Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
CIARAN
Well, this wasn’t fucking good.
Hadeom turning up at the worst possible time was...
“Not a coincidence,” Sawyer said, as if reading his mind. He took a dish of leftovers out of the fridge. “Did Cern tell him?”
“I doubt it,” Ciaran replied.
Sawyer raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“Cern has protected Salem for a very long time, and he healed him. Why would he do that only to hand him over a week later?”
Sawyer took out two plates and sighed. “I don’t know.
Something about Cern and Hadeom knowing each other just feels off.
Hadeom said he’s bringing a team out to fix the broken bars in the jail cell and have a catch-up after everything that’s happened with Lusca.
But the way he asked for intel on Salem...
” Sawyer shook his head. “It just all feels too coincidental.”
“And you don’t believe in coincidences,” Ciaran guessed.
“No, I do not.”
Ciaran took Sawyer’s hand. “Hey. Is it ideal? No. Is it probably bad? Perhaps. But we’ll be okay.
We’ll go tell everyone and action a plan.
Kellan, Dylan, and Hendrix can stay with Salem and Aurin, take food and whatever, and Otis and Pania can do patrol.
Beau and Hudson can show Hadeom the house and vegetable garden—so he can see how humanly boring and normal it is here now—and Fray and Tobin can hang around. ”
“And Tobin can try to get another read on him.”
“Yes. And if he asks where everyone else is, we’ll say they went to Hobart for some nightlife and restaurants, or whatever.” Ciaran studied Sawyer’s eyes, and, sliding his hand along Sawyer’s jaw, he pressed a kiss to his lips. “We’ll be okay, I promise. He won’t stay long, I’m sure.”
“He’ll want to speak to me alone, probably,” Sawyer said, rolling his eyes.
“May I suggest less attitude than what you gave Cern?” The corner of his lip pulled down. “I might have to apologise on your behalf.”
“I apologised,” Sawyer said petulantly.
“To the mountain.”
“And the mountain heard and forgave me. Or Cern heard me. I don’t know. But the wind and trees stopped trying to kill me, so....”
“Hm,” Ciaran hummed. “Still. A secondary apology from me when I hand-deliver his next grocery order couldn’t hurt.”
Sawyer sighed again, more dramatically this time. “All this talking,” he said, pouting his bottom lip. “And I still haven’t had food, and I still haven’t been railed. These are the conundrums I face, Ciaran.”
Ciaran laughed, pulling Sawyer closer, their hips pressed together. “Any particular order you prefer? Food, or...”
“Fucking. Fuck me now, feed me later. And then maybe more fucking. I think I’ll need it to face Hadeom tomorrow in a better mood.”
Ciaran reached up to brush his thumb gently across Sawyer’s cheek. The touch lingered, and Sawyer inhaled sharply, his ice-blue eyes sharpening a little.
“Maybe we should put the leftovers back in the fridge,” Ciaran murmured. “We might be a while.”
“Good idea,” Sawyer whispered, but neither of them moved for a second.
Ciaran looked at him, really looked at him, and suddenly the kitchen felt too small for all the things he wanted to say. They would deal with Hadeom tomorrow. Just as they would deal with Aurin and Salem’s predicament. And that was together. Always.
He kissed Sawyer slowly, tenderly, tasting his mouth and giving a hint of tongue before kissing along his jaw, nipping his earlobe, then sucking on that sweet spot on his neck that drove him crazy.
“Ciaran,” Sawyer whined, breathless. “You’re still not fucking me. I’m not face down and naked on the bed, and you’re not inside me. You need to be inside me.”
Ciaran chuckled, fisted the front of Sawyer’s shirt, and shoved him backwards toward the bedroom. Sawyer’s eyes lit up, his grin filthy as he fell onto the bed.
But Ciaran made good on his promises, and by the time they were done, a very sated Sawyer fell asleep with a smile.
SAWYER
The rain came down in a fine silver mist, too thin to drum against the ground, exactly, but too steady to ignore.
Sawyer wore his police-issued raincoat with the hood up, which Ciaran had called “cute,” and he’d also insisted on an umbrella.
Sawyer had argued that it wasn’t necessary because his plaster cast was protected enough by his coat, but Ciaran was adamant.
“It’s cold and wet today,” he’d said, his eyebrows knitted in a serious scowl. “If you get pneumonia, what then? Do I need to remind you of the frailties of the human lungs—”
So Sawyer had worn the coat and held the umbrella because no, he did not want to hear another lecture about his stupid human lungs.
The fact that Ciaran had been wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt was beside the point.
Apparently.
“At least wear jeans and a windbreaker,” Sawyer had argued. “At least try and look like a human in freezing cold weather.”
