Chapter 33 – Rook
ROOK
T he completely destroyed rose garden out front of Diesel’s house told us three things.
That they were still out there. Waiting.
That Carson was furious.
And that he wasn’t through with us.
The bastard couldn’t help himself, he had to take the one thing our father had left of his wife.
He knew where to hit him to inflict the most damage outside of killing us, and he didn’t waste his chance.
With all of us busy between Sanctum, the hospital, and the Crow’s Nest, Diesel’s place had been left almost entirely open to attack.
All he’d had to do was cut the power to the street and there was no evidence of his presence. No video footage. Nothing.
It was an act carried out in spite. He wanted to scare us, but all he’d managed to do was piss us off even more.
Ghost nudged me in the backseat of the Rover, the moonlight shining on her face revealing a soft, sympathetic smile.
It’d been like pulling teeth dragging her away from her friend in the hospital to come with us for the heist. She’d only come at all because we left half the Saints that’d been with us there to guard her friend.
Despite her father’s loud ass protests when he finally arrived a few hours ago.
They’d made themselves scarce, but they were under strict orders from my Ghost herself not to leave the second floor and cover all points of entry at all times.
It didn’t surprise me that they’d taken her orders without question. My Ghost was born to lead.
“How’s Diesel?” she asked, breaking the tepid silence in the Rover. She’d been in the shower when we got the call, and I was glad she didn’t have to hear his explosion when Corv put the call on speakerphone. Distraught wasn’t the right word. He was rattled. Broken. Breathing fucking fire.
“Not good, Sparrow,” Corvus answered honestly from the front seat, his head propped up by his fist against the window. “Not good at all. It was all he had left of her. I’ve never heard him so…” He trailed off, his voice shaky.
“Is there anything we can do?” she asked, leaning forward in her seat. “There has to be something salvageable. Maybe we can replant it and?—”
“It’s done, AJ,” Grey interjected, flicking his hard stare to her in the rearview. “Dies said there was nothing that could be saved.”
I shifted in my seat, fucking hating how some ruined flowers planted for a woman I’d never even met could make me absolutely feral, ravenous for blood.
Or maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t had anyone to punish for their sins in far too long.
I told myself I was just saving it all up for one person who would be punished far beyond anything I’d ever accomplished before.
His anguish would be music to my fucking ears. I couldn’t wait to smell his fear. Watch him bleed. Hear him fucking beg. I sucked in a breath and the air rattled in the empty vestiges of my chest.
I needed a fucking cigarette.
When I took out the pack, Ghost stole one from the stack, putting it between her lips.
Not more than a second after she had it there Corvus was reaching back between the seats to snatch it out of her mouth. He rolled down the window and chucked it out. “You’re not starting that shit. It’s bad enough he still smokes.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be groveling?” she asked, a dangerous lilt to her tone.
“I draw the line at letting you give yourself fucking cancer.”
“Oh, but for Rook, it’s totally fine?”
I smirked as I lit my cigarette, rolling down my window to blow smoke out into the night.
“You try making Rook do something he doesn’t want to do,” Corvus said lazily, going back to leaning against the window. “Call me when you succeed.”
Ava Jade rolled her tongue over her teeth, sitting back in her seat to cross her arms. I knew if she didn’t agree with him, she would’ve just taken another. But there was nothing like my tobacco mix to take the edge off a hard fucking day.
I took a long pull, holding the smoke in my mouth, and leaned over to her, kissing away the scowl on her lips. I blew the smoke into her mouth and she inhaled, her body pressing up against mine.
She blew it out with a haughty look in Corvus’ direction, but my brother just rolled his eyes in the side view mirror before giving me a pointed, warning stare I knew to take seriously.
He’d let me poison myself all I wanted, but he would have my ass if I let her get addicted to this shit.
I rubbed out the smoke between my fingers and dropped the dead butt into the pack with the others.
“So these eggs,” I started casually, trying to forget about ruined roses and just enjoy the night.
We hadn’t had to pull off a heist in a while, and even though this shit was about as low key as it got, it was still making me hard thinking I’d get to do it with my Ghost at my side. “Do we know where all of them are?”
Ghost nodded. “I clocked each one the first night I spent there. There’s four upstairs in the hallways and my aunt’s bedroom. Another five on the main floor. One in the foyer. One in the dining room. One in the living room. Another in the drawing room, and one in the sitting room.”
