CHAPTER THIRTY
Lachlan only catches two hours of sleep after the sun rises.
They have a busy day ahead.
He eats breakfast with Mimi and Blaire.
Mimi is making many plans for the protection of the Estate while he’s gone. She’s asking Mari to bring his other fox friends here just in case, as backup.
Jules joins them half an hour into breakfast. He reaches for coffee, wincing only slightly as he sits down beside his little sister. ‘Hey, Mimikins,’ he greets when she looks up at him and beams. ‘How’s the schemes?’
‘Daddy and me are making plans for Shadow Sneak Myna.’
‘Excellent.’ Jules locks eyes with his bodyguard across the table for a single moment that feels like eternity. Lachlan’s heart trips, throat swelling to craft an involuntary swallow. ‘Morning, Lachlan.’
He doesn’t dare look at Blaire, who’s gone rigid beside him.
Of all the fucking times for Jules to say his name.
Blaire gets up and excuses herself, assures Mimi she’ll be right back.
Jules glances at her and then drops his gaze, guilt lightly creasing his eyes before it’s ironed away and he gives a small nod to Lachlan. ‘Show me your plans, Mimikins,’ Jules offers and she settles in, loves explaining things.
‘One minute,’ Lachlan says as he gets up to follow.
‘Ambitious for you,’ Jules quips. Despite everything, Lachlan has to bite back a smile as he goes to find Blaire.
She’s in her bedroom.
He doesn’t knock.
‘Blaire,’ he says, quietly beseeching, closing the door behind him.
‘You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.’
Lachlan closes his eyes.
Blaire has always been his mainstay.
‘I love him,’ Lachlan tells her, as if it explains anything, excuses it.
‘I knew that,’ she says tightly. ‘I’m not blind. Everyone knows, but did you consider how much more complicated this makes everything?’
‘I should have. I’m really sorry.’
‘Are you?’
‘I’m sorry that you’re upset.’
‘That’s such bullshit.’
‘Blaire.’
‘What? What have you to say, Lachlan? He’s…’ She trails off, shaking her head and then says, quieter, ‘You are many things, but not unintelligent.’
‘That’s up for debate.’
‘Sex complicates everything.’
‘I won’t let it.’
Blaire’s hand is wrapped around the necklace.
He’s terrified she’ll yank it off, break the chain and throw it at him.
‘You’ve already let too much happen.’
‘I love you so much, Blaire. Please.’
Her gaze darkens.
‘It’s not that. You and I walk the knife’s edge, Lachlan. For you to fuck with the balance is reckless, and for it to be selfishly done is hard for me to swallow but swallow I must.’ She looks away. ‘We’ve adjusted before. We will again.’
‘I’m sorry. I…’ He trails off.
‘“I… I…” You what? Hollow apologies and nothing to say. Fucking men,’ she mutters, mouth twisting. ‘Don’t be sorry. Be careful.’
‘You know I will.’
‘I don’t know that.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He steps away, hand in his hair. ‘I know it’s…’ Wrong. Bad. Complicated. ‘Not the best idea, but it’s not like the old man forbade it.’
‘Can you hear yourself?’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘You sound like Fenwick.’
‘That’s different.’
‘Because you decided it. Do you think my concern is Penhalyx? Are you really so blind?’
‘I must be, because yeah, that’s what I think,’ he says quietly.
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘You never need to worry about me.’
‘Well I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I got you...’ She cuts herself off sharply, anger icing over into control so fast it almost looks painful.
Blaire always seems furious with herself for feeling things at all, let alone showing them.
Staring hard at the wall ahead, she says, quieter now, ‘You’re already far too involved with them.
The more people you love, the less your own wellbeing matters to you, I fear. ’
He doesn’t know what to say to that.
Silence bubbles between them.
After several tense beats, he says, ‘I can’t do this without you.’
Blaire closes her eyes. ‘I know.’
‘I never wanted to upset you.’
‘It’s fine. You need to prepare. We’ll talk when you get back.’
?
Vasily gets to stay behind.
‘Take care of Mimi.’ Lachlan gives Vasily’s shoulder a light squeeze. ‘We’ll be back in four days.’
‘Of course I will,’ Vasily says with a small smile. The kid gets more colour in his cheeks every day he spends here, becoming at ease with himself. ‘Tell Roman I said hi.’
‘You got it.’
Mimi is with Blaire in her Tower.
Lachlan knows better than to say goodbye, it’ll be too hard for them both. He’s wearing the leaf necklace under his shirt, nestled under rig wires.
He’s briefed Carrigan.
He’s given Danya one of two satellite phones.
He’s leaving the Estate and not only for a few hours.
