CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Show me what?’
Kade is assessing everything, outcomes, strategies.
The room is damp and the scent of mildewy water sits thick in his nostrils. Lachlan Tanner has Riley Harker by the throat and Kade knows how easy it is to make death in that way. The sight of that grip makes Kade’s own throat tighten in instinctive sympathy.
He raises both hands in placation and asks his question again.
‘What do you want to show me, Lachlan?’
‘A photograph.’
‘Let him go then you can show me.’
Lachlan growls, ‘I’m not in the mood for games.’
‘No games. You wanted me, I’m here.’ Kade steps closer, assessing Riley who watches him calmly, trusts Kade to handle it. ‘Let him go.’
‘He should die for what he did to you.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Lachlan. Let him go so we can talk. It’s me that you want, right? Here I am.’ Kade hears the arrival of the teams. ‘Everybody stay back,’ he calls out. ‘Stay out there.’
It’s Seth who answers. ‘Heard.’
‘Let him go so we can talk.’
‘We’re talking now.’
Kade shakes his head. ‘I can’t focus until you let him go.’
Lachlan’s mouth twists as he abruptly shoves Riley away, who stumbles hard, but Kade catches him before he can fall, relief like fresh air in his lungs. Riley straightens and throws Lachlan a look of abject, glacial loathing that’s there and gone so fast Kade isn’t even sure it was real.
‘Thank you,’ Kade tells Lachlan while he scans Riley all over for serious injuries, touches his neck, sees early bruises in newborn red, but he’s otherwise unharmed. Kade’s heart finally settles. ‘You good?’
‘I’m fine.’
Riley turns swiftly toward Lachlan, pulling Kade’s gun from its holster and aiming it between the intruder’s legs, but Kade steps between them before he can fire. ‘Whoa, whoa, let’s just—’
‘Move.’
‘It won’t kill him.’
‘No, but it’ll hurt like motherfucking hell.’
Lachlan knocks Kade aside.
‘Do your worst, Little Harker.’
Riley clicks back the hammer.
Kade gets between them again, more forcefully this time.
‘OK, just stop for a second, let’s just think this through!’
His boss glances at him, considers for a beat.
Then he says, ‘No,’ and shoots Lachlan in the foot instead.
Kade sighs roughly but makes no complaint. Riley hands his gun back and then goes to the door that Kade wrenched open, telling the teams for now everything is under control.
Lachlan, barefoot and shirtless, flexes his toes as the bullet pops out of his foot and the wound heals. ‘Fuckin’ hurts,’ he hisses.
‘Lotta bones in your foot,’ Riley tells him. ‘Better than your dick, though.’
‘I appreciate your restraint,’ the former bodyguard sneers sarcastically.
Quietly, Riley says to Kade, ‘You’re gonna have to handle him.’
Kade balks. ‘What?’
‘You heard me, First Captain.’
‘I mean, yes, I heard, but, like, what the fuck are you talking about?’
Lachlan laughs and echoes, ‘First Captain?’ with derisive, playful scorn.
‘Can you shut the fuck up?’ Kade snaps at him, then focuses on his boss again. ‘He’s immortal, Riley. We can’t—’
‘He’ll play nice for you.’
‘How do you know that?’
Riley sweeps his gaze over Lachlan. ‘You’ll play nice for him, right?’
The smile fades slowly. Lachlan tongues his cheek. ‘Yeah, I will.’
‘There, see?’
‘That’s… a lot to take on faith, isn’t it?’
‘My faith is in you, not him.’ Riley looks over Kade’s shoulder at Lachlan. ‘I’m warning you right now not to cause more trouble.’
Lachlan shakes his foot, last of the wound now vanished.
He healed much faster that time. ‘Your warning means less than nothing to me, Little Harker. You can’t kill me, you can’t hurt me and I still have devices planted in places you don’t know about, so watch your fucking tone.
’ He mimics Riley’s accent to add, ‘I’m warning you. ’
Kade bristles. ‘Don’t speak to him like that.’
‘I can’t believe you’re defending this thug.’
‘Don’t speak to him like that!’
‘I don’t want to speak to him at all. I only want to talk to you.’
If he can’t be killed or even restrained and the “other devices” threat is credible (it clearly is) then aggravating him will backfire. Riley is right. All they have right now is the fact that this man wants to talk to Kade.
‘If I let you, will you agree to some ground rules?’
‘I’ll agree to whatever you want, Kade.’
Glancing at Riley for the go ahead, given a small nod, Kade says, ‘OK, then obviously no harming anyone in here. No shooting anyone, no killing anyone, no hurting my boss. No activating any devices. If you’re here to talk to me, then talk to me and don’t spill blood. Can you agree to that?’
The older man has a faint smile playing around his eyes, like he’s amused by Kade’s demands. ‘Anything else?’
Riley gives a small shake of his head. Kade says, ‘No.’
‘I asked you, not him.’
‘We want the same things.’
‘Fine. I agree not to kill any more members of Iron Star for now.’
