Chapter 29
Kane
Fog crept over the North Sea in a slow roll, chilling me in my watch on a lonely beach and fucking over our chances of the evening going smoothly.
This was our second night, the first spent in much the same way.
Waiting in the salt-stained air. Ready to go at any second but with nothing happening.
We were about half a mile apart at staggered intervals, hiding in coves, and with Tyler making the occasional trip between us.
He’d brought food and water, checking in that we were good to hold out.
No problem on my end, except I’d had to keep my hands off my phone so I didn’t call Lovelyn.
Something was bothering me. A worry for her that was bordering on obsessive.
Her invitation to join her in my bed. Her request for a date.
The way I’d wanted my weapons on her. In her.
It should’ve sent me running, but instead I only wanted to hunt her down.
Fucking lock her in the boot of my car and keep her.
Which was insane.
I was losing it, and keeping a lid on my emotions was vital. I couldn’t become the boyfriend she’d joked about training me to be. There was no way I could be that man.
Aggravated, I adjusted my position on the cold gravel, my holster a steady weight at my back, and knives concealed about my body. The white mist thickened, gliding closer so it buried the shoreline and the hushed breaking waves.
A slow assault of ghosts.
I really needed to focus.
Earlier, I’d had an answerphone message from the estate agent selling my flat. He’d found a cash buyer who’d jumped at the bargain and was able to move fast. Though the transfer of funds could still take a month, it gave me some breathing space.
Not that I’d yet returned the call that had me scrabbling for money in the first place.
Fuck it. I was no coward, even if no part of me wanted to dial that number.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, swallowing down regret that Lovelyn hadn’t messaged me. How the fuck was I so desperate that I needed her name on my screen?
I thumbed through to my call log. Hovered over Blair’s number.
My heart thundered. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the fact that it was nine-thirty in the evening and too late for regular people to be taking phone calls. No, it was a bone-deep ache that killed another piece of me every time I had to handle my past.
I switched to a text message instead, writing a five-word note that the money would be there in a few weeks. The message fired off into the ether, and my breathing came hard like I’d run a marathon.
I was about to stow my phone again when an alert landed on my screen. It was from the cameras at Lovelyn’s house. My pained heart skipped a beat, and I opened the live feed, going to the front door first.
It was her. Home and alone. Lovelyn took two attempts at getting the key into the lock, her fingers shaking and her face a strange mask of emotion I’d never seen on her. She dropped her bag and stumbled into the hall, a slam telling me that she’d shut herself in.
I called her number.
She didn’t pick up.
I called again, leaving it to ring until her answerphone kicked in.
“Lovelyn? Answer me. Why are ye in the house by yourself? It isn’t safe. Stay in the warehouse. Go back to my room.”
With my back to the sea, I flicked through the camera views.
All the ones set up outside showed a clear exterior, but the two internal ones, she hadn’t turned on.
She hadn’t been there overnight so hadn’t had the need.
But what if the person threatening her knew she was there?
I couldn’t protect her. I was hours away.
Losing my mind, I called my sister.
“Kane! Have I got things to tell you.”
“Listen. Lovelyn has gone back to her house. She’s been threatened. Someone needs to be outside to watch the place.”
A pause followed. “I was with her, but there was all this fuss and she vanished. She’s home?”
“What happened? Did someone upset her?”
“Oh my God. You’re so sweet on her. I never thought I’d see this day.”
“Mila!”
“Okay, okay. This ex of yours came in looking for a job. She was mean to Lovelyn. She said her name was Karla.”
The fuck? “And Lovelyn left because of that?”
“I’m not sure. Wallace was here, and I got distracted. When I next checked, she’d gone. Should I go over and check on her?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to hold my shit together. “Please.”
“Leave it with us.”
We hung up, and I fired off Lovelyn’s address to Mila in case she didn’t have it, then wrote my flower girl a message.
Kane: I called because you’re home alone. It scared the fuck out of me to see you on the cameras. I’ve sent Mila over. If you don’t want that, tell me now and I’ll call her off.
She didn’t answer. It didn’t even update as read.
I stomped up and down my patch of beach, the fog swirling around my knees and rising, already thicker over the ocean and turning the horizon into a smudge. I itched to jog back to my car and fucking drive, but I’d never walked out on a job in my life.
My phone lit. I snapped it up, but it was Tyler in the group chat he’d set up for the night.
Tyler: Check in.
Heretic: All good. Can’t see shit.
Ash: Boring as my brother’s taste in music, and quiet enough to hear my will to live pack up.
I started typing.
A light flashed somewhere above the muted sea.
