Chapter 33 – Rook #2
“Masks?” she asked the others as they came around to the back.
“Grey shook his head. “Won’t need them. I’m going to shut down the whole system while we’re in.”
“Won’t that set off some warning bells?”
“Not until your aunt realizes her shit’s gone. They’ll check the footage from the security cams and find a gap in the feeds.”
“I wish I had one of you back in Lennox,” Ghost mused. “Would have made a lot of our jobs go a lot smoother.”
She’d mentioned before how she and her Dad used to run jobs together.
Conning unsuspecting shop owners and the wealthy elite.
But the reminder made me thirsty for something other than blood.
I bit my lip ring, watching her double check the placement of all her blades before nodding confidently at me, scrunching her eyes at the look I was giving her. “You ready, Rook?”
“ So ready.”
This was going to be fun.
“Let’s move,” Corvus commanded, hunching low as we circled the hedges, stealthily moving over the lawn in the moonlight to the side entrance.
The one the staff used to bring groceries into the house.
Ava Jade keyed the code into the small pad above the door handle from memory, but it chirped at her when she was finished. The light turning red.
“Shit.”
She tried again. Red light.
“Stop,” Grey said before she could enter it a third time. “You’ll have Thorn Valley PD crawling all over this place if you get it wrong three times.”
“I’m not getting it wrong,” she growled in a whisper. “That was the code.”
“Then the old bag is smarter than we gave her credit for,” Grey whispered, shuffling in front of Ava Jade to access the code panel. “She must’ve changed it after the shit show that was Thanksgiving.”
He used a flat bit of steel to carefully pry the box back, revealing a shining green panel with connected wires. He dug in his bag, connecting his device with some copper clips. “Just give me a sec.”
“Come on, come on,” Ghost repeated restlessly, bouncing from foot to foot. We had five minutes to get inside before the motion detection on the camera above our heads sent an alert to the alarm company.
“Got it,” Grey announced, detaching the device to reveal a green light.
“Move in,” Corvus urged. “We have to get to the coms room.”
We spilled into the mansion, greeted with the stagnant scent of musty old furniture made worse by the cover of expensive potpourri.
“Through here,” Ghost whispered, leading the way even though we’d gone over the location three times already. I followed her lead through the kitchens and dining room, across the marble floor in the foyer and to the little closet sized room around the dark side of the curving staircase.
Grey got to work right away, accessing the system with ease. He erased the couple minutes of footage that showed us coming up the side lawn and got ready to make it all go black.
“Can’t you loop this footage too?” Ghost asked, but Grey shook his head. “It’s an old system. Making it go dark is the best I can do.”
“Hold on,” I barked, grabbing my brother’s wrist before he could shut it all down. “Look.”
I pointed at the old bubbled screens and the fuzzy images they displayed of the mansion in darkness. There were angles of almost every room in the whole place. And there wasn’t a soul to be found in any of them.
“You don’t think she left town?” Ghost asked, leaning in to get a better view.
“After what happened?” Grey asked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she left the state.”
“Shut it down,” Ghost told Grey, sliding from the room like a wraith in the dark on silent feet. “Rook, let’s sweep the place. The staff quarters are down the hall, all the way to the end on the right. I’m going to check my aunt’s room. They were the only ones without feeds.”
I guessed the old bitch drew the line at her staff watching her sleep.
I nodded, drawing my gun more out of habit than necessity as I tiptoed down the hall. There was no reason to be silent, though. Ghost came back down the stairs to the foyer at the same time Corv and Grey left the security room and I came back from the staff quarters.
“Empty.”
“ Empty, ” Ghost echoed with a laugh.
“Well this just got a whole lot easier.”
“You mean more boring?” I corrected Corv.
He rolled his eyes.
A cunning smirk spread on my Ghost’s lips. “It doesn’t have to be.”
She had me at the smirk.
I tailed her to the living room with the others following close behind me.
“What are you doing?” Corvus asked as she crossed the Persian carpet to fiddle with the modern sound system that looked painfully out of place among the cloth bound books and antique wood of the bookshelves.
She plugged an auxiliary cable into her phone and flicked the dial, cranking the volume as one of my brother’s songs came on, blasting over the surround sound.
Hide and Seek.
I felt my lips pull into a venomous grin, watching her move on her toes, a sparkle in her eyes.
“AJ, what?—”
Ghost slipped off her shoes and my jaw flexed, legs burning with something other than the pain they’d been made to feel the last few weeks. They burned with the need to chase .
Her shirt went next and she threw it in my direction. I caught it with one hand and put it to my nose, inhaling deeply.
She bounced on the balls of her feet, her tits heaving in the lacy bra she wore as she looked around her, and I could tell she was thinking of all the places she could hide.
“I’m betting you’ll never find me,” she shouted over the blasting music. Over Corvus’ haunting voice warning of the things he would do once he found his prey.
“Hide and seek, Sparrow? Really?”
I slung off the duffle bags and jacket, tossing it over the back of the couch, never taking my eyes off her. “You don’t have to play, Bro,” I growled. “I’ll gladly have her all to myself.”
“Fuck that.” Grey was already setting his bag down and Corvus cursed, rolling his shoulders back.
“You have until the song ends, Ghost. Then you’re mine.”
She took off like a shot, and I put her shirt back to my face, breathing deeply of her before discarding it on the couch with my jacket.
Instinctively, I bent at my knees, ready to give chase.
I listened hard through the music, trying to hear her on the stairs.
Or above on the second floor. But she was too good for that.
I smiled to myself, my fingers twitching as the song came close to its end.
The others weren’t here anymore.
There was only me and her.
The predator.
And the prey.
The final note chimed and another song began, setting me free like the shot of a gun at a fucking horse race. I darted from the living room, catching the edge of the wall to slingshot around to the adjacent hall, my chest growing with each breath as I charged to the kitchens.
I heard my brothers on the stairs, but they weren’t my prey. And they wouldn’t find her.
I would.
“Oh, Ghost,” I singsonged over Gravedigger playing muffled through the walls. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”
The patter of little feet rained across the floor above my head, and I licked my lips, taking off at a sprint.
She had no idea what sort of monster she’d just unleashed.