CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eight Years Ago
It’s raining the day he gets Margot’s postcard from Canada.
Lachlan adds it to his little magpie collection beside his bed in his new room inside the Cove.
What was once the childminder’s room is now his.
It connects with the shared ensuite, and although it’s more of a downgrade in space, he never needed much anyway.
He’s only waited this long to take the room to ensure Mimi had no lasting negative associations with Belkin’s occasional residence there, but when he suggested it, she was thrilled, especially when he agreed to let her decorate it however she wanted.
Lachlan’s room is cosy and small. Sometimes when he wakes, he has an armful of Jessamine Penhalyx. He never did find out how she got the code to his old room, but he’s fairly certain it was Jules’ technical prowess and Lachlan doesn’t care anyway. He likes this new set-up.
And his bedside table has many objects upon it.
He’s never had a reason to have a box before that wasn’t to do with weapons. He’s never had anything to store that was precious or irreplaceable. Everything he had could be bought elsewhere.
Now he has little treasures.
He has need of a box.
And Margot’s postcard is the newest addition.
Her message was simple and it was signed, Margot, Evan, and the demon spawn. She wrote a return address, but Lachlan won’t write back. They don’t really need to talk anymore after he sent her his full one-year advance.
It makes him happy that the money can do some good.
Lachlan is two years down out of five.
He has three years to figure out how to get these kids safely away from Alistair Penhalyx. He knows he can do it.
There’s no doubt whatsoever in his mind, but for now he focuses on ensuring the flow state of his protection and spending time with Mimi.
It’s Lachlan’s birthday in a few weeks and he religiously avoids celebrating it, but Mimi seems to have other ideas.
She’s already asked him when his birthday is because she wanted to make a calendar.
Everyone’s birthdays are on there.
Jules’ is way ahead in November, Mimi’s is in August, Blaire had a red velvet cake and accepted only handmade gifts in March and Vasily’s is lucky last, far ahead in the tail end of December. Lachlan’s is only weeks away in May.
‘No gifts,’ he insists when Blaire asks. ‘But let the kids do whatever they want. Cake and games, make it like it’s their birthday.’
‘You’re such a spoilsport.’
‘I hate my birthday.’
‘So let us change that.’
‘No.’
Blaire tuts.
Lachlan goes on duty.
Jules slips out for a couple of hours.
It’s become routine.
Lachlan lets him out once a week with a few hours’ headstart. Thus far, Jules has been respectful of the allowance. Jules never goes further than thirty miles. He takes the old tracking bracelet, and he lets Lachlan bring him in quietly without anyone noticing.
Danya helps cover for them, using Zaitsev to do it. Surveillance pauses and un-pauses in careful intervals, wrapped around them inside a moving blind spot. Lachlan doesn’t ask how Zaitsev is doing it, though eventually he’ll have to. There’s technical skill and then there’s whatever this is.
Lachlan’s earlier research into Paranaturals led nowhere, but Carrigan had been right. Zaitsev was held in Project Spectrum. The available records are thin to the point of uselessness, though that’s hardly surprising. Lachlan can’t risk digging deep enough to attract attention.
He doesn’t particularly care if Zaitsev is a Paranatural.
Brightling. Modern-day witch. Unlike many, Lachlan has never had much patience for that kind of prejudice, though he knows parts of his team still do.
Fenwick certainly wasn’t alone in his opinions.
If Zaitsev is a Paranatural, Lachlan needs to know, but like much else that’s low urgency right now, it can wait.
Lachlan trains Jules five out of seven days a week. He breaks it up accordingly but wakes him early each morning even on rest days because to lose the rhythm would encourage backsliding and Lachlan is military through and through, knows the value of routine.
On “rest days” he trains him in different ways.
Tactics, language, style study and once a week, Tai Chi which Jules pretends to hate. Lachlan doesn’t know why because he never sees him more at peace than when he’s making the motions.
‘Why don’t you teach me other stuff?’ Jules asks when they head inside together after Tai Chi bathed in sunrise.
‘Like what?’ Lachlan asks, eyes on Jules while they’re outside.
‘Like boxing. Kickboxing. Taekwondo. Why CQC?’
‘Because in a real fight, the person in front of you won’t bow, they won’t follow rules and they won’t stay above the belt.
I am teaching you other stuff, too. Punches, kicks, balance.
CQC is good because it teaches you how to use your surroundings against your opponent.
It’s brutal, vicious and dirty.’ Lachlan grins at Jules obnoxiously. ‘Hence why I thought you’d like it.’
‘Fuck you.’
Lachlan chuckles, checks in. ‘Kestrel to Control, confirm status.’