So, that’s how they both came to be standing out in the rain, waiting for Hadeom to arrive, both of them uncomfortable but dressed appropriately for the weather.
“This is so much fun,” Ciaran said, pulling at the coat sleeve. Rain pearled on the fabric and in his hair, turning the copper colour a dazzling mahogany. “Sleeves are so inconvenient.”
“You look like a dork,” Fray yelled out from his window.
“Hey, Fray,” Sawyer shouted. “Shut the fuck up and leave him alone.”
“I wasn’t talking to Ciaran,” he yelled back with a laugh.
Sawyer grumbled, and, pulling back the sleeve of his raincoat, he produced a middle finger. Of course Fray thought that was hilarious.
“Don’t encourage him,” Ciaran mumbled just as a gust of wind pushed cold mist across the Cove. The water, dark and foreboding, lapped at the pylons.
“The water is getting darker,” Sawyer said. “Like, way darker.”
“Yeah, I think it’s Salem being extra protective. I don’t think he’s doing it deliberately. I think it’s just him.”
“How were they this morning?”
“Good. Aurin didn’t come out of his cave; Salem said he’s fine, and he’s eating those frozen fish fillets.” Ciaran’s nose scrunched up in a way that made Sawyer smile. “But he’s much happier in the little cave. It was a great idea.”
“It was.”
“Hendrix, Kellan, and Dylan are down there with them, in case they need anything, and Otis and Pania are on patrol.”
Sawyer glanced down toward Beau and Hudson’s house. “And our resident gardeners?”
“They’ll come up when Hadeom gets here, just like we planned. It’s all good, Sawyer. We’ll be fine.”
“I want to know how they intend on fixing the metal bars,” Sawyer wondered out loud. “They’re built into the concrete.”
Before Ciaran could reply, a low vibration rolled through the clouds.
Both men looked up.
At first the helicopter was only a pulse inside the low clouds—a distant chopping sound muffled by rain. Then a searchlight tore through the mist overhead, bleaching the clouds white like a probe.
Sawyer shielded his eyes.
The helicopter descended slowly, emerging from the clouds like some enormous iron insect. Rotor wash blasted rainwater across the Cove in violent spirals, and the aircraft touched down with expert finesse.
For a moment, the engine kept roaring while figures moved behind the side door. Then the hatch slid open, and Hadeom stepped out with the confidence of a man who owned wherever he happened to be.
Tall, wearing a long navy pea coat, his black hair slick as oil, Hadeom moved with irritating calm while rain lashed sideways around him. Behind him came four members of his repair team, who then began hauling long steel cases marked with yellow hazard stripes out of the helicopter.
Sawyer stared. “The repair crew,” he murmured.
“Mm,” Ciaran replied quietly. “The same containment crew as before.”
Hadeom strode toward them, boots splashing through the grass.
His expression never changed as he looked past Sawyer to the water as if he just had to see it for himself.
He nodded once, as if that confirmed something, then he looked at Sawyer.
“Detective.” Then he spared a glance at Ciaran. “Mr Brenner.”
Sawyer didn’t care for that tone much at all. He grimaced through a smile and gestured toward the police station. “Shall we?”
The three of them headed over, the containment crew following.
Inside the police station, Sawyer stood the umbrella upside down in the corner and was just about to take his coat off, but what he saw made him pause. He’d expected a reaction from the containment team, or hell, just a single second glance would have been natural.
But they simply filed in, not even giving the busted bars a second glance, as if fixing iron bars that had been torn like wet cardboard was something they dealt with often.
They wasted no time, getting straight to work. One of the technicians cracked open a steel case. Inside were not welding tools, but heavy restraint bolts, silver stakes, coils of chain, and strange black cylindrical instrument etched with tiny white symbols.
Another technician took out what looked like a high-tech control panel. Sawyer had seen enough sci-fi movies and TV to know weird shit when he saw it.
And this was weird shit. There were no angle grinders, no saws of any kind—
“Should we go somewhere else?” Hadeom asked. “It’s about to get very loud in here.”
Sawyer doubted that. He wanted to see what this cylinder could do, and he was just about to say as much when Ciaran cleared his throat. “Sure. My shop is right next door.”
Ciaran led the way, quickly opening the front door and holding it until the three of them were inside.
Ciaran had his coat off so fast, Sawyer was surprised it didn’t rip at the seams. Sawyer shook out of his coat, careful of his plaster cast, and hung it on the hook rack by the door. He then smiled at Hadeom and gestured to the spare hook. “Your coat?”
Hadeom slipped off his coat, revealing a tight black turtleneck and fitted black pants. He was muscular, clearly very fit, and had the build of a fighter. Sawyer was surprised, though he probably shouldn’t have been. Hadeom’s suits certainly hid a multitude—