Jeopardy
The smell of vanilla and sugar filled the kitchen, warm and sweet, teasing Daniel’s nose as he cradled the mixing bowl.
Jack would be home in time for his birthday, and while he didn’t want a big party, he wouldn’t turn down Daniel’s Black Forest Gateau.
Not when Daniel’s secret ingredient was a bowl of cognac-soaked morello cherries.
He gave the vanilla cream another stir, mind on the two rounds of chocolate sponge cooling on the rack—
Glass shattered.
The alarm blared.
Not a smoke alarm. Not the oven timer. The alarm.
Its shriek sliced through the house, shrill enough to make his teeth hurt. Daniel flinched, heart slamming against his ribs. Bowl forgotten. Hands frozen. Comfort and sense of safety evaporated in an instant.
Nico.
He moved like an automaton. Don’t panic, but don’t stop. His feet skidded on the tile as he bolted for the hallway.
“Nico!”
No answer.
He took the stairs two at a time, the step in the middle creaking like it always did—too loud, but he couldn’t worry about that now.
“Nico!”
The door to the workroom flew open. “Is that—?”
“I heard glass breaking. Then the alarm. Someone’s trying to get in.”
“Upstairs. Now.”
Daniel raced ahead, while Nico locked the workroom door.
A locked door is a lure. And people are nosy.
He held the bedroom door for Nico, slammed it shut as soon as they were both inside, and shot the bolts. One, two, top and bottom. Behind him, Nico had loosened the latches, and together they swung the bookcase across the doorway just as they’d practised.
There. Safe.
“You think it’s real? Someone breaking in?”
They hugged each other. Daniel’s heart was trying to hammer its way out of his chest, and he struggled to breathe. “Gareth. We need to call Gareth.”
“Yeah.” Nico reached into the front of his hoodie. “Oh, shit!”
“What?”
“Where’s your phone? Mine’s in the workroom, with our damned headsets.”
Daniel started shaking.
His phone.
His phone was in the kitchen. Sitting on the counter beside the slabs of chocolate sponge. Stupid. He never forgot his phone.
Panic clogged his throat, made it hard to breathe.
Don’t panic. Don’t stop. Get upstairs. Lock the door. Call us.
“Give me a hand!” Nico was pulling at the bookcase, but even with the pivot, it needed them both to move it. “Daniel!”
Daniel stared. “What are you doing? We can’t open the door.”
“We need our phones and the headsets.”
“You cannot take the stairs. They’ll hear you.
” He pushed against the bookcase, even as Nico pulled.
This was his fault. He was so stupid. He hadn’t stuck to the rules.
Like at the deli. Feeling watched and telling only Nico.
This was all his fault. Because he hadn’t…
hadn’t told anyone. He couldn’t let Nico go down the stairs. He’d lose him. Lose Nico and then—
“Daniel!”
“What?”
Nico had the window half open. “I’m getting our headsets.”
Daniel stared at the bookshelf barring the door, then back at Nico with his fingers tight around the rope ladder. He remembered the grim tone of Nico bracing himself to step in front of Daniel.
“Nico…. Don’t. Don’t leave me.”
“I’ll only be a moment. We need the headsets.” He dropped the ladder and straddled the windowsill. “Pull up the monitor. Gareth will need to know what we’re dealing with. We can give him intel.”
He disappeared down the ladder, leaving Daniel alone. The urge to hide clawed at him, but he ignored it. He might have forgotten his phone, but Nico was getting their headsets. Gareth… Gareth would be at the other end. And Jack was coming home.
Daniel headed to the corner to turn on the monitor and caught a waft of sugar and vanilla as he moved. It eased the shaking by a tiny bit.
Nico didn’t bother to push the window all the way open before he jumped through, rolling to his knees. His phone was on his desk, where he’d been working. He didn’t need it, not when they wore the headsets, but he grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket. Now where…
There. On the side table where they usually left them. Nico crammed the bud into his ear. “Gareth!”
“Fucking finally! Are you okay? What’s happening?”
The brisk, no-nonsense tone steadied Nico’s nerves.
“Glass shattered. Then the alarm went off.” Nico grabbed the ladder and swung out of the window as they’d practised.
He’d thought it fun at the time, showing off their escape route to deliver chocolates, and had rolled his eyes when Jack and Gareth had made them climb in and out of the house over and over and over again for the next week.
He knew why now. His hands and feet moved with no need for direction, and he could keep talking while he climbed.