‘Forever.’
‘No, not forever.’
‘Lachlan—’
‘I need to show you something, Kade. Tell your boss to leave.’
Kade bites down on his temper, but Riley squeezes Kade’s shoulder and says, ‘It’s fine, be careful,’ before he exits the broken room.
Kade waits until he’s gone and then turns his attention to Lachlan, who was watching his interaction with Riley very closely.
‘Show me, then.’
‘Are you and him…?’
‘Are we what?’ Kade asks, pushing where he senses weakness. ‘Boyfriends?’
‘Are you?’
‘No.’ Then he frowns slightly. ‘I don’t really…’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Show me the thing.’
Lachlan pulls it out of his back pocket. ‘Here.’
Kade takes it with outstretched hand, index and middle fingers grasping the thin object; fully laminated, creased and worn from handling.
It’s a photograph just like Lachlan said.
It shows a sunny day on grassy ground with a younger version of Lachlan in a messed-up suit and two kids.
His hair was shorter then. One of the kids is very young, little more than a toddler.
She has dark brown curls and a beaming smile while in Lachlan’s arms, who is laughing while looking at her.
She’s wearing a backpack in the picture.
Something multicoloured with a fluffy rainbow tail. The other kid is a teenager.
His smile isn’t so bright, but he seems happy in the picture.
He’s staring at Lachlan.
Kade squints because the sunlight obscures a lot, but he thinks maybe in a certain light it looks like him. He has no photos of his younger self, only knows who he sees in the mirror.
‘It does sort of look like me, but it’s not.’
‘Jules, that’s you.’
‘I don’t see it.’ Lachlan quietly takes the photograph back. ‘That was them?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The little girl was Mimi?’
‘I was sure you’d recognise her,’ he says, voice hoarse.
‘I don’t.’
‘Jules—’
‘Kade. My name is Kade. And if she was really my sister, don’t you think I’d feel something?
I’m sure it was painful to lose them,’ Kade says, shoring up what sympathy he has for this man given that he gunned down eighteen of his people and just took his boss hostage, ‘but I’m not who you think I am and it wasn’t my boss who killed them. ’
Lachlan looks around, seems to have adjusted suspiciously fast.
Neutral reset.
‘Can we talk somewhere else? I’m fucking freezing.’
Kade debates it, knows they can’t stay in here.
You’re gonna have to handle him, that’s what Riley said.
It’s so fucking flimsy, but the only thing stopping Lachlan Tanner from killing everyone is… Kade. They can’t gas him, drown him, shoot him.
‘Are you gonna cause trouble?’
‘No, that was always your domain,’ Lachlan says with a strange smile, waiting. Kade has a feeling Lachlan thinks he’s being polite.
The VII in the moon on his chest has become a VI.
‘All right. Let’s go outside.’
?
Behind the front face of the Tower there’s a narrow strip of hidden ground Kade sometimes disappears into when he needs space.
This chunk of outdoors is almost completely swallowed by the surrounding woodland, thick old trees pressing close enough to block most of the light.
Thorned undergrowth walls the clearing in on three sides, dense enough to discourage anyone wandering through by accident, but Kade knows all the ways through and knows where to stop, too.
It isn’t much out here. Just a small hollow of half-wild ground tucked behind the concrete high rise that he helped build into a fortress.
From the upper floors, the clearing barely exists at all beneath the canopy and Kade likes that. He can be alone, see the sky, breathe the air.
The sun is just starting to rise as they walk through into a narrow woodland clearing with Lachlan, who’s still shirtless and barefoot heedless of thorns, nettles or sharp stones.
His ruined boots are still in the Watch.
The situation is surreal, but walking through the trees, crunchy ground beneath his boots, Kade can adjust to almost anything.
‘You’re staring at me.’
‘Force of habit.’
‘Because you were my bodyguard,’ Kade says, mostly to remind himself. He doesn’t believe it, but he likes to keep Lachlan’s version of events clear. ‘Right?’
‘It was my job to have eyes on you whenever we shared space.’
‘You said you could prove it. Was the picture all you had?’
‘There are no public photographs of you online anywhere. He kept you both very well hidden. If I got into the Estate, maybe I could get more.’
‘The Penhalyx Estate?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It burned down years ago.’
Lachlan shrugs. ‘Not all of it.’
They walk in for a while longer, navigating the thin, treacherous trail Kade himself has worn down in these woods. He feels dark grey eyes trained on his every movement. ‘Talk to me then. This is what you wanted.’
‘What I wanted,’ Lachlan says, ‘was to kill everyone who played a part in what happened to you and Mimi.’
‘You must have loved her very much.’
‘I still do, every day.’
‘What about him? Jules.’
‘You were always more complicated.’
‘Complicated?’ Kade stares at him while they walk, and it’s funny how when he looks directly at him, Lachlan will look away.
‘Yeah.’
‘How so?’
‘It was complicated for a million reasons.’
‘Give me one.’