Chapter 5
Lovelyn
Out of my front door, I stepped into a grey day, my purple bag over my shoulder and Dixie’s tablet concealed within.
“Bye, Mum,” I called and set off down our street to the bus that would deliver me to the harbour.
After getting home last night, I’d had two pressing objectives. The first was to examine the tablet to see if there was any information on Dixie’s whereabouts. That had been a big fat fail. I couldn’t get into the thing.
My second was to check the latest on the Eden, the ship owned by Mila’s family that had been raised yesterday from its watery grave. An event I’d missed due to being kidnapped on the way. Mila had texted last night to ask to see me. Whatever she’d heard, I was ready to break the bad news.
This was going to ruin her day.
I hurried down the street, my coat tucked close around me.
Unlike yesterday, when I’d wandered straight into Kane’s clutches then been a flustered mess after, I listened out for engines and took note of passersby.
I lived in a quiet, residential part of Deadwater, not known for random abductions, but there was a first time for everything.
Kane’s actions yesterday had come shortly after my father’s parting words, informing me that someone had rung the police to make a threat against me.
He’d had no details. Nothing to help me protect myself any better.
I still couldn’t think of a reason someone would want to harm me, but that didn’t remove the risk.
I hadn’t slept well last night.
A grey people carrier cruised towards me, the driver leaning forward as if looking for something.
Or someone. I stiffened, only breathing again once it passed.
The driver was a woman, but I wasn’t ruling anyone out as a threat.
When I reached the corner, I peered back to check she had gone. The car was out of sight.
I exhaled my fear and turned back. Any more delays and I’d miss my bus.
Across the road, two men exited a lane, one scrawny but tough-looking, the other taller with a thick neck. Dark clothes, furtive glances, tattoos peeking out of their collars and sleeves.
I pulled up short. If the driver had seemed unlikely as a danger, these two screamed criminal. Either I’d stumbled onto a mugging in progress, or it was Bring Your Own Offender day in the suburbs.
I needed my car. I should’ve taken a taxi. Though I made good money from work, and from backhanders Arran paid me for information, I had to be conservative with my cash. I had more bills to pay than most people my age.
In unison, both men spotted me.
Shit.
I froze on the corner of the street. They were directly across the junction from me, in the way of where I needed to go. The road bisecting it was a dead end in both directions, but in these suburbs, there were lanes everywhere. I’d grown up roaming them.
Taking to my heels, I scurried along the right-hand route.
Down the street, passing parked cars and driveways, I clutched my bag and drove power into my legs, thankful for the workouts that gave me the strength to flee now I needed it.
Perhaps I imagined a shout following me, but my heartbeat had turned into white noise so loud it could have drowned out a siren.
At the end, I didn’t pause to check how close they were, instead diving into a narrow alley that led between a block of flats and a garden.
It turned a corner then split into three. I took the most overgrown route behind tall Victorian terraces, grass whipping at my legs, and I pictured where the alley came out. Behind an elderly person’s home with open lawns surrounding.
If I crossed that, I only had to jog two more streets to make it to the main road. I could do this.
With care to muffle my footsteps, I continued on my route, my ears pricked though I still couldn’t pick up the sound of running. Maybe the men were being as quiet as I was. Or they’d taken a different path and I’d thrown them off my scent.
Or they’d jump out and ambush me at the end.
The lane opened up where the gardens ended and the lawn of the last property began. I hopped a broken fence and made my way past flowerbeds. Roses, waiting for spring so they could bloom.
The large, square building sat plumb in the middle of the plot, the windows closed against the cold. I skirted to the front, pausing at the corner to check there was no one waiting for me.
Except there was.
A matte-black car idled at the kerb. As if knowing I was going to pop out right here, Kane leaned his fine backside against his car, sin with a side of smugness.
It was too late to hide. He’d seen me. Of course the universe would send me a kidnapper instead of a knight.
With wide eyes, I approached him. Then I froze. Terrible thoughts chased my panic. “Did you send those men after me?”
The huge gangster stopped moving. “What men?”
I didn’t answer, not trusting him an inch. It sounded ridiculous out loud, but so did “I was kidnapped by you yesterday,” and that still happened.
I glanced back, sure they’d burst out at any second. Did I run back or try to get past Kane?
Rock, hard place.
He pushed off his ride. “Is someone chasing ye?”
“Other than you?”
