Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
ALEX
I’d known this was coming for weeks. Despite Ciara’s wishes, we couldn’t keep her brother in the dark forever, and if the forbidding scowl on his face was anything to go by, someone had certainly clued him in.
Ewan stalked into the room. “Do you lot want to tell me why, exactly, that not a single one of you saw fit to tell me that not only was my sister was being stalked, but someone tried to fucking kill her?”
Not cowed in the least by his thunder, Ciara stepped in front of all of us. “Because I asked them not to. Who finally told you?”
Ewan’s hands were curled into fists. “Mum and Da. They called last night to tell me that your stalker had been arrested after assaulting you.”
“Did they mention that all your training held up, and that I handed Brodie his arse? Because I can assure you, he got the worse end of that fight.”
“Do you think that makes it better?” I recognized that low, lethal tone and knew to tread carefully.
Whether out of ignorance or the simple foolhardiness of being a younger sibling, Ciara didn’t back down an inch. “I didn’t want you handling it.”
“Oh, but you could go to him?” He jerked a chin at me, along with a narrowed gaze that told me his parents had mentioned that my role in her life was more than simple bodyguard.
Isobel managed to get through the door, Havoc effectively glued to her side. “Ewan, we talked about this.”
He only growled in response.
Time for me to step up. “I handled the situation.”
“Is that what you handled?”
Ciara got in her brother’s face. “Don’t you bloody well dare, Ewan McBride. I am a grown adult woman who can make her own choices. Alex is one of your best friends, and prior to this, you’d have said one of the best men you know. You can’t have it both ways, brother. You can’t decide he’s somehow not good enough for me when he’s put his life on the line to protect me for weeks.”
“Ciara, stand down,” I murmured.
The glare she turned on me was a twin of her brother’s. I’d handle that later. Ewan was the bigger problem just now.
“A private word.”
“Fine.” Ewan ground out the word as if he were imagining my bones.
We stepped out the front and circled around to the side of the building, into the trees, so we wouldn’t offer a front-row view to any passersby.
“Sitrep,” Ewan demanded.
Out of long habit, I delivered my report regarding Drummond, as brief and to the point as I’d been trained.
“You’re involved with my sister.”
“Aye.”
I braced myself for some sort of lecture about getting involved with the target of my protective detail. Which, frankly, would have been a little pot calling the kettle black, considering how he and Isobel had gotten together, but I knew well enough I ought to keep that to myself.
He chewed on that for a bit, studying me. “This isn’t just the past few weeks.”
That observation shook me out of the just-the-facts calm. But I didn’t want to lie. “We didn’t just meet when I moved up here, no.”
“Thought so.”
“What gave it away?”
“My sister’s an open, friendly sort. But I saw you two arguing the night Isobel and I left. Isobel insisted it was nothing I needed to get involved in, so I let it go. But it’s been niggling at me all this time.” He folded his arms. “Ciara was Edinburgh. The one you were all set to change your whole life for.”
I’d wondered if he’d remember that. I’d been full of hope, with stars in my bloody eyes when I’d gotten up here after meeting her, and though I hadn’t mentioned her name, I’d talked about making big changes to my life.
“Aye.”
“You didn’t change your life back then.” Some of the animosity was gone from his tone.
“No. I made a choice. Perhaps the wrong one. But I had the opportunity to go after the men who ended my career. I didn’t want any of that to spill over onto her. And despite my best efforts, it looks like it has anyway.”
“Explain.”
So I told him what I could without breaking confidentiality, all the way up through the bombshell Constable Williamson had just dropped.
Ewan listened without interruption until I’d finished. “You dinna think it’s over.”
He’d known me too many years not to be able to read me. “No. My handler thinks I’m being paranoid. The evidence seems to support this version of events. But my gut tells me Drummond wouldn’t have done this. To me, maybe. Not to her. I can’t stop thinking about what he said before we left the police station. That she’d pushed him too far. He was clearly speaking to Ciara. But she hasn’t done a damned thing to push him at all. She’s gone out of her way to avoid him.”
“Could be he sees her moving on with you as designed to get back at him.”
“Maybe. But what if there was someone else somehow manipulating him, making him believe it was Ciara? He’s no’ a particularly smart guy. He’d have been easy to manipulate.”
“Have you uncovered anything to support that in your digging?”
When I went brows up, he just smirked. “I know you, mate. If you didnae build a full dossier on this wankstain, I’ll be verra disappointed.”
It was my turn to smirk. “Okay, aye, I went digging. I found a lot of evidence of obsessive behavior, but nothing that would back up my theory.”
“But you think there’s something else there.”
“I could only access so much remotely. I’d need direct physical access to both of his computers—at home and at work, to go further. Not to mention the chance to search his place in case there’s physical evidence of some sort.”
“That should be easy enough to arrange between the four of us.”
“Just a wee bit of casual breaking and entering as a bonding exercise?”
Ewan grinned at that. “Aye. Just like old times. Hopefully, with fewer bullets involved. We’ll make a plan this afternoon.”
He started to move back toward the front of the building.
“Wait. That’s all you have to say?”
“I remember how you looked when you talked about her before. You wouldn’t cross that line if you weren’t serious, so I dinna have to break your face.”
Something in his tone had my internal alarms pinging. “Did Isobel tell you that?”
Ewan’s expression was caught somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Aye. She made me promise to behave.”
A tension I’d been carrying around for years finally let loose. “If I fuck things up with her again, I’ll invite you to break my face myself.”
He extended a hand. “Deal.”