Alec slunk forward, keeping low, his eyes on the guards. Two of them were deep in some kind of heated conversation if the manic wave of their hands was anything to go off of while the third seemed to be doing their level best to ignore the others. He couldn’t pause, else he’d seize up, but he also didn’t have a lot of dock left between him and the edge of the pool of light, and he had yet to come up with a suitable distraction.
He was three steps from being seen when a gun went off somewhere on the southern side of the island, and the guards’ conversation cut off abruptly as they jerked to attention and snapped their heads towards the sound. No doubt it was MacBain and his team. Alec knew he should let them handle it, but he’d come too far to turn back now. The guards talked briefly amongst themselves, though Alec couldn’t make out the words, and then two of them ran off in the direction of the disturbance. The other one drew their gun and began to scan the darkness beyond the fence for threats.
Alec froze, knowing a single movement could give him away, and instantly, his whole body began to stiffen. He dug the now dead burner phone from his pocket and threw it to his left as hard as he could, and it landed with a thud that immediately drew the guard’s attention. They raised their gun, pointed it towards the sound, and began to walk in that direction, torch sweeping the ground. Alec crept forward, using his hands for balance as his knees unstuck. He stepped into the light. The guard’s back was still him, so he kept his feet feather soft as he moved towards the gate. It was a lot harder to maintain a silent tread than it usually was. He reached for the gate latch, positive the guard was going to turn around and spot him at any moment, but they were down by the water’s edge, still hunting for his thrown phone.
The gate was locked because, of course, it was.
“Anything on your end?” the guard’s radio spat.
“I thought I heard something, but there’s nothing.”
Alec had seconds to act, but the cold had slowed his brain. He stared at the latch, trying to think. It didn’t seem terribly sturdy. He picked up a fist-sized rock and smashed it against the lock just as another gun went off. The mechanism was mangled, but the gate swung open, and he stepped swiftly inside, swinging it shut and diving behind a bush just as the guard turned around.
His heart thundered in his throat as he lay among the branches and waited to see if he would be discovered. He kept his head tipped towards the ground to hide the white of his face, but his ears strained for any noise of alarm.
“We’ve got intruders on three sides of the island,” the person on the other end of the island said. “I think some of them got inside.”
“What should I do?”
“Keep guarding the main gate. There might be more of them.”
Alec tilted his head until he could see the guard’s legs. They stood with their back to the gate, and it didn’t seem like they’d noticed the broken mechanism. Alec held his breath and scooted out from under the bush, keeping its branches between him and the guard. He cast his gaze around, but the brick building seemed otherwise unattended, everyone’s attention drawn to the shore.
He scanned the building. If he were a rich and despicable businessman, where would he hold a young child? Holden would have his office on the top floor, but would he keep Finn near him or somewhere else like a basement? If he went for the head, he could force Holden to take him to Finn, but he wasn’t entirely sure how he would manage that with a can of mace and a penknife. He also didn’t know how long he would last simply wandering around in and out of rooms looking for Finn.
He decided to go for Holden. He wanted to make the man pay.
One of the windows on the top floor was cracked open, no doubt to be able to listen in on the chaos below, and Alec thought he heard a man's angry voice slip through the crack. A drainage pipe led right to the window, and he had scaled many a drain pipe in his day, so hopefully, he would be able to do it even with the cold sapping at him.
He crossed the empty stretch of land between the fence and the building, shaking out his limbs in an attempt to bring as much warmth into them as he could, and then he put his hands on the cold metal and began to climb.
Twenty-Four
Fletcher opened the door on the left because we had no idea of where to start looking for Finn, and she figured we had to start somewhere. She found a closet full of cleaning supplies and not much else. I opened the door across from it as something slammed into the back door, the sentries still trying to bust their way past the heavy barricade. I looked down at a set of narrow, carpet-covered stairs.
“MacGowan said the room he saw in the video had cement block walls. Maybe it was an unfinished basement?” I said as I reached up to pull the string dangling from the bare bulb. The light was wan and flickering, in need of changing.
“Better than standing around here,” Fletcher said, eyeing the trembling door.
I drew my gun and held it at the ready as we descended the stairs. There were dirty boot prints on the carpet, leading both up and down the steps, but the staircase hit a dead end at the bottom and turned sharply to the right, so it was impossible to tell if anyone was down there. It seemed every other stair creaked and groaned no matter how I put my weight on it, announcing my approach to anyone who might care to listen.
I hit the landing and spun, putting my gun between me and anything that might be in the room. But there was only dust, two empty chairs, and a discarded magazine.
“Well, shit,” I said, holstering my weapon as I moved further into the room. The basement wasn’t large enough to run under the entire estate, but maybe it had once been a wine cellar or other such storage.
“Do you think he was here?” Fletcher asked as she began to nose around the edges of the room.
“At least for that video.” I ran my hand down the rough cement stone of the wall. “I hope they at least had the decency not to keep him down here the entire week.”
You might keep a man you’d abducted in a dingy, depressing room like this, but I thought you had to be a special kind of monster to stash a kid somewhere so uncomfortable and frightening.
“Do you think he’s in a bedroom or something upstairs?”
“They’d probably move him as soon as they realized they were under attack,” I mused, rubbing at my eyes as I tried to think. At least it was warmer inside, out of the wind and rain. I took off my wet hat and gloves, tucking them away in my duster pocket, and tried to squeeze some of the water from my hair. “He could be anywhere.”
