Midnight Captive Read Free Page B

Rabbit’s employ, but they’d parted on good terms—the old man had helped Sean and his twin get their network off the ground, for Christ’s sake.
    Well, fuck him. Sean was officially done with that fanatic motherfucker. Rabbit had all but stomped his foot on their former relationship and ground it into dust, making it painfully clear what the Reilly brothers meant to him.
    Absolutely nothing.
    “I’m not going to hurt you,” Sean said through clenched teeth. “I’m just pointing out that if you’d simply handed over your phone when we asked, you wouldn’t have drawn any unwanted attention to yourself.”
    “I’m sorry,” the girl whispered again.
    “What’s your name, luv?”
    She hiccuped softly. “Maggie.”
    “Listen to me, Maggie. Nobody else is going to get hurt, not as long as you do what we say. It’ll all be over soon.”
    He hoped that was true. The in-and-out heist he’d signed up for had turned into a deadly hostage situation, and it would turn into something much worse if the ERU decided to launch a full-scale assault.
    They’d been trapped inside the bank for an hour, and the hairs on the back of Sean’s neck hadn’t stopped tingling since the response unit had arrived. He knew bloody well there was a rifle trained on his head. Probably an outdated Steyr SSG 69, the ERU’s weapon of choice.
    Come to think of it, Bailey occasionally used a Steyr too. Or at least she had that time he’d tracked her to Germany. He doubted she ever used the same weapon twice, though. That would mean giving law enforcement a routine, a calling card, and the woman was too damn smart to leave a trail.
    But now was
not
the time to be thinking about Bailey, goddamn it.
    “Delta.”
    The sharp address came from Gallagher, whose expression had gone dark, deadly.
    Sean stared at the man’s masked face and cocked his head in question.
    “Leave the bitch alone and do your job,” was the brusque response.
    He rose to his full height, offering Maggie a reassuring pat on the shoulder before turning to monitor the status of the other hostages. There were fifteen of them, sitting on the floor against the counter like a group of preschoolers. More females than males, ranging from early twenties to late sixties. The bank’s security guard sat at the end of the line, clad in his crisp blue uniform. Unfortunately for him, that uniform hadn’t come with a weapon, which was something the man was no doubt cursing at the moment.
    Satisfied that his charges were behaving, Sean marched across the tiled floor toward his “leader”—Rhys Gallagher, former Irish army special ops, current Irish Dagger lieutenant, and one of Rabbit’s most trusted enforcers. Sean and his brother had grown up not only with Gallagher, but also with the other four men situated throughout the bank, but while the twins had left Ireland for bigger and better things, the others had stuck around to serve Rabbit, who’d been a mentor to all the boys.
    Some bloody mentor he was to them now, keeping Ollie hostage and forcing Sean to do his dirty work.
    Sean approached Gallagher and addressed him in a low voice. “We need to talk.”
    The man nodded at Joe Murray to take his place, then stalked into the corridor with Sean on his tail. They paused when they were out of sight and earshot of the others.
    Sean promptly peeled off his black wool balaclava and rubbed his face with both hands. The mask had beenitching the shit out of him. “Look. We got what we came for,” he announced. “It’s time to get the hell outta here.”
    “No shit,” the other man snapped. “But in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a real fucking jam at the moment.”
    They sure were, and all so Eamon O’Hare could get his hands on the flash drive burning a hole in Gallagher’s back pocket. Rabbit had instructed Sean to be present when the men breached the vault where the safe-deposit boxes were stored. The Irish Dagger leader was paranoid that a mole had infiltrated his