I squinted into the dark made pale by the mist. But it was so thick, above head height at the water’s edge, I couldn’t locate it again. I deleted my half-written message and fired off another.
Kane: Light out at sea. Seconds ago. Fucking weather making it hard to be sure where.
A group call instantly came in.
Tyler spoke in my earpiece, his voice low. “Everyone silent unless the action’s on your stretch, then we’ll converge. Stay on the line and keep your senses sharp.”
No one replied, but a sense of connected energy grew between us.
Putting my phone away, I prowled closer to the water, adrenaline rushing and preparing me for a fight.
The bay I was monitoring had black, slippery rocks at either edge and jagged outcrops in the water.
It left a short channel which a boat could come in by.
But if I couldn’t fucking see, they could walk right up to me and I wouldn’t know until the last second.
An engine rattled, the sound distorted by the mist but close.
At my back was a cliff face with a road carved into it, barely wide enough for my car which I’d hidden further along the beach. The coast road above had been silent and still for hours. Rocks popped under tyres.
Fuck yeah, they were coming to me.
I touched my earpiece. “Vehicle approaching at my back.”
“On Kane,” Tyler came back instantly.
Scrabbling followed, my team mobilising. I sucked in a lungful of fog-laden air and reminded myself of my priorities. I was here to rescue whoever they were smuggling. Anyone who got in my way would get taken out, though I’d try to secure the leader.
Trusting that Tyler and the others had my back, I closed in on the water and paced along a line of rocks that led to the surf, only the spill of a wave over my boots clueing me in to exactly how close I’d got.
The white haze rose above my head, swirls of it so thick I could only catch glimpses of the world around me.
I hated the sensation. I couldn’t see. I might not be trapped, but it felt the same.
The engine cut out.
A rushing sound came from the water followed by a short, snapped instruction. Gravel crunched, a boat landing. A light blinked on, dispersing in a wide flare before extinguishing. Not quick enough to hide my target.
I leapt forward and connected with a figure jumping down. A man from his grunt of surprise. I threw a fist and decked him, his body crumpling to the beach.
Satisfied but far from done, I felt out for the prow then closed my fingers around damp wood and hauled it a few feet up the beach. No fucking way was I letting them back out.
Engines roared up the cliff, one the deep growl of a motorbike. Shouts followed.
Mere feet away, another male voice exclaimed, then a woman whimpered in fear.
In a heartbeat, my brain flipped the situation to Lovelyn and the bastard who’d threatened her. Fury flooded my system, and I vaulted the side of the boat and landed on its deck. A cloud of white swirled, and I stepped carefully through it, my fingers speared outwards.
A body launched at me. I grappled them to the deck, using my forearm to pin their neck with my weight on it. They were smaller. A slight figure.
They didn’t fight back.
A mewl of terror came from my victim, and I leapt away. Shite, no. They’d thrown a woman at me. I’d realised it too late. Wait, not even a woman. She was a kid from the reveal of features.
Cold metal touched my forehead.
I stilled and raised both hands, knowing the barrel of a gun when I felt one. The weapon glinted in an eddy of fog, backed by a man in all black clothing, his features hidden.
He didn’t speak. The barrel shook.
“I’m here for the lass only,” I said. “I’ll take her and go.”
Bootsteps pounded the beach in our direction. Ash led the way, from the shout of delight at the body I’d left in my wake.
“Come at me and I’ll upgrade you from dickhead to corpse,” he snarled.
The man I’d decked must still be conscious. If Ash had him, the others could get the victim out of here. I just had to give her space to run.
I ducked and charged, crashing my assailant into the controls of the boat. We tussled, and I landed a punch that crunched bone. Then an explosion blasted my eardrums.
The gun fired at close range.
The shot scorched past at an angle, a hot kiss over flesh but not through. A graze. Lucky.
I hit the deck at the same moment Tyler dove on, a spectre emerging through the grey.
With an expression of pure rage, he tackled the trafficker off me.
A wicked-looking silver-handled blade flashed, and Tyler drove it into the man’s chest. Without hesitation, he repeated it, sprays of dark blood spattering until the fucker went limp. Only then did he turn to me.
Fucking hell. I remembered him describing the previous raid where the traffickers had been killed. Now I got why. For him, this was personal.
“The gunshot, how bad?” he snapped.
Behind him, two small figures curled up together, half under a bench. Not one girl, but two. Safe, now.
“I’ll live. I need to go.”
“To hospital?”
“To Lovelyn. She’s in trouble.”
My team leader stalled. Then his savage smile returned. “Ye did good. We’ve got this.”
The fog swallowed him and the shooter, but I’d already seen enough to guess the rest. Tyler didn’t stop killing when the body stopped moving. And I was wasting time.