Chapter 28 - Maeve
MAEVE
“Why can’t we just send up a drone again?”
I was sitting in the back seat next to Remy while Bram navigated the Hummer up the mountain.
It was the first week of December and the landscape was beautifully bleak.
The bare branches of the maples and oaks stood in contrast to the lush greenery of the evergreens, and everything was covered in a sepia tint, the last bit of color before everything was washed pale and white with winter.
“It’s harder than it looks,” Poe said from the passenger seat next to Bram. “If it’s Todd’s house, we don’t want him to spot it. Rafe, Nolan, and Jude know all about this shit.”
“How do they know about drones?” I asked.
“Former SEALs,” Remy said. “They’ve got all the gear.”
It felt natural that he was holding my hand, which shouldn’t have been a surprise given the fact that I’d fucked him and Poe in the shower a few days before. Although fucked seemed like too mild a word for the way they’d taken total possession of my body.
I’d never done anal before, but I hadn’t thought twice when Remy had asked. I’d wanted them anywhere and everywhere I could get them and the whole experience had left me feeling like a live wire with nowhere to go.
My body had come alive under their mouths and fingers. I felt like a blind person suddenly seeing in technicolor, like a deaf person able to hear for the first time while standing in the front row of a concert.
Even the stroke of Remy’s thumb on my hand was enough to set my body humming.
We’d fallen back into our old routines. I did most of the cooking in between my shifts at Lushberry while the Butchers came and went from the loft.
I’d asked them what they did for work and gotten a cryptic answer about “keeping the town running.” I wanted to know more, but we were still in a weird place: not quite friends but not enemies either.
Uneasy allies, I guessed.
I had a feeling their “work” — whatever it was — wasn’t exactly legal. The thought didn’t bother me as much as it should have. I mean, I’d tried to kill a man. Was still trying to kill that man. Who was I to judge?
We pulled onto a long drive near the top of the mountain and wound our way through thick stands of trees on either side. The place was every bit as deserted as Ethan Todd’s house, tucked away on a side street farther down the mountain.
We emerged from the tree-lined drive to a house on a knoll. Well, house was an understatement. It was an architectural masterpiece, a cabin reimagined into a sprawling wood-and-glass structure that looked right at home in the surrounding forest.
“Wow,” I said. “Nice place.”
“Don’t get Jude started on the house,” Bram grumbled. “He’ll never shut up.”
He pulled the Hummer up to the closed garage doors and we got out of the car.
I looked around as we made our way to the front door. “It’s so quiet here.”
I felt like I’d been dropped in the middle of nowhere, nothing but blue sky and birdsong and the big house looming two stories high.
Bram rang the bell and stuffed his hands into his leather jacket.
I knew he didn’t want to be here because I’d been witness to the argument about it that he’d had with Poe and Remy.
They’d wanted proof that Ethan was in the house on the mountain, but Bram had said they didn’t need proof: they’d find out when they got there.
That had sounded reckless even to me, but after a lot of back and forth I’d gathered that Bram just didn’t want to ask the man named Rafe and his friends for a favor.
I’d been glad Poe and Remy had won out in the end. I was almost positive Ethan Todd lived in the house I’d cased a few weeks before but I wasn’t willing to stake someone else’s life on it.
The door was opened not by one of the three men we’d come to see but by a girl about my age with long blonde hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She was wearing leggings and a hoodie, her feet bare despite the cold.
She looked up at Bram. “Hello! You must be the Butch… um, Bram.”
She didn’t shrink away from him exactly but I saw her clock his energy, the same darkness I’d felt the first time I’d seen him. I still felt it from time to time, but more and more he was just Bram.
He nodded.
She held out her hand. “I’m Lilah.”
He looked at her hand like it was a gesture from another civilization, then took it and gave it a shake.
“Maeve,” I said, holding out my hand to come to her rescue. I was pretty sure the Butchers hadn’t shaken anyone’s hand in a long time. Or, like, ever. “Nice to meet you.”
Poe and Remy introduced themselves and Lilah led us through a foyer, past a staircase with the kind of sleek suspension railing I’d only ever seen in magazine spreads, and into a vaulted great room.
The living area was expansive, a loft area visible on the second floor, and a fire crackled in a massive stone fireplace. The furniture was modern but warm, like a high-end lodge where you wanted to curl up with a good book and a cup of cocoa and never leave.
A modern kitchen occupied a third of the sprawling space, a rough-hewn dining table situated in front of a wall of glass that looked like it opened onto a big deck. The view dominated the room, and the surrounding trees and mountains felt almost close enough to touch.
“Wow, this is so nice,” I said.
A tall muscular man with dark hair and warm eyes stood by the sofa. “That’s all Jude.” He held out a hand. “I’m Nolan.”
“Maeve.” I shook his hand.
A blond guy sitting on the sofa stood. “Jude.”
“You built this?” I asked, looking around.
He chuckled. “Hardly. I just designed it.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Thanks.”
The men exchanged greetings but they’d obviously met before.
