Chapter 25 Roxy
The greenhouse was colder than I expected.
Moonlight filtered pale and silver through the glass panels overhead, throwing strange shadows across some carefully tended tomato plants.
I crouched behind the potting bench near the far wall, tablet clutched tight in both hands.
My ragged breaths sounded impossibly loud in the enclosed quiet.
The feed showed Declan crossing the last stretch of open yard, moving fast now, whatever remained of his earlier caution burning off the closer he got to the house.
Through the kitchen window, I could see Liam, illuminated deliberately in the doorway, exactly where we'd planned, his posture carefully casual despite what I knew had to be pain radiating through his bad shoulder.
Come on, I thought, watching Declan close the distance. Just a little closer.
My thumb hovered over the lock icon, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat, waiting for the exact moment he'd cross fully into the kitchen, past the threshold, into the trap we'd built for him.
Declan reached the back door. Paused. Glanced around the yard one final time with the paranoid caution of a hunted man, and then, apparently satisfied, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Now.
I hit the lock icon, holding it down, watching the little wheel spin as it processed the command—
And then the screen flickered. Stuttered. A small, innocuous message bloomed across the top of the display, the worst four words I could possibly imagine seeing in that exact moment.
Connection lost. Reconnecting…
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
"No, no, no," I whispered, frantically tapping at the frozen screen, watching the little spinning wheel mock me from the center of the display.
Through the greenhouse glass, I could see the shape of Declan moving further into the kitchen, could see Liam backing carefully away from him, buying time, his eyes flicking briefly, urgently, toward the greenhouse like he could somehow sense my system had failed.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
I could wait. Pray the connection restored itself in time. Or I could move.
Through the glass, I watched Declan take another step toward Liam, something dark and unstable in the set of his shoulders, a man with absolutely nothing left to lose.
I moved.
Staying low, I slipped out the greenhouse's side door, into the cold night air, the tablet gripped tight against my chest as I half-crawled, half-ran along the low stone wall bordering the garden path, putting distance between myself and the safety of the glass walls, closing the gap toward the house instead.
Every instinct screamed at me to stay hidden. But every second I wasted was a second closer to something happening to Liam that I couldn't undo.
I dropped low behind an old rain barrel roughly thirty feet from the kitchen window, close enough now to catch a stray thread of signal. I forced myself to check the screen with hands shaking so badly I could barely hold it steady.
One bar. Then nothing. Then, agonizingly, one bar again.
Come on. Come on, come on, come on…
Inside, through the window, I could see Declan's mouth moving, shouting something at Liam I couldn't hear from this distance, one arm raised, the unmistakable dark shape of the gun leveled once more.
Liam had his good hand raised, placating, buying time the way we'd planned.
But I could see the tension coiled through his entire body, could see how close this was to going wrong in a hundred different, permanent ways.
The signal bar flickered to two.
I hit the lock icon again, breath held so tight my lungs burned, watching the wheel spin one more agonizing time.
Please.
The screen blinked. Then, finally, mercifully, a green confirmation flashed across the display: LOCKDOWN ENGAGED.
Through the window, I watched the heavy security shutters slam down over every door and window in the kitchen in near-perfect unison, the mechanized whir of steel sliding into place audible even from thirty feet away, sealing the room shut like a vault.
Declan spun toward the nearest door, already realizing his mistake, hand slamming uselessly against the reinforced steel now blocking his only exit.
But my eyes weren't on Declan.
They were on the narrow gap between two shutters near the side door, the one Liam had been standing closest to when the lockdown engaged, the one that had come down maybe two, three seconds too fast for a man moving at half-speed with a bullet wound still healing in his shoulder.
My heart stopped entirely.
"Liam!" The name tore out of me before I could stop it, no longer caring about staying hidden, sprinting the last thirty feet across open ground toward the house, tablet forgotten, dropped somewhere in the grass behind me.
I reached the side door and grabbed the handle, fully expecting it to be sealed, fully expecting the worst. It gave way beneath my hand, swinging open into the narrow mudroom just outside the now-sealed kitchen.
Liam stood there, pressed against the wall just outside the steel shutter line, chest heaving, face pale with pain and adrenaline, very much on the correct side of the trap.
He'd made it. Just barely. But he'd made it.
"You're okay," I breathed, half-sobbing with relief, throwing myself against him hard enough that he grunted in pain, though his good arm came up immediately to hold me just as tight. "You're okay, you're okay—"
"I'm okay." His voice was rough, breathless, his lips pressing hard against my temple. "You did it. Roxy, you actually did it."
From the other side of the steel shutters, muffled but unmistakable, came the sound of Declan's fists slamming against the reinforced steel, followed by a stream of furious, panicked cursing as he realized exactly what kind of cage he'd walked himself into.
I pulled back just far enough to look up at Liam's face, still shaking from adrenaline, from fear.
"We got him," I said, disbelief coloring every word. "Liam, we actually got him."
Liam's answering smile was fierce and exhausted and utterly relieved, and behind us, trapped and raging in the vault-like kitchen, Declan screamed obscenities into a room with absolutely no way out.