Chapter 8
Annabelle
“This plan is shit.”
“I know. It’s the best plan,” Aidan says, crossing to me and gripping the back of my neck as he pulls me closer.
“Our best plan is shit. I can’t cope with those odds.”
Aidan’s thumb presses just under my hairline. “You’ll cope because I said you will.”
It works. He knew it would.
The warmth of his hand steadies me. I need it. In a room full of guns, blood, broken glass, and a man who has torn my whole life apart twice over, my body still notices the exact pressure of Aidan’s fingers at my neck.
Jack is still against the wall, too composed for a man marked for death by half the city and definitely by every person in this room. His cheek is still red where I hit him. Good. I wish I’d hit him harder.
“We have to go,” Jack says.
Aidan nods and brushes his lips against mine. “We’ll be back.”
“You’d better be.”
He nods and steps back as Callan moves forward. He stops in front of me, his expression cut from something cold and final.
He doesn’t kiss me.
He studies my face for one long second, then slides his hand into my damp hair, half come down from the bun, and holds me there, forcing my focus onto him.
“The door stays locked after we leave. If Ethan tells you to move, you move. If he tells you to stay down, you stay down. Don’t argue with him. ”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Stay alive for me.”
The words hit low and hard. I swallow. “Come back, then.”
His eyes darken. He doesn’t say anything.
He lets me go too soon.
Jack pushes off the wall.
Every part of me turns to acid.
He glances at me once. “Annabelle.”
“Don’t say my name.”
His jaw tightens. “Lock every internal door behind them once they’re out. Maeve likes second entries.”
I stare at him. “You really think I’m taking advice from you?”
“I think you’d be smart to take it from anyone who knows her.”
Aidan shoves him towards the bedroom door with the gun in his ribs. “Keep walking.”
Callan opens the door. The room feels too small for all this fury.
I stand rooted to the floor while they file out, leaving Ethan and me in the room. “This is such a bad idea,” I mutter.
“It is,” he agrees. “But it’s better than the alternative.”
Ethan takes my wrist and pulls me into the hallway. “Come on.”
I go because standing in that bedroom with their heat still in the air and Jack’s voice still stuck in my head feels unbearable. Ethan shuts the bedroom door behind us and locks it, then the next one, then the study. He checks every handle after each turn of the key, methodical and brutal about it.
I follow him into the main living space and stop dead at the ruined window.
Glass still covers half the floor. A cold draft slips into the room and skates over my bare arms.
Ethan catches me looking. “Don’t go near it.”
He stares at the mess, and I can see it bugging him. It almost makes me smile. “You want to tidy up.”
His eyes flick to mine. “It’s driving me mad.”
“Thought so.”
“I don’t like loose ends.”
“That window is a bit more than a loose end.”
“It’s also a security breach and a mess.”
Despite everything, a shaky breath almost turns into a laugh. “That sounds more like you.”
He steps around the scattered glass without looking at me, heading straight for a long cupboard, where he pulls out a tall dustpan and brush.
“Seriously?”
“It’s not something I can ignore.”
“You might get shot at. While you’re cleaning. What a shit way to go out.”
He snorts. “I think they’re gone.”
“Think and know isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”
He starts sweeping glass into a neat line with short, efficient strokes. It is absurd. It is so completely Ethan that it hurts something in my soul. Attraction, need, want, sparks into something else. Something bigger.
Not knowing how to unpack that yet, I hover near the kitchen island, arms tight around myself, watching him clear away the evidence that someone tried to kill us in his home. His face is set. Calm on the surface. Not calm underneath. I know him now, and that just adds to the spark.
“You’re stress-cleaning after a sniper attack,” I say because I have nothing else.
“I’m removing anything that can cut your feet open.”
I look down at my bare feet and grimace.
He keeps going, pushing shards into the dust pan, emptying them into a bin bag, then going back for the smaller glittering pieces I would never spot before stepping on them. I pull my hair completely from its bun, over the sink and tip my head upside down.
“What are you doing?”
I shake my hair out, using my fingers to agitate the strands. “Shaking out any glass,” I say, not knowing if it’s the right thing to do or not.
When a few tiny shards fall into the sink, I figure I’m doing it right and keep going.
“Need some help?”
“I’ve got it.”
Ethan looks at me for a second longer, then sets the brush down on the counter and comes over.
Carefully, he lifts sections of my hair and checks through them. His fingers slide through the strands, slow and thorough, searching for anything sharp. The contact sends a stupid little shiver down my spine that has no business existing right now.