“There’s a car in the drive. Like… a black SUV. ”
“Where are you and where is Daniel?”
“In our bedroom.”
“Why are you gasping? Are you hurt?”
“No. I… We forgot our headsets in the workroom. I just… I just got them.”
“Good lad. Pull up the ladder and close the window almost all the way.”
Nico crawled across the windowsill and did as he was told. When he turned, he froze. Daniel was curled up in the farthest corner of the bed, back to the wall, and arms wrapped around his updrawn knees.
“Daniel. Daniel, what is it?”
“It’s him.”
Nico turned and stared at the TV screen on the wall, which showed two strangers in their home.
The surveillance cameras Jack had dotted around the house were top-shelf kit, and the men’s faces were sharp and in focus.
Even if he’d wanted to, Nico couldn’t persuade himself these two were only random thieves who’d got lucky.
“Nico. Talk to me.”
“Two men. From Goran.”
“What?”
Nico kept talking. It was that or throwing up. They’d watched Daniel. Maybe followed him home. They’d found them. “The guy in the red baseball cap is Goran’s brother. He… he had a thing for Daniel.”
“Did you grab both headsets?”
“Yes.”
“Get Daniel to wear his.”
Nico crawled onto the bed and pushed the earpiece into Daniel’s ear.
“Listen to me,” Gareth’s voice came across the line. “We’re almost there. Don’t panic now. They won’t get you. Not ever. Get up to the roof as you’ve practised. If the police get there first, get their attention and take the ladder down once they’ve seen you. Do you hear me?”
Daniel didn’t make a sound. He trembled and his eyes were wide and dark with fear. Nico knee-walked around him, blocking Daniel’s view of the screen. Then he put his arms around Daniel and hugged him tight. “Let’s get up on the roof,” he urged. “If they only find empty rooms, they’ll leave.”
Daniel didn’t respond, and Nico shook him a little. “Daniel. Come on. Let’s run.”
Daniel’s lips moved. Nico felt the movement against his neck, but he couldn’t hear any sound. “Daniel?”
“Incapacitate and run.” Daniel repeated the mantra Jack and Gareth had taught them over and over, as if it would help steady him. “Incapacitate and run.”
Nico tightened his arms around Daniel, fear churning hot in his belly.
“Not this time.” He didn’t want either man close to him, and he was sure Daniel felt the same way.
“If you can’t handle something, it’s perfectly fine to remove yourself from the situation,” he quoted Jack.
“Come on, Daniel, let’s go. Jack would hate it if we just sat here and waited for them. ”
That made Daniel raise his head. “Jack’s on the way home.”
“So are Aidan and I,” Gareth’s voice sounded rough and growly in their headsets, and Nico got goosebumps at the sound. “I don’t want you in the house when I get there. Get up on that fucking roof right now!”
Daniel shot upright as if the profanities had flicked a switch. Gareth never swore. And he never used that voice.
Nico was just glad it got them moving.
He pulled Daniel off the bed, opened the window, and reached for the ladder that led to the roof. “Go,” he urged. “Quickly.”
Daniel was half out of the window when he turned. “You’re coming with me?”
“Of course I’m coming with you. Go.”
Daniel went first. Nico stepped over the windowsill and onto the ladder. Holding tight, he bent and pulled the sash window nearly all the way down. Then he grabbed the rungs and climbed.
Daniel waited for him on the edge of the roof and together they hauled up the ladder so nobody could follow them.
They had another exit on the other side of the house, a ladder that reached all the way to the ground, but Nico wouldn’t drop that one until it was safe.
He grabbed Daniel’s hand and towed him into the shade of the wide chimney.
“We’re up,” he said, as they hunkered against the brick, invisible from the ground.
“Good,” Gareth replied, still with that growly edge to his voice. “Stay there. Keep low and quiet, whatever you hear. I’m just coming off the roundabout.”
The black SUV with its tinted windows fouling up his driveway pissed Gareth off. He pulled up behind it, blocking its escape. Then he took a knife to the tyres. Whoever the enemy was, they wouldn’t be leaving under their own steam.
Aidan’s black Jag screamed around the corner as Gareth slashed the last of the tyres.
“Aidan’s here and we’re coming in,” he told the boys. “Don’t worry about any noises you hear. Don’t come down until I tell you, okay?”
He waited for the confirmation, then turned to Aidan. “Two intruders. The one in the red cap is Mitrovic’s brother.”
“How the fuck did they— Not important right now. Cavalry is on the way. Split or stay together?” Aidan brandished a tyre iron and eyed the front door.
