Chapter 31
Tyler
The drive out of Deadwater was quiet. It pressed in on my skull and made every thought loud.
Arran drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his open window frame.
In the back, Shade tapped his thumb against his knee, restless energy caged.
He’d found us readying to go and pitched a fit about coming along, rather than holding the fort as Arran had asked him to do.
Fine with me. The more of us, the greater the chance of success with the mission. I wouldn’t fail her.
I sat in the passenger seat with my phone face-up on my thigh.
Dixie’s dot pulsed on the tracker. Seventh floor. Safe. Surrounded by women who cared about her.
The urge to have Arran turn the car around nearly made me sick.
She’d given me permission to go, but I half wished she’d refused.
Arran broke the silence. “So, our man. Terrence Harford. What are we expecting? Any security? Any trouble?”
I thumbed the edge of my phone. “Castle Tien has a full perimeter system. Cameras. Motion sensors. Alarm tied to a private security company. Good toys sold to a rich man who’s mistaken if he thinks he’s untouchable.”
My friend nodded. “He lives alone?”
“His wife will be there. A housekeeper has a cottage onsite but not close enough to hear anyone shout. If we avoid tripping the alarms, we can be in and out in ten minutes.”
I’d already established their household and had Ash set up a couple of cameras on a scouting mission. Access was easy, a lane with a locked gate no match for a decent pair of bolt cutters.
Shade leaned forward. “We’re storming a castle. I like it.”
I glared out at the dark countryside. Fields and stone walls sped by. Trees stripped bare by winter. All of it peaceful enough to lull a man into thinking the world was safe.
It wasn’t. It never had been.
I continued with the plan. “We go in fast. We don’t get distracted. We don’t engage with anyone else. We take him and we’re gone.”
Shade snorted. “Hard to resist engaging when there’s an actual drawbridge.”
“It doesn’t have a drawbridge.”
“Seriously?”
Arran’s mouth quirked again. “It doesn’t. I know the place. Built for style, not function.”
Shade sat back, the disgruntled killer. “Fuck that. If I die in a castle, I’d just like it noted that as a poor Scotsman, I expected better.”
I shook my head and raised an eyebrow at Arran. “How?”
“Pretty sure my father knew Terrence. Seems the type he’d associate with. I looked up the castle when I heard its name.”
“Small world,” I muttered, though it wasn’t.
Arran’s father, when he wasn’t abusing his kid, had been a lord of the realm and a corrupt public official. Another part of the rich elite who fucked over anyone they chose. It didn’t surprise me at all.
Castle Tien appeared at the top of a long drive, looming above the trees. A fairy tale sort of place. All stone and fancy windows.
We’d already killed the headlights, and Arran drove on, circling the grounds until we reached a lane with thick trees at the edge of the property line.
I checked the time then the security sweep on my tablet.
Arran looked at me. “You’re certain he’s there?”
I inclined my head. “He drove home a couple of hours ago, and his car’s in the back courtyard. Lights in the main house suggest two occupants. One upstairs, one down in a lounge. That’s him.”
Shade sucked his teeth. “With those thick walls, the wife might not even hear.”
I hoped he was right. If I saw her, I couldn’t vouch for what I’d do. I swallowed a hit of adrenaline that had my hands shaking and turned to my friends. “The wife remains untouched. For now. If ye see me deciding otherwise…”
They swapped a glance.
Shade smirked. “Aye, we’ll sit on ye and judge ye after.”
We climbed from the car and moved through the trees, keeping low, using the dark as cover. We crossed the lawn, the grass damp underfoot, and reached the outer wall.
I lifted my hand. Both men stopped.
Similar to the lake house, motion sensors and cameras were our only real issues, but we couldn’t be too careful.
“Now,” I breathed.
We went over the wall.
Shade landed without a sound. Arran’s boots hit and stilled. Three men in black, masks up, crossing history with criminal intent.
The back door was secured with a keypad and digi-lock, two cameras covering the area. Same with the grand front entrance. Hard to find a way through. No matter, as we were going in through a barely protected side door.
Heretic would’ve opened it in six seconds.
It took me five.
Inside, the air was cooler and faintly scented with damp.
A hall stretched ahead, unlit aside from the spill of light from a room halfway down and a lamp at the base of the stairs at the far end.
We prowled in deeper. Portraits stared down from the walls, generations of arseholes in oil paint, all of them with the same dead-eyed entitlement.
Shade’s gaze swept the ceiling. “No cameras.”
“I know,” I said. “Keep your head down anyway.”
We moved on, passing doorways of empty rooms.
A lounge sat to the left, the source of the light. The clink of ice in a glass punctuated the quiet hum of a television. We spread out and gained a view inside. Terrence Harford lounged in an armchair, robe half-open, one foot propped on a tapestry stool. A tumbler in his hand of some brown liquid.
He turned his head at the soft sound of our entry and blinked, slow realisation hitting him that we were out of place. “What the—?”
