Chapter 24
Tyler
The corner of the operations centre I used for recon was sunk in shadows, a glow coming from the screens bolted into the far wall. Four feeds from the bodycams of four men I trusted to do what I said. And nothing I didn’t.
I braced my hands on a metal table, boots planted, gaze flicking between angles.
On Kane’s feed, night vision washed the exterior of the lake house compound in high contrast black and white, with water lapping at a private jetty, tall pines hemming the property in, and a stone wall running the land-side perimeter to keep the world out.
It couldn’t.
“Confirm location,” I murmured.
Kane adjusted his position, the image bouncing once as he settled. “Lake house located. Expensive taste, shite security. Cameras on the gate and east side are dead or decorative. Either way, someone paid for peace of mind and didn’t bother to check it worked.”
Suited me. “Access?”
“Narrow lane, high wall. No problem us getting in but vehicle access for extraction will take a minute,” he advised.
Heretic added, “Ash and I are on it. Sixty seconds.”
Someone appeared behind me. Arran.
He gave an explanation. “Our women are demanding live updates.”
Something crushed in my chest at the thought of Dixie being included in that number. I gestured to a seat, and Arran popped in an earbud, phone in hand.
I returned my focus to the operation. “Eyes on windows.”
Convict, positioned higher on the hillside, swung his camera towards the main structure. “Dining room’s lit up like Christmas. Either they’re enjoying sharing the easy life or they’ve never heard of curtains.”
Ash snorted, a scrabbling sound following, and branches crossing his camera view. On my tracker map, he was in the north corner of the property, close to the water. “Rich people love to be seen. It’s a disease. No known cure.”
Heretic didn’t bother commenting. The older of the Atherton brothers never did unless it mattered. His feed was steady, approaching the gate, his actions telling me he was measuring height, distance, considering options.
“Head count,” I asked.
Convict’s camera settled on the haze of a brightly lit house, visible amongst the black. “Two confirmed. Man and woman. Late fifties maybe. Wine on the table. He’s cutting something that bled earlier in life. She’s pretending not to hate him.”
Kane gave a low huff. “Romance isn’t dead. It’s just expensive.”
“No third?” I asked.
Kane’s night vision passed over the house in sweeps, picking up Heretic outside the gate and a faint glow of Ash shimmying along a tree branch that closed in on the wall.
It was our luck that the place had been forgotten and not maintained.
“Negative. No extra bodies, no movement. If the son’s here, he’s invisible or dead. ”
Annoyance tightened my jaw. We’d wanted all three. Husband. Wife. Adult son. Two wasn’t a dealbreaker, but it wasn’t the result I wanted to offer Dixie.
Ash spoke. “In position. About to drop.”
“Hold. All ready?” I asked.
Kane and Convict agreed. Heretic took a device up to the gate’s control panel.
“Proceed,” I ordered.
Ash dropped inside the wall, landing almost silently. He sprinted to the garage, pulling a thick cable from his rucksack. He dropped to a crouch and held it up, a counterpoint to Heretic twenty feet away on the other side of the entrance.
“What are they doing?” Arran asked.
“It’s a relay,” I explained. “When you have an electronic gate like this, often the homeowner’s car will have a proximity emitter so when they roll up, there’s no entering a code or waiting around.
The brothers are using a relay to extend the reach.
It’s a similar method to how keyless cars are stolen. ”
An elegant, simple solution.
From one of the microphones came a hushed grind of metal. Then Heretic gave the news I wanted to hear.
“In.”
A low whoop of success came from one of the other men, and all four were moving, inside the compound wall and over the mossy drive, spreading out to circle the property.
Ash spoke with a grin in his voice. “House is sexy. Wants us to come inside.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Kane muttered. “Less poetry, more opening doors.”
Heretic crossed the inner grounds, keeping to the shadows and out of the sensor range of an automatic light that could catch a man if he was sloppy. I took a breath to warn him, but there was no need.
“Side access,” he said at last. “Service door. Old lock. No alarm.”
