Chapter 16
Callan
Annabelle stands in the middle of our living room, shaking with rage, grief, and purpose, and every instinct I have goes quiet.
That is how I know it is bad.
Noise is manageable. Panic is manageable.
This quiet inside me is not.
It is the place I go before I do something that cannot be undone.
Annabelle’s face is flushed, her eyes bright from tears she is too angry to shed now. Her hair is down, tangled. She is still barefoot. She still looks breakable to anyone stupid enough not to understand what has been forged in the last twenty-four hours.
Every person in here is calculating the same impossible equation and coming up with the same answer we all fucking hate.
She means it.
That is the problem. If she were scared and lashing out, we could wait her down. If she were spiralling, Ethan could tell her what to do, and she’d do it.
But she isn’t spiralling.
She is standing in the middle of the penthouse, grief carved into her face, fury keeping her spine straight, and she is more alive than she has been since we dragged her into our world.
“No,” Ethan says.
Annabelle slowly turns her head towards him. “We already did that part.”
“No.” He takes one step closer, not touching her. Smart. She looks like she might bite. “You can be angry. You can want them dead. You can want justice. You are not walking into a police station and letting one of those bastards take you anywhere.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“She is.”
Ethan turns to me, and Aidan, the absolute dick, raises the gun and points it at me.
“She’s doing it her way. If she doesn’t, she will regret it and blame us.”
“Then she blames us,” Ethan says.
“I will shoot you if you keep talking,” Aidan snarls.
“Oh, shut up,” Annabelle snaps, annoyance on her face. “Thank you, Callan, for being the only one in here thinking clearly.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Ethan looks at me like betrayal has a sound, and I just made it.
I don’t blame him.
But this is not a threat that dies clean if we keep her hidden. Men like Bennett don’t stop because doors are locked. They’ve been running this ring for years. They wait. They circle. They use badges, paperwork, and polite voices. They make the cage look official until the key is already gone.
“She needs control,” I say.
Ethan’s eyes narrow. “She needs to be alive.”
Aidan lowers the gun by a fraction, but not enough to make a fucking point of it. “I hate agreeing with him.”
“Good,” I say. “Suffer.”
Annabelle lets out a breath that is almost a laugh, but it breaks before it becomes one. She presses her fingers under her eyes and turns away from all of us for a second.
I watch her because I can’t stop.
I don’t like watching people. It makes them too close. It fills my head with details I don’t want. But with her, my mind tracks everything like it belongs there. Like she belongs there.
She turns back, and her chin lifts.
“Tell me how we make it safe,” she says.
Ethan makes a low sound in his throat. “We don’t. That’s the fucking issue.”
“Safer, then,” she fires back. “Tell me how we make it so they think I’m alone while I’m never actually alone. Callan. You see things no one else sees. How do we do this, so I don’t get killed?”
“Wires are out,” I say instantly. “They will check. Trackers are out. These are professionals who have gotten away with this for years. Not some thuggish idiots you can blindside. There is only one way that I can see to do this.”
“And that is?” Ethan spits out.
“To let Annabelle go in clean.” I hate every word of it, but it is the only way.
Ethan stares at me. “Clean.”
“Clean,” I repeat. “No wire. No tracker. No panic button in her pocket. Nothing that gives them a reason to change location or put a bullet in her.”
Annabelle swallows, but she does not back down. “Okay.”
“Not okay,” Ethan says.
I ignore him because if I look at him too long, we are going to fight, and one of us will do damage we don’t have time for. “We don’t put anything on her. We put everything around her.”
Maeve nods slowly from the kitchen. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“I’m thrilled,” Aidan mutters. “Really warms the heart when you two agree on how to risk her.”
“We stage the outside,” I say. “Bennett wants her alone. Fine. We make her alone from his view. Not from ours.”
Ethan’s expression does not change. “Explain.”
“She arrives by taxi. Public entrance. No one gets out with her. No one waits in the lobby. No obvious tail.”
“And where are you?” Annabelle asks.
“Already there,” I say. “Before you arrive.”
Maeve’s eyes sharpen. “Inside?”
“Near enough. Bennett won’t attack her, physically or verbally, in the station. He won’t risk it. There will be more straight police officers in there than corrupt. These are careful men. They haven’t gotten away with this for so long by being stupid and impulsive.”
“Correct,” Maeve says.
“Stop validating me,” I say without looking at her. “It makes me want to change my mind.”
Annabelle’s eyes come to mine. “Keep going.”
I nod once. “Bennett has to move you. That is where he exposes himself. Inside the station, he’s protected by procedure. Outside it, he’s just a man taking a woman somewhere she doesn’t want to go.”
