, sweetheart,” Emily murmured. “Come on.”
Erin hurried across the room, but before she could reach the pantry, two men came into the kitchen. Ciaran’s youngest sister spun around, her gun raised. When the other three intruders arrived, Erin’s shoulders sagged, and she dropped the gun. One man crossed the kitchen, grabbed her, and forced her to her knees.
“I know him.” I recognized the stocky redhead as one of the men who’d brought me to Ciaran’s apartment the other day.
“Mike Bannon.” Will spat out the name. “Fucking traitor!”
“I wish we could hear what they were saying.” I hated that their lips were moving but I couldn’t make out a word.
“We can.” Will pressed a button at the bottom of the security monitor for the kitchen and sound came on.
“Come on, princess,” an ugly brute with a receding hairline and a large paunch at his waist said. “Tell us where your useless brother and the little whore are hiding.”
“That’s Danny Mulhearn,” Emily whispered.
Why had she lowered her voice? “Can they hear us?”
“No. I’m just….” Emily threw her hands up. “I don’t know.”
“It’ll be okay. She’ll be okay.” Will tried to reassure himself more than us. “Ciaran will be here soon.”
“Can he see what’s happening?”
Will nodded. “Yeah, he can access the cameras on his phone. He’ll have eyes on everything.”
“Where is she?” Mulhearn demanded when Erin stared defiantly at him. Of all the siblings, she looked the most like Ciaran. She had the same long straight nose and bow lips. “Where has William taken her?”
A thought occurred to me. I turned to Emily. “They don’t know you’re here. They think Erin’s you.”