Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bryan
T he cold creeps in—through the boots, up the legs, and into the bones. Night air in the English countryside cuts like it’s personal.
Or maybe I’m just salty and missing the warmth of being wrapped in the duvet and balls deep inside Harper.
Aye, it’s likely that.
I lean against the frame of the Range Rover, my gaze fixed on the dim silhouette of the farmhouse the drone is sending us as a visual.
The place is dark now, but once Kieran’s little toy is in place, he’ll flick on the thermal view, and we’ll see who’s home. Hopefully nothing has changed.
Kieran mutters to himself while he maneuvers the drone controls, his breath fogging in the air between us. “Almost got it…” he grits. “The little bastard is caught on a cross breeze.”
I don’t say anything. Just stay still and wait. A fox screams somewhere off in the hedgerow, eerie and sharp, and I turn to see if I can spot anything.
I can’t. The moon is lost behind cloud cover tonight, so it’s as dark as dark can get out here.
“Finally,” Kieran whispers, smug.
The feed stabilizes and he switches to the infrared overlay. The farmhouse lights up with a handful of heat signatures inside and outside the house.
My focus is solidly on the upstairs suite and the lack of bodies up there. Fucking hell. Where did she go? I count the bodies and there are more downstairs than usual, but that doesn’t make me feel better.
Did I fuck up this afternoon? Did I miss the person upstairs getting moved out while I was having sex?
Kieran sets the controls for the drone into the back luggage hatch and grabs one of the two long, reinforced plastic cases. “Want to see what I brought for show-and-tell tonight?”
He flips the latches on the case and opens things up to expose one of our two new RPG-26s laying inside the customized padding.
“This baby is sleek, compact, and mean as hell,” Kieran says, pulling the launcher free. “She packs just enough punch to ruin a mercenary’s day.”
He hands it to me and I run a hand down her smooth body. “She’s a thing of beauty, all right.”
Kieran grins and opens up the second case. “Mick says they’re fresh off the books. Unmarked. Soviet surplus, still in prime condition.”
I take it, the weight familiar. “These are single-shot and preloaded, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“Point. Click. Boom.”
I check the sights, my fingers brushing over the cold metal. It’s solid. Clean. No scratches, no rust. It’s the kind of weapon you don’t use unless you’re damn sure of your target—which, sadly, we’re not.
Kieran lifts the second launcher and sets it on his shoulder, peering through the sight. “As much as I’d love to fire these girls off, this whole thing goes sideways if we light up that farmhouse and the bitch isn’t in the fucking building.”
I grunt in agreement, keeping my eyes on the shadows beyond the fence line. “Sad but true, mate.”
Kieran lowers the weapon and sets it back in its case. “Did you see anything this afternoon that indicates who’s being guarded?”
I stiffen.
The truth is—I didn’t see shit.
Not because the mercs were careful. Not because the farmhouse is impenetrable. But because I spent most of the day not watching the camera feed, losing myself inside Harper.
And fuck me, even now, out here with cold steel in my hands and the stakes of this mission hanging heavy over my head, I still feel the drag of her nails down my back. Still hear the sounds she made when I?—
Kieran’s expression hardens and I snap out of it. I exhale through my nose. Hard.
“I didn’t see anything conclusive, no.” I glare at the burst of orange and red bodies on the main floor, willing one of them to go back upstairs to be guarded by another at the top of the stairs.
Then we’d be no closer to figuring out if it’s Siobhan, but we’d be no further away, either.
Kieran turns and frowns at the screen. “Are they having a fucking tea party?”
I grunt. “Seems so.”
There’s a small part of me—a dark, gnawing whisper in the back of my skull—that’s worried I missed something important. That while I was inside with Harper, tangled in sheets and heat and the kind of pleasure I haven’t let myself feel in years... Siobhan slipped through our fingers.
Wouldn’t that be a fucking twist?
