Chapter 2 #2
"Fraser is in Edinburgh," he continued. "The money trail runs through Scotland, and she's the only person we know has been digging into Blackridge from the outside. We find out what Lennox saw, determine how much Fraser knows, then follow the property chain south."
"I'll go," I said.
Raze snorted softly. "Pretty sure that part was decided before we left the compound."
Toxic gave him a flat look. "It was. Same team. Irish leads recon, Trigger and Hawkeye cover him, and you and Storm follow the evidence trail. Cipher and Eli stay here. I don't want both of my tech people sitting on the wrong side of an ocean if things go to hell."
"Comforting," Eli muttered through the screen.
"Maverick?" I asked.
Steel leaned back. "Already knows you're coming."
That produced the first real easing in my chest since Cipher had shown us the map. I hadn't seen Maverick in years, but some men didn't require regular contact to remain brothers. "Still hustling half of England at poker tables?"
"According to Ellie, he calls it networking."
"According to everyone he's beaten, he calls anything networking if there's money on the table."
Raze looked interested. "I like him already."
"You won't when he takes your cash," I said.
Toxic dismissed the meeting twenty minutes later, but I had taken no more than two steps toward the door when his voice stopped me. "Irish. Stay."
Nobody looked surprised. Steel was the last one out and shut the door behind him, leaving Toxic and me alone with the map still glowing across the wall.
He waited until the sound of conversation moved farther down the hall before enlarging the western edge of Ireland.
One highlighted property sat close enough to County Clare that I knew the roads around it without reading the name.
"How close?" he asked.
"To what?"
His expression didn't change.
I exhaled through my nose. "Less than an hour from where I grew up. Depends on the road."
"And Covenant Renewal?"
"My father worked with a property foundation. Different name, as far as I remember. Same kind of work. Estates. Retreats. Restoration projects." I paused. "Could be nothing."
"You believe that?"
"No."
Toxic studied me for a moment before saying the one name almost nobody inside the clubhouse ever used. "Rory."
Every muscle across my shoulders tightened. "Don't."
He didn't apologize. Toxic knew when a line mattered, and he also knew when I was hiding behind one. "I'm not asking you to tell me everything tonight. I'm telling you not to turn this into something you have to carry alone because it touches Ireland."
"I know how to do my job."
"Never said you didn't."
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is you can disappear inside that job better than any man I've ever met.
" His voice remained calm, which somehow made the words land harder.
"You know the roads. You know the ports.
You know how to sit across from somebody for three hours and walk away knowing everything they tried not to tell you.
That's why you're going. But if this starts leading toward your family, you call me before you decide handling it alone is easier. "
I glanced toward the map.
Toxic followed my gaze. "You call before it becomes a graveyard."
For one terrible second, I was twenty-three again, standing in a stone hallway with blood on my hands and rain blowing through a front door that should have been closed.
I forced the memory back where it belonged. "Understood."
Toxic nodded once. He didn't ask whether I meant it. He simply trusted that I would try, and sometimes that was worse.
I stopped by my room long enough to change, shower the compound smoke from my skin, and pack what I needed into one bag.
I packed my passport, spare clothes, two phones, a notebook, chargers, a photograph of the ledger codes, and the weapons paperwork already handled through contacts I didn't need to know about.
I reached into the back of the drawer for my travel wallet, and the old brass key lying beneath it caught against my knuckle.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
The farmhouse key had crossed the Atlantic with me fifteen years earlier.
It had lived in drawers, pockets, lockboxes, and bags through every place I had called temporary before the Flaming Skulls stopped being temporary.
I had replaced almost everything else I owned since leaving Ireland. Not that key.
I picked it up and slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, telling myself that carrying it across the Atlantic did not mean I was ready to go home yet.
Forty minutes later, the SUVs pulled away from the clubhouse with Trigger driving the lead vehicle, Hawkeye beside him and the long black crossbow case stored with the rest of the equipment in back.
Raze and Storm followed while I sat watching the clubhouse disappear through the rear window.
Sunshine had packed enough food to survive a siege.
Lark had made every one of us promise to call.
Charlie had informed Hawkeye that crossbows were "cooler than boring guns," which had earned her a horrified look from Remedy and the first actual grin I'd seen from the prospect all day.
The families standing on the porch grew smaller as we reached the end of the road.
For years I had believed home was the place I had lost in Ireland, but the men and women disappearing behind us had slowly taught me that home could be something built again.
Now, somewhere across the Atlantic, a Scottish woman named Skye Fraser was looking for the person she considered family, and the same organization that had spent years stealing choices from ours might have taken hers.
I rested my hand over the farmhouse key inside my jacket as the airport lights appeared ahead.
This time, I wasn't crossing the Atlantic to run.
I was crossing it to find out what had followed me home.