“What’s the fucking difference?” Grey asked. “Between a living room and a sitting room and a—what was it?— drawing room? Isn’t that all the same shit?”
“Rich people shit,” Ghost said with a shrug. “Don’t even bother trying to understand it.”
Up ahead, the rich bitch’s estate sprawled in rolling hills of gated off green, the mansion itself still hidden in the hills.
“Switch,” Grey announced, pulling off to the side of the road so he and Corvus could swap seats.
The convoy behind us slowed, pulled off as well.
It was less than the contingent of Saints that Diesel wanted with us, but I had to agree with my Ghost. Becca needed just as much protection as we did. Maybe more.
Thanks to her we now knew of the existence of a ‘factory.’ Carson mentioned it to Becca a few times, and she’d figured it was just a story he concocted.
Another lie. But there was detail there.
He said he’d needed to meet his leader there not once, but three times during the time they were “dating,” probably to get out of spending any more time with her than he needed to.
There must be at least a hundred factories in between here and Lodi, but Grey was already looking into every single one.
Open and operating. Shut down. It didn’t matter.
If it was a place where shit was made, he was finding the name on the lease, looking for any cracks in the facade.
With any luck, by the time we secured our new firepower, we’d have them by the balls.
Grey opened his laptop in the passenger seat, tapping keys as Corvus pulled away from the road. “I just need to get within range. Pull up another mile, but stay out of sight of the cameras at the main gate.”
Corvus grunted in reply as Grey rolled down his window and held a black box with an antenna outside, his hair blowing in the wind. There was silence for a minute before Grey said, “I’ve got it. Pull over.”
He continued to hold the device with one hand and tapped away at the keys on his laptop with the other. My Ghost peered curiously over the seat, watching with squinty eyes. “How did you learn how to do this?” she asked.
Grey took a second to respond. “Trial and error. One of us needed to know how to hack and these two were both way too impatient to learn.”
“Hey, man, I tried,” I argued weakly.
“Yeah, two broken laptops later…”
“I said I tried. Didn’t say I succeeded.”
“What about you?” Ghost asked Corvus.
“No broken laptops. My talents were better put to use elsewhere.”
“Like singing to yourself in your closet?” Grey asked with a playful lilt, tapping the final key with a loud stab that I knew meant he had cracked the coding.
“Fuck you.” Corvus elbowed him.
I laughed, but Ghost was frowning. “Have you called Max back yet?” she asked seriously as Grey announced he was in.
Corv scratched the scars forming at the back of his skull. “No, but I will. When this is over.”
“Okay that should be enough footage to loop,” Grey said, mostly to himself as he did whatever magic he did to make it look to Old Lady Humphrey’s cameras as though we were never here.
“Take us to the gate, Corv.”
The other Saints pulled ahead to the service road down the way as we turned up the short stretch to the main gate. They’d wait there, tucked away in case we needed backup, until it was time to make our getaway.
Grey stepped out of the Rover and attached a small screened device to a port on the back of the big silver box with the number keys. It took him less than twenty seconds before an electronic horn sounded and the gates slowly swung inward.
Pleased with himself, he slipped back into the passenger seat. “Now it’s just the home security and we’re good.”
“Like your new toy?” Ghost asked him as my brother practically stroked his new brick-like device like it was a newborn babe.
“I’ve always wanted one of these,” he muttered.
She gave him a playful shove. “You’re such a nerd.”
He laughed and Corvus killed the headlights as we crept up to the imposing mansion.
“It’s so dark,” she said, her brows furrowing.
Corvus pulled down the narrow road that led to the caretaker’s shed and the vegetable gardens on the east lawn, parking between the hedges.
“You think something’s up?” I asked Ghost.
She lifted a shoulder. “Don’t know. It’s just, even in the middle of the night, there were always a few lights on. You know, the staff getting things ready for the next day. Cleaning and all that. My aunt hated them puttering around her during the day so she had them all work at night.”
“She’s a real piece of work,” Grey sighed, gathering his new device into a black bag as he stepped out into the night air. Ghost and I followed, going around to the trunk to collect the duffles filled with packing foam to protect the eggs once we had them.
Ghost pulled on a pair of tight fitting leather gloves and flexed her fingers.