Nolan looked at the bandage around Bram’s arm, a product of the bullet that had grazed him when he, Poe, and Remy had gone after the Ghosts. “What happened to you?”
“Work injury,” Bram said.
Nolan nodded like it was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
“Can I get you something?” Jude asked. “Coffee? Beer?”
“I’ll take a beer,” Poe said.
Remy nodded. “Beer sounds good.”
“I’m good.” Bram looked like he was expecting a sneak attack at any minute.
Then again, Bram always looked that way: on guard, like he couldn’t let his defenses down for even a second.
I had a flash of him in the kitchen the night before I’d left. In my memory, his expression had been softer, more open, but that was probably wishful thinking.
“Maeve?”
I realized Jude was talking to me.
“I’m good.”
He went to the kitchen to get the beers and was on his way back when another man stepped into the room. He was big and muscular, with dark hair and gray eyes that seemed to clock everything in the room all at once.
This must be Rafe.
“What’s up?” He nodded at the Butchers, then headed straight for Lilah, bending to kiss her on the lips before turning to look at us again. “Sit.”
He didn’t ask who I was, but I wasn’t offended. It didn’t really matter. For better or worse, I was with the Butchers, and apparently they were the only membership card I needed in order to be here.
Rafe sat in one of the chairs by the fire and Lilah perched on the arm while the rest of us sat on the couch. There was just enough seating for us all, and I gathered Rafe and his friends didn’t do much entertaining.
I’d only just met them and already it made sense: the expensive, isolated house, their military expertise.
I read them as an army of three — four if you counted Lilah — and from the way Rafe looked at her, his arm curled possessively around her waist, I thought you had to count Lilah.
My curiosity was officially piqued. Was Lilah with Rafe? Or was she with all three of them?
“What can we do for you?” Rafe asked.
“We need a drone,” Bram said. “And someone to operate it.”
“Where?” Jude asked. “When?”
“Compound farther down the mountain,” Poe said. “As soon as possible.”
“We’ll pay your usual rate,” Bram added.
This was the only way Poe and Remy had been able to get Bram to agree to ask for help with the drone: Bram wouldn’t owe anyone any favors.
He would pay.
“This going to get us in trouble?” Nolan asked.
Remy stretched his arms across the back of the couch like he owned the place. “Does it matter?”
It was a fair question. I got the feeling trouble wasn’t something Rafe and his friends avoided.
“We like to know the risks going in,” Jude said, tipping his beer to his mouth.
“Shouldn’t get you into trouble if you stay out of sight,” Bram said.
“Who’s the target?” Rafe asked.
“Manosphere douchebag,” Remy said. “He’s from here apparently, and now he’s back.”
“Wait… is this the guy who’s involved in the trafficking thing overseas?” Jude asked. “I saw that on the news.”
“That’s the one,” Poe said.
“What are you looking for exactly?” Nolan asked. “With the drone.”
“General layout of the place, ID on the guy we’re looking for if at all possible,” Bram said.
Jude rubbed at his jaw. “You’ll want us to send it up during the day then.”
“We’ll leave that to you,” Remy said.
Nolan leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Why this guy? I know you said he’s from Blackwell, but so what?”
Bram’s jaw tightened. “Is telling you a deal-breaker?”
Nolan shook his head. “Not necessarily, but like Jude said, we like to know what we’re stepping in before we step in it.”
There was a lot of testosterone in the room, but I could tell Nolan was trying to keep things cool.
“Then let’s just say it’s better for you if you don’t know.”
“He wasn’t involved in the trafficking operation up here was he?” Jude asked.
“Why would you say that?” Bram asked.
He was always hard to read, but I thought he sounded surprised.
Jude shrugged. “The Hungary thing.”
I’d heard whispers about a trafficking ring, first from Aventine University, the college outside of town, and then with a couple of guys who’d gone to Blackwell High a long time ago.
One of them had been a hotshot real estate developer and had planned to build a resort on the mountain before he was found out.
But none of that had anything to do with Ethan Todd.
Still, I felt the scratch again, that feeling that there was something I wasn’t quite catching, a loose thread I needed to pull. I thought about the flyers I’d seen at Cassie’s Cuppa, the missing girls on the bulletin board.
“Maeve?” I looked up to find Lilah looking at me, her green eyes bright. “What is it?”
I shook my head. “I saw some flyers of missing girls on a bulletin board in town.”
Lilah’s expression darkened. “That might have been Rain.”
I nodded. “I think so. Did you know her?”
Lilah cut a glance at Nolan and Jude and I felt something private pass between them. “Not directly. But I’ve talked to her mom. She’s still looking for Rain.”
“The guy we’re looking for has only been around town for a few weeks,” Remy said.
Rafe stroked Lilah’s hip. “The trafficking thing was transnational.”
“How do you know?” Bram asked.
Rafe leveled a gaze at Bram that said he wasn’t about to say anything else and Bram gave him a tight nod.
I filed it all away to think about later.
“Can you do it?” Remy asked them. “With the drone?”
Rafe stood. “Send us the address.”