Chapter 18
KANE
Igot back to the Sanctuary just after midnight, adrenaline still humming under my skin like electricity despite the long walk through Paris streets.
The lights were still on in the sitting room, warm glow spilling into the hallway through the open door.
Not unusual—Ellsworth seemed to keep odd hours, moving through the building like a ghost who never actually slept or needed rest. Probably didn't, knowing his background.
Former SAS operators didn't retire so much as they just found new missions.
But when I walked in, it wasn't just Ellsworth maintaining his vigil.
Connor sat in one of the leather chairs near the unlit fireplace, a book open on his lap but his attention clearly elsewhere. His posture was too alert, too ready, weight forward like he might need to move fast. He'd been waiting for me.
Knew something was wrong before I walked through the door.
That was Connor. Always reading situations three moves ahead.
He looked up the moment I entered, eyes sharp and assessing in that way I remembered from school.
"What's wrong?" he asked immediately.
No preamble. No small talk. No pretending he didn't already know something significant had happened just from the way I was moving, the tension I was carrying.
That was Connor. Always had been.
Direct. Efficient. No wasted words.
I dropped my jacket over the back of a chair and ran a hand through my hair, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical fatigue and everything to do with the weight of history catching up.
"They found me."
The room went very still.
Even the air seemed to stop moving, like the building itself was holding its breath.
Ellsworth appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, face unreadable but attention focused entirely on me with laser precision.
Connor's expression didn't change outwardly, but something shifted behind his eyes. Recognition. Concern. Immediate tactical calculation about what this meant for everyone.
"St. Paul's?" he asked, though the answer was already written in the tension of my shoulders.
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Tonight. A few hours ago." I moved into the kitchen, needing something to do with my hands, needing motion to process.
"The fat men from the fight club were in on it.
Took me to an abandoned building in the industrial district east of here.
Three suits waiting. Professional operators.
Military backgrounds, I'd guess. They knew who I was.
Knew about the Nine. Had surveillance photos from Bangkok. Recent ones."
Connor leaned forward slightly, elbows on knees, processing every detail. "And?"
"And I put them down. Two unconscious. One dead. Three shots. Then I ran."
Connor and Ellsworth exchanged a look.
Not surprise. Not disapproval. Not judgment about the violence or the body count.
Just ... acknowledgment.
Understanding that things had just escalated from theoretical threat to active combat.
From hiding in shadows to open warfare.
"Where did this happen?" Ellsworth asked, voice perfectly calm like we were discussing grocery lists instead of corpses cooling in an abandoned building.
I told them the area, described the building with detached awareness.
They listened in silence, both of them processing information, probably already planning cleanup or countermeasures or damage control or whatever came next in situations like this.
Standard operating procedure for men who'd lived this life too long.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge, twisting off the cap with more force than necessary and taking a long drink. Half the bottle disappeared in one pull, cold and bitter and not nearly strong enough for what I was feeling. Not nearly strong enough to drown out the questions multiplying in my head.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out reflexively.
Ella's text lit up the screen.
Tomorrow, you're not allowed to be late. Dangerous men should at least be punctual.
And something shifted in my chest.
Tightened like a fist closing around my lungs.
Because I'd been so focused on St. Paul's, on the immediate threat, on getting out of that building alive, on surviving the next five minutes—
I hadn't thought about the larger implications.
Hadn't thought past my own survival.
How could I have been so fucking stupid?
Ella.
If they'd been watching me, tracking me, following me through Paris before making contact—
If they knew where I'd been tonight, where I'd fought, where I'd gotten stitched up—
They knew about her.
Or they would soon.
The apartment building in the Marais. The café where we'd had coffee. The clinic where we'd met.
All of it documented. Photographed. Added to some file somewhere with her face and name and address.
Fuck.
"How vast are our resources?" I asked abruptly, cutting through whatever Connor had been about to say.
Connor looked at me, expression shifting slightly. Curiosity mixed with tactical caution, trying to understand where I was going with this.