“Confirm interior path,” I ordered.
His camera peered through a narrow window. “Utility room leads to a hall. Hall opens into the dining room on the right. Kitchen left. Stairs up at the end.”
At the far side of the building, Kane’s night vision sprang back on, picking up the warm kitchen and the bodies beyond.
No third occupant, still.
“These doors will pop easy,” he muttered.
Convict converged on him, Ash to Heretic.
“Proceed,” I said. “Keep those masks up.”
Kane grumbled at the order but complied. The black fabric provided some semblance of disguise, skeleton teeth grinning where their faces disappeared. The crew became something else then. Anonymous.
Intimidating.
Those we hunted spoke more when afraid. Not that I typically got that far. I admitted to myself that I could be a liability in the field. Not so much an issue when intercepting traffickers, but not ideal when capturing suspects like these.
As much as I wanted to be out on a mission, I knew my strengths and weaknesses. And my priorities. I was better off here.
Someone else entered behind me, and I squinted around at Cassie, drawing up another seat.
“Arran was taking way too long to text,” she griped then held up her phone. “Say hi to Dixie.”
I snapped my gaze to the pretty lady on her screen. “Hey, doll.”
Her lips curved into a smile that had my heart aching.
“Eyes on the prize, big man,” she chided.
I fought a grin and turned back to the operation, ignoring Cassie elbowing Arran with a whisper of the nickname I hadn’t meant to give up.
Heretic worked the lock in seconds. “Entry,” he breathed.
At the same time, Kane and Convict moved in from the lounge side, Kane taking point now, his camera dipping where he crossed the threshold. Convict followed, light-footed, humming under his breath like this was a social call.
“Convict,” I warned quietly.
“Relax, boss,” he whispered. “I hum when I’m happy. Keeps the nerves under control.”
“I’d prefer the occupants that way. Convict, hum quieter.”
Ash stifled a laugh as he slipped in behind Heretic and eased the door shut.
In the interior, yellow light bled down the hall. Classical music played somewhere in the house, and cutlery clinked. A woman laughed too loudly at something that probably wasn’t funny.
“Positions,” I said.
Kane flattened himself against the wall outside the dining room, peering in.
Convict mirrored him opposite. Ash took the kitchen.
Heretic covered the stairs, still as a statue, listening.
Just the same as the collection of people in my operations suite and on the phone all seemed to hold our breaths.
Kane murmured, “Two targets confirmed. Nothing upstairs. No heat.”
That answered one question and raised another.
“Execute,” I commanded.
They moved together, the minute adjustments of the green dots on my tracker screen a rush of my team in action.
Kane stepped in first, a blade in hand, his voice deceptively calm. “Evening.”
The woman screamed. The man stood too fast, his chair scraping back. Wine spilled.
Convict was behind him in a blink, arm locking around his chest, knife appearing without ceremony and resting under the man’s jaw. “Sit,” he said pleasantly. “Or don’t. Your call.”
Cassie cackled. “Your boy’s a menace, Mila.”
Down the line, Mila answered with a laugh, “Tell me about it.” She sounded proud.
Ash caught the woman before she bolted, guiding her down with a hand at her shoulder, firm but not cruel. “Easy. Nobody’s here to ruin dinner. Permanently.”
“There’s cash. In a safe in the office. I have the code,” the man spluttered. “My wife has jewellery.”
Heretic appeared at the doorway, blocking escape routes with a casual lean.
The husband stopped talking.
“Who else is here?” Kane asked.
“No one,” the woman squeaked.
With no further heat signals, no second car, and a table set for two, it felt truthful.
“Push her on it,” I ordered in his ear.
“Another vehicle was seen coming and going,” Kane said.
Her eyes widened, perhaps at the assumption they’d been watched. “Our son. He left this morning. He isn’t coming back.”
“Where did he go?”
She pressed her lips together, darting her gaze to her husband.
I didn’t like the look of either of them.
Their middle-class swag rubbed me up wrong.
The clothes, the fact they were fine dining in a dead man’s house while the police sought them.