Arran crossed the distance in two strides and slammed him back into the chair by his throat. Shade killed the lamp with a flick of his hand, plunging the room into shadow, only the moonlight piercing the space.
Harford’s breath hitched. He struggled under Arran’s grip then stilled at the glint of a blade.
“Please.” His voice trembled. “There’s money.”
“Yawn,” Shade intoned.
Arran gave a dark laugh and released his hold.
I stepped in close enough that my voice could be low. Intimate. “Terrence Harford.”
Rapist. The man who’d unknowingly hurt Dixie so badly her life had broken into pieces. He didn’t escape blame just because his wife had made him into a puppet.
Annoyance crossed his features, some kind of lazy cruelty underneath. “Who sent you?”
All I’d needed was the confirmation of his identity, just to eliminate any doubt.
I leaned in and let him see my eyes, showing him how I wasn’t here for money. Or to bargain or play. His actions towards Dixie had signed his death warrant, but they also told me he was used to a life where he got his own way. And took what he wanted.
Fury rose.
Something in him recognised the danger. His mouth quivered. “Wait.”
I snapped out a fist, smacking him and the chair to the floor. Both landed with a thump.
“Bag him before I kill him,” I ordered.
Arran produced zip ties. Shade gagged him without ceremony, his actions efficient and cold. Then he jabbed our prey’s neck with a needle, delivering a dose of unconsciousness the bastard didn’t deserve. At my feet, Harford struggled for the length of two breaths before he understood.
Good. Let him learn powerlessness.
We hauled him up and moved fast, keeping him between us. We hit the hall.
A figure stood at the far end.
Slim, paper-white, and wrapped in a silk dress, Denise Harford held the banister, her face composed. Not a woman woken in panic.
Her gaze snapped to her husband then to us. Her lips thinned.
I went still.
Not from fear, but from ice-cold fury.
That elegant mask. That cultivated calm. The woman Dixie had described with disbelief, because the world would never imagine that kind of person as evil.
Denise stared right back. Took in my posture. My mask. The way I stood between her and her husband.
But not the grip Arran had on the back of my jacket.
“Put him down,” she said softly.
“No,” I answered.
I held that ice queen’s gaze and let every promise I’d made to Dixie show. I wanted to step forward. To grab Denise Harford by the throat and let her know what it felt like to have your world ripped open by someone else’s spite.
But I’d promised. Even as every instinct screamed to do the opposite, I took a backwards step.
Denise’s voice chased us. “You’ll regret it.”
Shouldering Harford, Shade made a sound of amusement. “Original.”
I was slower to follow. When he reached the end of the hall, I’d barely moved. Denise’s eyes were still on mine. Then she slammed her palm down on a brass plate mounted to the wall.
A low, ugly wail erupted through the house.
Shade laughed. “Oh good, a panic button. I was hoping for that.”
Arran shook me. “Go.”
Denise stood beside the alarm panel, chin lifted, a queen defending her keep. For one final second, her gaze flicked to her husband. Not in concern, but cold calculation.
Then she smiled.
So badly, I wanted to turn back. Take her like we’d done with her rapist husband. But she could wait.
In time, I would come for every piece of her world, and she wouldn’t see until it was already on fire.
Arran growled a warning. Somewhere in the house, a door smacked open, the sound echoing.
At last, I gave up my side of the standoff and ran.
We thundered down the hall to where Shade waited, and Arran shoved open the back door. The night punched in. We extracted Terrence while the alarm screamed behind us and lights sprang on in the cottage across the lawn. Someone shouted.
Headlights flared at the front of the property. Security had acted fast. Faster than a callout should be.
We hit the wall, cleared it hard, and sprinted through the trees.
I chanced another look back. Men entered the front of the house. Another stopped at the door we’d just fled.
They didn’t come after us.
We threw Harford into the SUV, piled in after, and Arran gunned the engine.
“What the fuck is that about?” he asked.
Neither of us answered him, because there was no logical answer.
The tyres spat gravel. We tore down the lane, the castle shrinking behind us, its alarm still howling into the dark. At the previously locked gate, Shade leapt out and closed it with a chain of our own. Then we were off into the night, our head start now guaranteed.
Though I was ninety-nine percent certain we weren’t being chased.
Shade peered back at me over the seat, his mask tugged down. “That was the weirdest fucking shite ever. What was with that stare-off? She hates him, right? Why bother with the alarm if her guards weren’t there to protect them?”
Arran’s gaze flicked to mine. Something knowing lived there. “She summoned protection for herself.”
My blood rushed. I managed a nod. He was right.
The tracker dot on my phone pulsed. Dixie. Waiting for me. Safe.
I let the rage settle into its rightful place, a realisation following. I hadn’t gone into a frenzy, thank fuck. I’d stuck to the plan.
For her, I’d coped.
And when Denise Harford finally realised what we were doing, everything she had built would fall at Dixie’s feet.