I hear the faint click of glass hitting the sink.
Then another.
His hand settles briefly at the nape of my neck before he pulls the last bits of broken glass free and steps away. “Better.”
Ethan studies me. “You okay?”
“No.”
The word comes out flatter than I mean it to.
Ethan’s expression changes anyway. Not softer. Sharper. More focused. He takes the dust pan to the counter and sets it down with care before turning fully to me.
“What do you need?”
“I need this day to fuck off,” I say. “I need to go to the police with Maeve’s name. I need to feel better after finding out who killed my mum. You know, normal people stuff. This is too dark, too much. Why doesn’t it feel better?”
Ethan stands in the centre of the kitchen. He doesn’t look away from me. “Because the truth doesn’t change the fact she’s gone, Tinks. It just gives the pain a different name.”
His voice is flat. It offers reality instead of empty comfort. I look at the sink where the glass shards sit.
“I thought knowing would make me feel lighter. Instead, the weight is just heavier.”
“The weight stays until we kill the cause.” Ethan stays in my space. His blue eyes are dark. They hold a promise of violence, and something low in my stomach pulls toward it. “I’m going to make sure she never gets near you.”
I look up at him. My pulse thuds against my ribs. “What if Jack is lying?”
“Then I’ll end him. I’ve wanted to for years, anyway. One more excuse won’t change the finish.” He reaches out. His palm stops just before it reaches my face. He waits. I move into the contact. His skin is warm. “We’re going to end this by being more lethal than she is.”
I want to believe him. I need to believe him. The air in the penthouse feels thin, even with the cold wind coming through the broken window.
“I’m tired of being the prey, Ethan.”
“Then stop being it. You’re with us now. We don’t hide.” He slides his hand into my hair. “We hunt.”
Hunt. It sounds like something from a different world, one where I’m not just a librarian with a hole in her heart.
“How?” I whisper.
Ethan’s thumb tracks over my cheekbone, tracing the line where the panic is still trying to leak out of my eyes. “By making them come to us. By being the one thing they can’t calculate.”
He pulls me flush against his chest, and I let my forehead drop into the crook of his neck. He is the only thing keeping me upright. I’m exhausted. The kind of tired that gets into your marrow and stays there.
“They’re going to be okay, aren’t they? Aidan and Callan?”
Ethan doesn’t answer immediately. He just holds me tighter, his heart a steady thud against my ribs. “They’re Deveauxs, Tinks. They’re harder to kill than bad habits.”
I want to believe the bravado. I want to sink into the certainty he radiates, but the cold wind whistling through the hole in the window won’t let me. It’s a constant reminder that the walls aren’t thick enough.
“Go to the bedroom,” he says, his voice dropping into that low, command frequency that makes my blood hum. “Get under the covers. I’m going to secure what I can, and then I’m coming in.”
“Don’t be long,” I mutter, already moving toward the hallway.
“I’m right behind you.”
I walk into the semi-dark bedroom and don’t turn on the light. I don’t want to see the curtains fluttering like ghosts. I just want to disappear into the blankets and pretend, for one hour, that the woman who wants me dead isn’t currently hunting my life.
I climb onto the mattress, my skin still buzzing from the sex, from the terror, from the slap I gave Jack.
I don’t feel like prey. I feel like a fuse that’s finally reached the powder.
I close my eyes. I want to sleep. The silence in the penthouse feels like a threat.
I imagine the woman outside, watching, waiting for the moment we drop our guard.
I won’t let her take anything else from me.
I don’t want to be the girl who hides in the dark anymore.
I jump when Ethan opens the door. He climbs onto the bed, on top of the covers, and lies back, staring at the ceiling.
“What exactly was the plan for Aidan and Callan to leave with Jack?” I ask. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Maeve will likely follow them, drawing her away from here.”
“You really think that Callan is right about the shot not being for me?”
“Callan sees things others don’t. His brain works on a higher level.
It’s why he thought about Maeve earlier from the texts.
It’s why he saw this. He is right, even if we can’t corroborate it.
I trust him. If she wanted you dead, the shooter wouldn’t have missed,” Ethan says, his voice a low vibration in the quiet room.
“She’s trying to isolate the target. She wants Jack.
You’re just the lever she uses to move him. ”
I pull the duvet up to my chin, the silk cold against my skin. “And then what? She comes for me to kill me face-to-face?”
I look into his blue eyes. They are hard. There is no mercy in them. This is the man who stalked me, who broke into my life, and now he is the only shield I have.