Kane’s eyes darkened. “Get in the car, Lovelyn.”
“You know, some people just say hello.”
“Do it.”
A laugh escaped my lips. “Do I look crazy?”
From my squawk, I sounded it.
Movement to the left caught my eye. On the street behind Kane, the scrawny guy strolled. With a side-eye at my kidnapper, he passed where I still hadn’t moved but didn’t even peep my way. A few houses on, he went inside, greeting someone loudly.
I breathed through parted lips. Had that been a coincidence? The men just happened to be in this neighbourhood because…they lived here?
Or, they’d seen Kane and assumed I was already claimed in the terrifying man department.
Paranoia closed in tight.
“Was it him? What happened? Did he say something to ye?” Kane’s focus remained on the house the stranger had disappeared into.
“He tried to abduct me,” I quipped. “Oh wait, that was you.”
By degrees, my fear receded and my brain took over what had been fight or flight. I gave up my position at the elderly person’s home wall and exited to the pavement. Kane stood taller, turning with me when I walked straight past his car.
“What are ye doing?” he said.
“I have somewhere to be that isn’t anywhere near you.”
“You’re seeing my sister at the warehouse. I’m going there as well.”
“Good for you. Try not to abduct anyone on the way.”
Of course his sister had told him. But it wasn’t only her I needed to see.
I had an appointment with Cassie. Dixie’s tablet had a passcode and facial recognition I couldn’t get past. I was a data scientist, not a hacker, even if I’d joked about that with the skeleton girls.
I needed access, and as Dixie’s employer, Cassie was my best shot.
An engine rumbled. Kane cruised down the street, keeping pace with me.
“I’m not getting in,” I informed him.
“Didn’t ask.”
Oh, for Heaven’s sake. I rolled an unimpressed glance his way. “What are you even doing here?”
In my fear, I’d barely questioned why Kane would be only streets away from my house. As far as I knew, he wasn’t even from Deadwater, and his only ties were to the warehouse and the skeleton crew who ran it.
He didn’t answer, keeping that maddening car’s width away from me.
At the end of the street, I turned. He did, too. Then at the main road, when I hopped onto a thankfully waiting bus, Kane drove the whole route behind it. I didn’t get this guy. I didn’t have anything he wanted…
My stomach tightened. Unless he knew what I’d taken from Dixie’s. That had to be it. Why else haunt me?
Off the bus, I clutched my bag to my chest and hustled down the cobbled river street to the huge, red-brick warehouse that housed the skeleton crew and their clubs, certain I would be mugged at every step.
There was no sign of Kane in the neon-pink lit reception when I reported in to the crew member manning the back desk.
Mila and Cassie appeared to collect me, the first a beautiful woman a couple of years younger than me and with wavy blonde hair to her shoulders and zero resemblance to her brother, and the second a fierce but tiny Scotswoman with wild black curls.
I was a hugger, but I didn’t know either well enough to launch in with open arms, though I wanted to.
Cassie walked straight up and threw her arms around me. “I heard what ye did to get Convict free yesterday. Badass member of the Skeleton Girls Detective Agency. Ack, you’re freezing, woman.”
“I had to get the bus,” I explained. “My car is still in Leith.”
Mila joined the hug. “I don’t even think I said thank you.”
I embraced her back, sinking into the warmth. Hugs fuelled me, and it had been a while. “You don’t need to, but I accept gratitude in the form of cake.”
Cake didn’t fix everything, but it did take the edge off existential dread.
Mila laughed into my shoulder. “You were the only solution that guaranteed his safety. You did that. And I know it could’ve come at a cost. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, let alone to have you as a friend.”
My emotion dipped. No, plummeted. It happened when I was carrying stress.
Feelings hit me in a tidal wave, sometimes so strong I had to hide away until they faded.
More often it was gentler, like yesterday when Kane told me about Dixie, or now, when a hug and kind words threatened to make me cry.
As a teenager, it had dominated my every day, so bad my mother took me to doctors and then therapists. I’d learned to manage it. Mostly.
By force, I pulled myself together, summoning a smile. “How is he? How are you, for that matter? I thought you’d be holed up for days.”
“Con wanted to see Arran and Shade, but we’ll go home once they’ve talked.”
“Come upstairs? I’ll make tea and warm ye up.” Cassie directed us deeper into the warehouse and in the lift to the seventh floor.