It all smacked of a superior, entitled air of people who thought themselves better than others.
The type who believed money made them untouchable.
At the head of the table, Kane sighed and lifted his chin to Convict. Con raised his blade a millimetre. Blood beaded and ran down the husband’s throat in a line.
My heart thumped faster.
If we were right, and they were traffickers, they deserved a whole lot more pain. I wanted it. My pulse picked up.
“Answer or he’ll be cut into pieces and fed to the lake,” Kane added.
“We…we don’t know. He left after an argument.”
“Give us your best guess. If you lie, you won’t like what happens next.”
“Maybe his girlfriend’s?” She rattled off an address in Deadwater.
“Nature of the argument?” I asked.
Kane repeated the question, and the woman dropped her gaze to her plate.
“Money. He wanted more than we had. He called us selfish.”
“Yet ye have cash in the safe.”
She snapped her focus back up, a sudden viciousness in her eyes, shown on Convict’s bodycam. “Take it, you thugs. That’s all people like you want. Take it and go.”
Kane huffed a cold laugh at the cousin who didn’t recognise him. “This is no home invasion, ye stupid fuck—”
Phylis Marchant-Smythe burst from her chair, knocking Ash away. She snatched for the carving knife in the centre of the table and whipped around, wielding it out.
Ash growled annoyance. He ducked back to avoid a swing then kicked up her chair, smacking it into her wrist. The knife clattered to the tiled floor, and in seconds, he had her arms behind her back and her face pressed to her plate, gravy slopping.
“My hair! Get off me,” she shrieked.
“Bind,” I said.
Ash reached for his small backpack and secured zip ties in place. Convict did the same for the husband who hadn’t moved a muscle.
The man’s face paled to match the white tablecloth. “What do you want with us? Who are you?”
Kane leaned close enough for the skeleton grin to be the last thing he focused on. “The people ye should’ve been afraid of.”
Two quick jabs knocked them out, and they slumped in their chairs.
I watched it all from the dark. Two captives secured. No third in sight. No alarms triggered.
“Secure their electronics then search the house,” I ordered. “Every room. Every cupboard. If the son isn’t here, there could be evidence on where he went, assuming the mother was lying.”
My men were already on it.
I straightened, rolling tension out of my shoulders.
“What next with the couple?” Arran asked. The screens reflected in his eyes.
Cassie waggled her phone. “The skeleton girls have something to say about that. Dixie?”
On the screen, Dixie gave a pretty grimace.
“Not to tread on any toes, but I was talking to Mila and Lovelyn about how these people need to be processed by the cops. They potentially know about trafficking routes and have contacts. Surely that should be part of a wider international takedown? It could be bigger than just Deadwater.”
I considered her request. “True. That tactic loses us access.”
“While also giving the public a target that isn’t Mila.”
Ah, I got it. She wanted to help her sister.
Arran asked, “And if the cops let them go?”
Cassie said, “We grab them right back up again and deliver payback for the suffering they caused. We still need to go after their son. Let the police handle the formal investigation.”
If I got into an interrogation room, both would likely end up dead. Still, I didn’t love simply giving up the people we’d found.
This time, it wasn’t my call. “Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll clone their phones and complete our search first.”
Cassie nodded. “Lovelyn will organise handover with her pet cop.”
I relayed that to my team who were coming up empty on anything further in the house. It looked like the Marchant-Smythes had arrived in a hurry, not bringing much.
“Exit,” I ordered. “We’ll reconvene and regroup.”
Then it was over to Heretic to work magic with their phones, Lovelyn to give a drop-off point for the police, and Kane to get back to his girlfriend’s side within his time limit.
I sat back in my seat, still buzzing from the raid. Adrenalised without the blood on my hands to help me come down.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Dixie: I’m going back to your apartment. Come up when you can?
My energy shifted again, drawing me back to the woman I’d never say no to. For her, I’d given up my usual trafficker takedown method, no question. I’d do far more, too. Given the chance, I’d tear up the world in her name.