But I don’t say it out loud because doubt is like blood in the water—it spreads and draws the sharks.
And out here, that gets people killed.
I place the launcher back into its foam nest and latch the lid of the case closed. “Let the drone run its course. If nothing new comes up tonight, maybe tomorrow night we move in closer. No more watching from the trees.”
Kieran nods, packing his RPG back into its case. “And if we see her?”
My fingers curl into fists. “If we see her, we do what we were sent to do. We end her.”
That thought brings the warmth back to my bones as I imagine all the ways I’d like to put that woman down.
My father was a great man and even his enemies respected him enough to offer their condolences when he died. That Mattie McGuire was behind an assassination plot to kill him is no surprise.
That Siobhan Daley—a woman who grew up in our home, who was Tag’s first love, who worked for our family for years—was the one who accepted the mark?
Well, that betrayal goes well beyond the pale.
I take a walk down the graveled shoulder of the road, my da front and center in my mind. His death stole him from us too soon.
He missed Tag finding Laine, Sean saving Piper, and Brenny falling for Nora. He’s also going to miss the birth of his first grandbaby. We’re all so fucking pumped about becoming uncles. And it won’t be long now.
The wee one is due in January.
That’s another reason I need to wipe Siobhan off the playing field. Because while she’ll be out to take us all down, the poisoned tip of her spear will be pointed directly at Tag.
And that baby needs a da of its own.
The whirling thrum of the small drone’s rotors buzzes overhead, and I make my way back to the truck. “Battery change?”
“Aye.” Kieran lands the little machine on the paved road, picks it up and swaps out the battery with a new one.
I make myself useful and slot the spent battery into the charger while he gets the drone back into the air and back to the farmhouse.
We’ve done this enough times now that we’re damned efficient. We can get the drone here to swap batteries and back into position in under five minutes.
Maybe when we get home, we can hire ourselves out as a Dublin duo surveillance squad.
I’m thinking up a name for us when a flare of body heat is picked up on the edge of the screen. “Whoa, hold position. What the fuck is that?”
Kieran hovers the drone in place and comes to the back of the vehicle to have a look. I point to the screen. “Go back a bit. There was something in the trees you just passed.”
Kieran swings the drone back a few yards to where we stood the first day, hidden by the stand of trees at the far edge of the property.
“There. What is that?”
Kieran frowns, leaning closer to get a better look. “A deer, maybe? Hard to say from this angle.”
As much as I want to confirm who is in that farmhouse, my instincts tell me there is a more important issue at hand. “Reposition the drone. Let’s figure out what that is.”
Kieran does his thing and the view shifts from the trajectory of the Sentinel safe house to the large flare of orange and red at the edge of the screen. As the drone moves closer, the large blob of thermal heat reveals itself as something more.
The thermal blob divides and defines until we can make out six separate bodies kneeling in the trees.
“That’s a recon team.”
Kieran chuckles. “Maybe. Or a bunch of local hunters spotted a buck and are hunkered down to get the shot.”
It’s possible but my gut says no.
“Go higher. Give me a look at the entire area.”
Kieran follows my instruction and adjusts the drone again. The picture on the laptop screen zooms out and I point at three other teams above, below, and across the property from the first.
“Whoever they are, they’re locking the place down to move in.”
Kieran meets my gaze. “What do you want to do?”
I consider the options and possible outcomes. No matter how I slice it—there are only two of us.
“We’ll watch. If these fuckers attack, they’ll either fail and we’ll learn how good Sentinel is, or they’ll succeed and grab the person being protected. Maybe they’ll help us confirm it’s Siobhan.”
“And if it is, that gives us a good idea of who these fuckers are.”
Aye, it does. “Tag warned me the Mcguires were on the hunt. Given how reckless a full-scale attack is without proper recon, this could easily be them.”
The south side of Dublin is run by violent thugs who think cruelty and brute strength make them powerful.
Actually, I hope these are Mcguire men because getting themselves killed while trying to one-up me would make my day.