Jules goes with his father in the helicopter, rotor blades turning lazily overhead while Lachlan performs the final exterior checks around the aircraft.
Hands over seams and panels, eyes scanning hydraulics, landing gear, fuel lines.
He doesn’t climb aboard until he’s satisfied everything is exactly as it should be. It feels strange to buckle up.
Lachlan hasn’t been inside a helicopter for years and this one hardly resembles the last. Soft leather seating, polished cabin gleaming in the early morning sunlight beneath the slow rotation of the blades overhead.
Jules sits opposite beside his father.
The helicopter is a short forty-five-minute journey that takes them to Penhalyx’s private airfield where a jet waits on the runway.
Lachlan refuses champagne on the flight and goes over the security packet again, still unhappy with what he’s been given.
Just as the bodyguards of guests at the Estate were informed only as necessary, now Lachlan finds himself in the same role.
Jules sits with his father once more, the pair quietly talking.
Lachlan can’t hear what it’s about, but it’s only a short flight besides.
They land after three hours at an even smaller airfield on an island that isn’t Sable Key, but is, in fact, a staging island.
The layered security makes sense to Lachlan, who instantly approves of this deliberately unremarkable transit point for handling arrivals before access to the real island is granted.
A conversation with the harbourmaster reveals that a crew boat brings the Sable Key staff here from the mainland whenever the island is occupied.
So far, it’s not too bad.
Lachlan’s focus is drawn naturally back to Jules as they await transport to the island directly.
Every time Lachlan looks at Jules, he seems absolutely mesmerised by the dazzling marine-blue water, likely desperate to touch it, but Alistair keeps Jules close with his entourage for now.
From the staging island, they take a private launch across dazzling marine-blue waters.
Barely five minutes into the crossing, Sable Key rises into view all at once.
Bottle green treetops and a sugar-white shoreline.
It looks like something on the front of a postcard.
Lachlan smiles to himself when Jules reaches down the side of the boat just a little to touch the water. He hides his happiness well, but Lachlan knows him well enough by now to recognise it when he sees it.
Once they’re on the land, however, Lachlan’s reasons to smile vanish.
The island itself is small, three miles square at most.
The heat is significant.
Two golf carts arrive to collect them from the small dock.
Lachlan rides up front, studying this new place, scanning around as they’re driven to their destination.
‘Pure heaven,’ Alistair says from behind. ‘Paradise unparalleled.’
It’s not paradise to Lachlan.
The first thing he clocks is that the island has no elevation, no natural overwatch and, far more worryingly, it’s almost entirely coastline around the exterior. Palm trees, white sand, scalding sun overhead. It’s probably the most beautiful place he’s ever seen, but by far the most exposed.
As they draw closer, a gleaming villa looms ahead.
Lachlan leans forward, instantly troubled by the total lack of visible perimeter.
No fences, no towers. He can see the courtyard on one side and the glare of a pool on the other.
Surrounding the building, which is entirely glass in parts, cresting upwards like a boat sail, is a heavy amount of foliage at the base of worryingly high trees.
It’s stunning to the eye and it does provide cover but in the wrong way.
There’s no standoff distance at all.
‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ Penhalyx sighs happily to his son as the carts pull up.
Ariadne Alderwyck, her daughter Savannah and several others Lachlan recognises, are waiting to greet them, smiling and gracious in shades of white.
They’re close enough to the coastline that Lachlan can hear waves if he strains.
Lachlan scans the villa, which is really more a mansion, from the outside.
Beach doors, pool doors, service doors.
Guest villas. Garden paths.
Impossible to seal.
Limitless lines of sight.
The sun is blinding.
Lachlan is ignored at first, which is how he likes it. He’s too busy looking around for security presence, surprised to see so little. There are only two other bodyguards, both of whom are loitering by the pool and they seem far too relaxed for his liking.
‘I’m sure you remember my head of security,’ Alistair says to Richard Vale and Thomas Whitlock. ‘Lachlan Tanner.’
Lachlan gives a smart nod and a clipped, ‘Hello.’
‘Of course we remember him, Alistair. You speak of him often enough.’
Lachlan ignores that, more concerned by the lack of security.
Keeping eyes on Jules, who chats pleasantly with Savannah, he accompanies the group as they walk inside.
The mansion is bigger than it seems, stretching a long way back.
So many of the walls are heatless glass, made to catch the light and blossom prisms everywhere.
Lachlan can’t deny how striking it is, but it’s all worryingly spacious too.
No choke points, no narrow areas.
What he sees is aggressively open plan. Kitchen to dining to lounge to terrace to pool, it all runs through uninterrupted.
Ariadne gives Jules, and therefore Lachlan, a tour of the place with Savannah in tow. Lachlan is scanning for staff areas.