CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #4
The sound that follows is unlike anything he’s ever heard.
An orchestra of screams erupting beneath falling glass in sheer panic.
Savannah cries out for her mother, trying to run back, but her bodyguard catches her immediately and restrains her with sharp, quiet commands.
‘Oh my God,’ Jules utters, visibly terrified. ‘We’re being attacked again?’
‘Stay close to me,’ Lachlan instructs, moving swiftly onwards. He finds a small nook they can take a breath in. ‘Everyone close your eyes.’
‘What?’ Vasily asks, sounds terrified. ‘No, no, if we’re going to die, I won’t close my eyes, I want to see—’
‘They’ll cut the power next. You’ll be night-blind. Close your eyes now.’ Lachlan has a feeling Jules isn’t going to do it, so he covers the boy’s eyes with his hand, closes his own and counts the rings in a cut-down tree.
One.
Two.
Three.
He hears another new kind of scream, higher pitched, opens his eyes to near total darkness. ‘OK, open,’ he whispers.
‘Blyad,’ Roman mutters.
Lachlan looks to the Alderwyck bodyguard. ‘Can you keep her safe if I lock you down somewhere?’
‘I need to go back for my mom,’ Savannah whispers. ‘She needs me.’
‘I’ve got it,’ the other bodyguard says with a decisive nod.
Lachlan heads for one of the few rooms that locks this close to the ballroom.
His requests to install safe rooms around the ballroom were, of course, shot down, but he took the time to scope out preexisting ones.
Lachlan is meticulous about his corners, knows every inch of this place even in the dark.
When he reaches the room, he opens the door and is this close to leaving them when Savannah’s bodyguard says, ‘You should leave him with me too.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll cut a better path without him,’ he says, nodding at Jules and then the Sorrenko boys. ‘Leave them all with me. I’ve got this.’
Lachlan’s instincts might be dulled from playing babysitter for over a year, but he still trusts the small, hostile part of himself that bristles beneath his skin like a threatened sea urchin.
Jules is almost certainly the target of this attack, and no competent bodyguard broadens their protection detail around an active HVT unless ordered to.
‘Julian stays with me.’
‘I’m just offering—’
Lachlan smashes an elbow into the man’s face, and a fight erupts instantly, fast and savage.
Savannah screams. Lachlan snaps at her to shut up as he takes the bodyguard down hard, locks his legs around him and twists until the man’s neck breaks with a loud crack.
He fought well enough to break Lachlan’s nose, but it’s over in less than twenty seconds.
Adrenaline keeps the pain distant while Lachlan searches the body fast. Weapons.
Spare ammunition. A small handset switched to silent but still active.
He motions sharply for the kids to stay quiet, then flicks the handset off silent and listens to the burst of rapid-fire Russian crackling through the speaker, mostly code. Lachlan is proven right, at least.
Savannah is sobbing. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’
‘He’s with the Front. The Moroz Front,’ Lachlan says, keeps the radio on low, clips it to his shirt so he can track the stream. Maybe he can hijack the frequency, bounce something to Control. ‘They use very specific code.’
The kids are all muttering things, panicking.
‘He wouldn’t… he was my friend,’ Savannah cries, voice breaking.
Lachlan sorely wants to leave all three spare kids in here but without a protector he can’t and Jules won’t allow it. Fuck.
‘All right, listen up,’ he says quietly. ‘We need to get the East Wing. I’m taking all of you with me but if you make noise, we’ll be caught and killed. Do you understand?’
‘We understand,’ Jules says, wrapping an arm around Savannah’s shoulders. ‘We understand, don’t we, Ana?’
‘He was my friend. He was… he—’
Vasily hugs her, ‘We keep you safe, don’t worry.’
Lachlan looks to Roman, who nods. ‘You can trust me. I’ll keep them quiet.’
‘No screaming, no crying, no noise. Eyes on me, understood?’ All four mumble agreement. ‘Jules, remove your belt.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s your tracker.’
Jules pulls it out, lets it drop on the floor. Lachlan stomps on it and then pulls off his Kevlar threaded jacket and drapes it around Jules’ shoulders, then says to Roman, ‘Give her the bodyguard’s. It’s bulletproof, same as mine.’
Roman gives Savannah her dead bodyguard’s jacket, pulls her arms through it for her too. The poor thing is shaking so much her teeth chatter.
Lachlan gentles his voice. ‘It’s gonna be OK, sweetheart. Just stay with me.’
She manages a teary nod. ‘A-all right.’
‘Roman, you bring up the rear. Jules behind me, then Savannah, then Vasily. This,’ he says motioning with his hand, makes a raised fist, ‘means stop.’