“Stay together. They went in through the back. The boys heard glass breaking.”
They rounded the side of the house and found the backdoor forced and glass all over the back hallway. “Jack will be so pissed when he sees that.”
“That the door he had to fix before?”
“Yep.” Gareth slipped into the utility room and waved Aidan in after him. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.” He opened a cupboard door, revealing a monitor cycling footage from the home’s security system.
“There.” Aidan pointed to the image showing the main hallway. “Coming down or going up?”
“Don’t care,” Gareth growled. “They’re in the wrong fucking place.”
“Yes.” Aidan hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. “But now they’re coming to us.” The scuffle of feet on tiled floors bore him out.
“Good for us. Shit for them.” Gareth pointed to himself, then the door on the other side of the hallway.
Aidan nodded, and Gareth disappeared, images of body bags flashing through his mind. He couldn’t go that far and knew it, but the thought was soothing.
Goran Mitrovic’s brother was as tall as Aidan. A bruiser with heavy muscles, a mean mouth, and meaner eyes. Aidan stepped from the utility room and smashed the tyre iron into his back. The man stumbled, and Aidan was on him, landing punches.
Gareth wasn’t far behind. He lunged at the second intruder, a shorter man, but no less broad.
His opponent spun, threw a punch—and missed.
Gareth was already inside his defences, gripping the man’s wrist like iron cuffs, slamming his fist into the wall.
He forced him to the ground, his knee pressing into the man’s back as he yanked his arms behind him.
“You’re not getting your hands on my kids,” Gareth hissed through clenched teeth.
The man grunted in Gareth’s hold, then twisted to sneer over his shoulder. His grin showed a broken tooth. “Already did, man. Already did.”
Gareth pulled him up and hit him. Then hit him again. “No one touches my family.”
“Flynn. Don’t kill him.”
Gareth took a step back. The man at his feet moaned and tried to curl out of the way. Gareth stopped the movement by planting a boot on his chest. “Don’t worry. I’m not that merciful.” If rumours were true, child rapists didn’t thrive in jail.
“Horwood’s rubbing off on you.”
“I don’t see your opponent faring any better.
” Aidan was making quick, thorough work with a handful of zip ties, and he wasn’t gentle.
“In fact, he’s bleeding rather more than this one here.
Which is a shame. Maybe I should drop my knife and accidentally castrate him…
” He grinned at the choked-off noise coming from Aidan’s direction.
“In self-defence, of course. I expect you to get that point across to the jury.”
“I’d rather join you in the dock,” Aidan growled as he straightened. “It would be more satisfying.”
The sudden silence was disconcerting, though the adrenaline rush eased as Gareth stared at the squirming man at his feet. The urge to let the knife slip from his fingers and do damage was strong.
“Here.” A rag sailed towards him, and he plucked it from the air. “Better clean up before we call the boys down from the roof. They’ll be rattled enough.”
Aidan’s opponent was the source of most of the gore, while Aidan had remained near spotless. If he tidied his hair back into its customary tail, he’d be fit for polite company, while Gareth was a blood-spattered mess, as if he’d dished out the violence he’d only contemplated.
“Gareth?”
“All clear, Nico,” Gareth soothed the breathless question immediately. He snagged a hoodie from the coat rack by the door and zipped it to his throat, hiding his gory T-shirt. “You can come down if you want.”
“We’ll stay on the roof,” Nico answered after a long moment. “Will you call the police?”
“They’re on the way,” Aidan cut in. “Any alarm from here goes straight to them, remember?”
Gareth listened with half an ear while he surveyed the mess in the back hallway.
Blood spattered the walls, glass crunched underfoot, and Gareth groaned.
“Jack will have a fit when he sees the back door. Maybe I should get a carpenter in here on the double.” Then a fresh surge of adrenaline hit him.
“Shit! Jack’s flight is about to land. He’ll go ape when he turns his phone back on.
Daniel, Nico—keep calling Jack’s mobile.
Make sure you get through to him before he can read his messages. ”
“We can auto-dial him,” Nico said, and Gareth sighed in relief when he heard Daniel’s voice, too.
“Do it. Anything to make sure he doesn’t get himself arrested.”
A wail of sirens rent the air, and Aidan stepped outside to welcome the arriving officers.
Gareth didn’t move from his vigil. Despite the shattered door and the two trussed-up men at his feet, the house felt oddly peaceful and safe, as if he hadn’t just been taught—again—that safety was an illusion.