Ellsworth's eyebrow went up fractionally, like he was thinking, Now we're getting somewhere. Finally asking the right questions about what we do here.
I burst that bubble immediately.
"There's a girl. I think she might be in trouble, too. Because of me."
The room temperature seemed to drop a few degrees.
The mood shifted from strategic planning to something more personal and therefore more complicated.
Connor's eyes narrowed, reading me with the precision of someone who'd known me for years. "Why? Who is she?"
"It's my fault," I said, the words tasting like ash and failure. "We just met. Pure coincidence. Wrong place, wrong time. But I've been with her multiple times today. The clinic. A café. Her sister's apartment. If they were watching me—"
I didn't finish the sentence.
Didn't need to.
Connor understood immediately what that meant.
"What's her connection to you?" he asked, voice carefully neutral, not asking the real question underneath.
"No connection. No operational relevance. She's American. Manhattan. Here because her sister died in a car accident. She's trying to understand what happened." I took another drink, throat tight. "I helped her find some information. We were supposed to meet tomorrow morning to follow up."
"That's not a good idea," Connor said immediately, no hesitation, pure tactical assessment. "We can get eyes on her place quickly. Protection. Surveillance. If you really think she's in danger—"
"I do." The certainty in my voice surprised even me.
Connor nodded once, decisive, then glanced at Ellsworth.
Ellsworth disappeared without a word, already moving to handle it, footsteps receding down the hallway toward the tech room where he could mobilize whatever resources we had available.
Connor stood. Walked to the fridge. Grabbed a beer. Opened it with practiced efficiency and held it up, clinking the neck against mine with a hollow sound that echoed in the quiet kitchen.
"To old times."
The familiar phrase hit harder than it should have.
Carried weight neither of us needed to explain.
I repeated it quietly, feeling everything it meant. "To old times."
We drank in silence for a long moment, both of us thinking about things we didn't—couldn't—say out loud.
Memories that didn't fit into words or explanations.
Experiences that had shaped us into men who stood in expensive Parisian townhouses drinking beer at midnight while discussing surveillance and dead bodies and protection details like it was completely normal.
Like this was just life.
"They're really back?" I asked finally, breaking the silence that had stretched too long.
Connor nodded slowly, deliberately. "They are."
"How? We burned it down. Killed Thorne. Scattered. How the fuck did they rebuild?"
"Don't know yet. Been trying to find out since I got here." He took another drink, Adam's apple moving as he swallowed. "But I'm pretty sure I know why they're active now. Why they're hunting us again."
"Why?"
"They want the Nine either back under their wing or in the ground. No middle option. No walking away. We're either assets or threats, and threats get eliminated." He paused, jaw tight. "Only question is why now. Why after all this time? What changed?"
I didn't have an answer for that.
Nobody did.
It was the missing piece in a puzzle we couldn't solve.
So, instead, I asked what I'd been thinking all day, what had been gnawing at the edges of my mind since Ellsworth had pulled up detailed files on étienne Moreau in under five minutes with resources I didn't understand.
"How vast are our resources? Really? What can we actually access?"
Connor sipped his beer, considering his words carefully. Deciding what to share. How much I needed to know.
"The Sanctuary is funded and ultimately run by a place called Dominion Hall.
Estate in Charleston, South Carolina. It's owned by a family—the Danes.
Big money with a capital B. Real money. The kind that doesn't run out or ask questions about expenditures.
" He paused, choosing words. "I did a couple missions out in the field with one of the brothers.
Micah Dane. Good man. Solid operator. Combat experience.
They're all good men, from what I've seen.
The Sanctuary was their idea. We just happened to be the first test case. "
He gestured around the room with his beer bottle, indicating the building, the operation, everything we were standing in the middle of.
"As for resources, let's just say anything I've asked for, they've made good on. Equipment. Intelligence. Funding. Operational support. Medical. Legal, if needed. No questions asked beyond what's necessary for security and mission parameters."
"Give me an example. Concrete."