‘I know the basics,’ Roman says. ‘You should give me a gun.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Lachlan insists while mentally acknowledging he might have to at some point. Roman Sorrenko is nineteen. Worst comes to worst, he’ll arm the kid if it means keeping the others safe. ‘Let’s move out.’
They move through the darkness, leaving the dead bodyguard behind.
Lachlan glances back once, confirming the children are still keeping formation behind him.
They make it up one floor, stopping at each hallway long enough for Lachlan to clear it before continuing on.
Ahead, distant white flashlight beams cut rapidly through the dark.
Still far enough away. Lachlan ushers the kids past before anyone spots them.
They’re currently in the furthest quadrant of the West Wing, moving east, but the centre is by far the most dangerous.
Twice along the way, Lachlan listens to the secret radio, finds the code they’re using borderline indecipherable.
He could crack it given time, the fairytale words mixed with military jargon, but his focus is needed elsewhere.
He pauses when they find another little pocket of safety, listens hard, eyes closed. ‘Roman,’ he whispers, beckoning the boy close. ‘Listen for me, tell me if anything stands out.’
‘I speak it too,’ Jules mutters.
‘Not like I do,’ Roman rightly points out, listening with his head cocked. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘Repeat words of value.’
‘They keep saying Lazorevy.’
‘I’ve never heard that before.’
‘It is old way of saying Lazurny.’
‘Azure?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘This word means… heaven, royalty, the blue of Gods.’
Lachlan looks at Jules.
‘Anything else?’
‘They are surrounding the East Wing.’
‘They’re what?’ Jules blurts out. ‘Mimi… they—’
‘Shh, stay quiet. They won’t get inside. We have to move.’
Avoiding the centre of the Estate proves harder than it should be. Guests scattered from the ballroom are flooding the corridors in blind panic, running through the dark like disturbed ants. Lachlan keeps the kids low, quiet and pressed into shadow whenever trouble comes close.
They pause halfway along the outer rung of the North Wing. Vasily leans towards Roman and whispers, ‘You think father is dead?’
‘No,’ Roman answers immediately, sounds certain.
The absence of contact is what starts bothering Lachlan most.
No soldiers. No armed intruders. He’s seen flashlight beams moving through the dark but hasn’t encountered a single operative directly.
It likely means they’re massing exactly where he’s headed.
‘Are you sure this is smartest plan?’ Roman asks Lachlan when they pause again to radio check. ‘I know the little girl is—’
‘Quiet,’ Lachlan tells him, eyes closed, listening to the radio.
Bits and pieces of broken code, set up, surrounded, confirmed, unbreakable.
The Azure.
That’s Jules, he’s positive.
God, he hopes Blaire is keeping Mimi safe.
When they get close to the entry points of the East Wing, Lachlan finally sees some of his own people. He pulls them into a quiet corner. Only five, but better than nothing.
‘Tell me everything,’ he says, and three talk at once but he can track all three conversations, takes the pertinent information and discards the rest. Several of his people are dead. They confirm it’s more than a random snatch and grab.
‘They want him alive,’ Lachlan agrees quietly. ‘Do we know if the thermal interference held up?’
‘I think so. We moved right by them, and they didn’t see us in the dark.’
‘Good.’
‘Sir, what about the vents?’
‘Mimi is terrified of them ever since…’ Lachlan doesn’t finish his sentence, doesn’t want Jules feeling worse than he does.
‘Blaire wouldn’t risk getting caught there for anything less than an emergency.
The Cove is well reinforced. The doors, walls and windows all close in the event of an emergency breach, and they have their own oxygen supply. ’
One of his people glances at Jules. ‘Sir, if Shimmer is secure, wouldn’t it make more sense to draw them away and get these kids to safety?’
‘Once we get into the Cove, I can get us all out through the vents. Mimi won’t go in there without me and it’s a labyrinth.’
He assigns each of the new people to a child, puts the best one on Jules and goes ahead alone to assess the assembly in the East Wing.
As he expected, it’s heavily concentrated around the Cove which, thus far, hasn’t been breached.
Lachlan’s insides tighten when he sees Bennett dead on the floor from a distance, but he shuts down that part of himself, stays in Focus Mode.
When he returns, he has a plan in mind.
But before he can open his mouth to speak it, gunfire explodes.
Vasily and Savannah scream as they’re pulled around a corner to get away.
Lachlan grabs Jules and whirls around to cover him before flattening him against the wall.
He reaches back to grab Roman but he’s already low to the floor, smart boy.
One of Lachlan’s people is dead.
The white lights move closer.
Lachlan drags Jules into the room with the two kids, Roman following.
‘Anyone hit?’ he asks, feeling Jules all over then the girl.
‘Lachlan,’ Jules says, eyes wide. ‘You. You’re.’
Oh.
Right.
His own arm is wet with blood and hurts like hell.
He’s been shot twice.