“They’re on the move, so we’re about to find out either way.”
Kieran and I watch as the drone’s thermal imaging tracks a coordinated advance. Four teams of six men advance on the farmhouse from all sides.
Dressed in black. Guns up. Moving in a surprisingly tight formation, they creep toward the house.
This night just got a whole lot more interesting.
Gunfire erupts. It’s on.
* * *
Harper
Sitting at the table with my laptop, I work my way through the names of Windsor Catering employees that worked Eddie Mason’s sex-trafficking auctions. It boggles my mind. Having signed an NDA, I can maybe understand them not going to the police, but signing up to work another event?
A dozen of these assholes worked all four events since the beginning of the summer. Do they have no morals? The pay can’t be that good. Are they being coerced? Blackmailed, maybe?
The only bright spot to this screwed up mess is that the July 26th event directly coincides with the disappearance of Macie and Chantal. And the September 17th event lines up with the last time Anton heard from Zhara.
As horrible as it is—this is great news.
Now, all I need is to look into these people and find the ones most likely to tell me what I need to know. Like who attended those events and who bid on my friends?
I pick up my mug and lean back on the bench seat, sipping my peppermint tea. I’m getting closer, girls.
My mug makes a heavy sound when I set it back on the table and I make sure I don’t set it too close to Bryan’s laptop. A flash of blue foil makes me smile—a condom packet I missed.
I pull the little square from under Bryan’s laptop and let my mind wander to this afternoon’s horizontal hijinks.
It’s a wicked little highlight reel—Bryan’s possessive hands, his hungry mouth, the power behind those hips of his. Damn. It’s like he was built for the sole purpose of wrecking me in the best possible way.
I bite my lip, laughing at myself. Friends who fuck is one of the most brilliant things I ever came up with.
Because that man can fuck.
It’s not an exaggeration to say he’s likely ruined me for all other men. Not that I can imagine myself with any other men. Not really.
But like the song says, ‘We’re here for a good time. Not a long time. So have a good time. The sun don’t shine everyday.’
Well, the sun was shining on me today.
I reach for my phone to fire off a quick text to him.
How’s the surveillance?
Watching a gunfight ATM.
WTF? You okay?
We are. Another group attacking the farmhouse. Waiting for the dust to settle.
Stay sharp.
Always.
I set the phone down and let that sink in. My FWF buddy is watching a gunfight and will text me once bullets stop flying. That’s not good.
I get that I’m an adrenaline junkie and dove into investigative journalism because I’m drawn to danger, but this is not a normal situation.
But what is ‘normal’, anyway?
Running my fingers over the touch pad of Bryan’s laptop, I bring the machine to life. The picture of him smiling and in love with his lost love hurts my heart.
Man, every woman deserves to have a man look at her that way. Like he would raze the earth for her. Like she is the air that feeds his cells, and he would wither and die without her in his life.
I have a feeling that’s not far from the truth.
But that’s a thought for another night—a night when Bryan isn’t part of a gunfight. I type in his passcode—I may have snooped a few times when he typed it in—and open things up.
I have no interest in anything other than the video feed of the farmhouse. Not that it’s all that enlightening. There is no sound. The entire compound is as dark as the night sky. And the only thing that I see are flashes from gunfire, but I can’t make out the shooters or the targets.
Adrenaline pumping, my mind spins.
The more I think about it, the more I need to get moving. If there’s another group going after Siobhan, the farmhouse is burned.
No matter how I imagine the night playing out, we need to be ready to move. Scooting out from behind the table, I grab my mug and a few other dishes and head to the sink. After that, I pack my stuff and set my suitcase and my purse next to the door.
Bryan and Kieran are each living out of a duffle bag, so it doesn’t take any time to pull their stuff together and set it by the door as well.
With that taken care of, I race back to Bryan’s laptop, hoping it will show me something more—something that tells me he’s safe.