‘Eight bells, Kestrel.’
‘Seriously, why though?’
Lachlan side-eyes him. ‘Truth?’
‘Always.’
‘I thought it was what you’d need the most.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s harder to put martial arts to use when someone is on top of you,’ Lachlan says bluntly.
‘You can learn so much about fighting but nothing prepares you to fight when you have no space to breathe, move, can’t even draw back a fist. CQC teaches you to navigate that.
Once you have it down, learn whatever else you want, but you’ll always be master of your own space and that’s what I wanted for you right from the start. ’
Jules seems to read him in that way he does sometimes.
Lachlan can almost feel it, like the brush of static. ‘What?’
‘You became what you needed,’ Jules observes quietly.
‘So can you.’
?
Danya and Carrigan don’t get along.
It takes Lachlan a while to notice, mostly because Carrigan no longer operates within his security sphere in the East Wing.
She’s based out of the South Wing now, in what used to be Clara and Fenwick’s territory.
They still meet once a day to go over operational details, overnight reports, clearance approvals, scheduling.
He’s never really seen her with Danya Yashin before.
Danya knocks on the door midway through their morning meeting and Lachlan tells him to come in. Carrigan’s reaction is immediate.
One second composed, the next gone cold.
Danya barely even looks at her, only Lachlan.
‘Perimeter sensors are down in quadrant five. I sent team to investigate. Permission to switch to dark-band?’
Lachlan clocks why Danya requested the switch to dark-band in person instead of over comms. It’s never smart to announce a surveillance problem across an active channel while you’re still trying to fix it. Danya often thinks the same way Lachlan does.
‘Go ahead. Good catch.’
‘Next time wait until we’re done,’ Carrigan says without looking at him.
Danya doesn’t miss a beat, hand on the door.
‘Security comes before ceremony,’ he counters dismissively, then says to Lachlan, ‘Dark-band, four-minute check-in,’ before he leaves.
Lachlan looks at her. ‘Is there an issue?’
‘He just doesn’t read right to me.’
‘He’s good at what he does,’ Lachlan says. ‘All three of them are.’
‘They’re not ours though, are they?’
‘Meaning what?’
‘They’re Sorrenko’s.’
‘I vetted them.’
‘Zaitsev is a Paranatural. He could manipulate—’
‘We don’t know that he is,’ Lachlan interrupts, ‘just that he was held as one.’
‘I don’t like him,’ she admits, sitting back. ‘Yashin.’
‘Fair enough, but he’s right. Security before ceremony always.’
Carrigan makes a face. ‘Is that what I do, then? Pander to ceremony?’
‘In a way, yeah,’ he answers fairly.
‘I make more money than you do now.’
‘I should hope so, but the priority is safety and safety is achieved by security. You know that.’
‘Whose efforts do you think allow you to create safety?’
‘If you don’t like him, that’s fine, but the chain of command—’
‘Is where I sit higher than you,’ she reminds him.
‘—is fickle. The kids come first. We’re in agreement there, right?’
‘Of course,’ she says, inclining her head, focused on her paperwork, sitting rigid. ‘But they’re his children, Tanner, and I report to him, not you.’
It gives Lachlan a bad feeling all day.
One he can only work out with controlled violence.
Danya is his new favourite to spar with, so in the twilight hours, they train in the gym together.
When Lachlan asks what he thinks about Carrigan, Danya’s mouth twists, he spits blood, switching to Russian. ‘She is his,’ he simply tells Lachlan as if that says it all. ‘Not yours.’
After the sparring session, Lachlan feels lighter, wrung out in the best way.
Violence has always been the quickest route to quiet for him, especially the controlled kind.
Bruises blooming beneath skin, lungs burning, blood humming hard through his veins, it sands the sharp edges off everything else for a while.
He and Danya head for the showers together afterwards.
Side by side beneath hot water, shoulders loose from the fight, conversation comes easier after exertion.
Lachlan asks about Danya’s life, something he’s never done with anyone else he works with barring Blaire. It’s not idle. He genuinely wants to know.
Danya tells him about the girl he loved who died of cancer two years after they met and fell in love. Her name was Roxanne Bellitane.
‘She was my whole world,’ he tells Lachlan with a wistful sigh.
‘She was so fucking funny and mean and sexy. After my mother died, I had no one left in Russia, so she became my whole world. Her and her little brother, Lucas. She was British.’ Danya grins ruefully.
‘They’re so fucking sarcastic. My God, I miss her.
But before she died, she made me promise to take care of him so.
’ Danya shrugs, rinsing his hair. ‘He’s my reason right now. ’
‘How old is he?’