“I might go willingly,” she says.
Aidan’s head snaps towards her. “Don’t help.”
“I’m not. I’m saying if he tells me there’s evidence somewhere, I might agree to go because that’s what I would’ve done yesterday. Before all this. I’d want answers.”
“That works,” Maeve says quietly.
Ethan turns on her. “Do not sound pleased.”
“I’m not pleased. I’m assessing.”
“You’re enjoying being useful.”
Her mouth hardens. “I’ve been useful for years. None of you noticed because you were too busy hating a ghost.”
Aidan laughs once, and it is sharp enough to make the air shift. “You chose that.”
Maeve looks at him. For a second, something moves through her face. Pain, maybe. Regret. I don’t care enough to name it.
“I did,” she says. “Because this matters.”
The room goes too still.
Annabelle steps between them before Aidan can answer. “Not now.”
That gets to me. She’s exhausted. Commanding. Completely fucking done.
Aidan closes his mouth, and Ethan’s eyes cut to him, noting it. We all do. Annabelle Harrison, barefoot and furious in our living room, shuts down Aidan Deveaux with two words.
I file that away with everything else about her that scares me.
“Fine,” Ethan says, but there is nothing fine about him. “Around her. Not on her. Who goes where?”
“We all go together, separate cars in case one of us gets waylaid. That leaves four cars still on her. Harder for Bennett to track, harder for us to lose him.”
“Four?” Ethan snaps. “You’re really trusting this bitch with Annabelle’s life?”
“Language,” Maeve snaps back.
“Fuck your language,” Aidan says.
Ethan ignores them both. “Four cars means you, me, Aidan, and Maeve. Aidan can barely stand upright.”
“I can stand,” Aidan says. “Besides, driving is sitting.”
“You passed out in a field.”
“I got better.”
Annabelle makes a sound under her breath. “This family is insane.”
“You’re in it now,” I say.
She looks at me. “I know.”
I have felt bones break cleaner than that.
I look away first because I need my brain back. “Bennett has to know we are involved with Annabelle by now. We all stay out of sight. If he spots one of us, he spots all of us.”
“Facts,” Ethan agrees. “So no one gets seen. But that leaves Annabelle walking into the station alone.”
“I can do it,” she says. “I have to.”
“It’s dangerous,” I say.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You said before he won’t try anything in front of straight officers. He can’t. He is too careful. I’ll be okay while I’m inside.”
“And if you’re not?” I move closer, reaching for her. The need to touch her and make sure she is still here is clawing at me almost as much as it used to claw at me to move away. That alone almost fucks me up.
My hand rests against her cheek, light enough that she can step out of it if she wants. She doesn’t. Her skin is warm. Too warm. Human. Alive. Mine, even if I have no clean right to the word. I can feel Maeve’s gaze burning into me, but I ignore her. She is irrelevant now.
“Then I make noise,” she says. “I scream. I throw something. I bite. I do whatever it takes to get attention. He is expecting grieving and meek Annabelle. Not this.” She gestures to herself.
“Good,” I say, and my thumb shifts once along her jaw before I make myself let go. “Inside the station, you stay visible.”
Ethan’s focus is fixed on my hand dropping away from her face. His control is fraying by inches. I can see it. Aidan can too, because he adjusts his stance between Ethan and me by half a step, despite looking like death with a fresh plaster.
Annabelle nods. “Okay.”
“Not okay,” Ethan says again, but the fight in it is different now. Lower. Worse. He is not arguing the plan anymore. He is arguing reality.
Maeve moves around the island and takes a notebook from her jeans pocket.
It is small, black, and battered at the corners.
“Bennett likes presenting himself as reasonable. If he thinks you are frightened but hopeful, he will use that. He will offer answers. He will probably say he has something your mother left behind.”
Annabelle goes still.
My stomach tightens.
“Don’t,” Ethan says.
Maeve’s eyes do not leave Annabelle. “I’m sorry, Annabelle, but you need to know what you’re really getting into.”
“I do,” she says.
Maeve hesitates and then nods. She leaves the notebook on the counter. “Tomorrow afternoon, then. Make it just after lunch. It will be busier, all around. I’ll be outside in a white Ford Focus.”
“The white hatchback,” she mutters.
Maeve presses her lips into a thin line and nods again. She heads for the lift, and we all let her go without saying goodbye. What’s the point? She isn’t our mother anymore.
“What now?” Annabelle asks, wringing her hands, the cracks showing now that Maeve has left.
“Now, we wait,” I say.