Fletcher followed my lead and shed some of her sodden outerwear. “Would they try to smuggle him out?”
I hadn’t thought of that, I realized with a jolt of fear. Otherwise, I would have put a watcher on the dock. “They’d be crazy to risk it, right?” I said. “It would be too easy for one of us to spot them, and they wouldn’t know how well we have the island surrounded.”
The answer to that was not terribly well. There was a decent amount of shore between each of our landing points, but if I started thinking about that too hard, my whole plan might collapse.
“Let’s assume he’s here,” Fletcher decided, because there probably wasn’t much we could do if he wasn’t. “Let’s go find someone to tell us where.”
I nodded. It was a solid plan. Surely, there would still be someone inside, guarding valuables or the bossman. They wouldn’t all rush outside and leave this place undefended.
I jogged back upstairs, following the trail of water my coat had left behind when we came down and paused to listen at the door for a second before I pushed it open. The chest was still blocking the door to the outside, but it had been shoved forward half a foot, and there was an arm clawing at the gap, trying to widen it further.
“Should we ask one of them?” Fletcher whispered.
I shook my head. Four against two odds were not really something I wanted to get into at the moment, especially not in the narrow corridor.
We tried to move quietly to the door we hadn’t opened yet, but an eye pressed up agains
t that gap at just the wrong second and spotted us.
“Hey!” someone shouted, and the hand withdrew to draw a gun and fire wildly at us.
Fletcher and I threw ourselves into the next room and slammed the door shut. A single bullet spat through the wood, inches from Fletcher’s shoulder, and she stared at the faintly smoking hole, eyes wide, as the sound of struggle intensified outside.
I grabbed her elbow and shook it, pulling her back to the present. “Worry about being dead later,” I said.
“Great advice,” she drawled but pushed away her fear, and we turned to face the room together.
Thick rugs covered the floor in between the shiny leather furniture arrayed before an unlit fire. Bookshelves that looked like they were only there for shore took up two of the walls, the other two hung with large paintings of faraway places. There was an old-fashioned gun on the mantle above the fireplace, gleaming in the light of the faux-lamp that I turned on. The whole place screamed ‘pretentious’ to me.
I picked the far door to go through as something splintered in the hallway behind us, and we wound up in a corridor with far too many doors to choose from lining it. I cursed. There had to be a better way of doing this than randomly.
We opened each door as we made our way down the hall. I saw a bathroom, two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a small office. Fletcher found a staircase on her side, so we headed up to the next floor. She poked her nose out at the top before we let ourselves out into a sprawling library. Fletcher gasped, desire rising in her eyes. Shelves marched from floor to ceiling, polished wooden ladders leaning against them at irregular intervals. Plush armchairs were scattered throughout the room, low tables in between them, but as in the den, the space had an unused feel to it. There was no dust, but nor was there a single book out of place, and I wondered if the books could even breathe, packed so neatly in with each other.
“No time,” I said, because I could see that Fletcher was about to be sucked away by the tomes.
She gave me a sad look but followed me around the perimeter of the room as I went looking for a way out. The library was eerily silent without the rustle of turning pages and the quiet sound of breathing.
I threw open a door to a small security office, startling the woman watching security camera feeds on a set of tiny monitors. She jumped violently as the door hit the wall and spun in her chair, but I already had my gun up and pointed at her. It was the woman with the braided crown, whom we’d met at the Castle of Old Wick.
“Don’t try anything,” I said, gesturing to the red button she was reaching for with my gun. Her hand froze, then slunk sullenly back into her lap as she glared up at me. “Good. Now take us to your leader.”
Behind me, Fletcher groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“If I say no?” the woman asked.
My eyes flicked across the grainy monitors behind her. Figures ran across several of them, diving in and out of cover as gunshots turned the picture white for a second. Our pursuers had broken through the back door and were moving quickly through the building, and the woman was trying to stall us so they could get here.
“I will shoot you,” I said. “Up.”
“You won’t--” she began, but I shot her in the shoulder. I didn’t like people telling me what I would or wouldn’t do. The retort was near deafening in the small room, and the residual gunpowder stung my nose.
“Shit, Callum,” Fletcher said.
“Leader. Now,” I said. “I don’t like to repeat myself.”
The woman clutched at her shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers. She looked at me like I was crazy, but I wasn’t the one kidnapping children. I gestured at the door with my gun, impatience growing in my gut as I watched the four other lackeys pound down the long corridor towards the stairs.
The woman stood, grimaced as she almost lost her balance, and left the office, shooting withering glares at Fletcher and me as if looks could actually kill. “This way,” she said grumpily and pointed towards a door with leaves carved around the frame.
I motioned for her to go first, gun pointed at her back to make sure she didn’t get any tricksy ideas. Our pursuers burst into the library just as we reached the door. Fletcher spun and fired above their heads as I seized the woman’s collar before she could dive to the side and run away. She spluttered, choking, and I dragged her backwards. I didn’t have enough hands to open the door.
“Fletcher!” I ordered and took over covering our asses as she threw the door open.
I shoved the woman through and shut us in, plunging us into darkness. Fletcher found the light switch before the other woman could make a move, and then we were running up the stairs to the sound of feet pounding across the library floor.
We tumbled out onto the third floor, and I slipped on the red runner on the floor, banging into the wall. The woman took off, but Fletcher dropped and swept her leg in a circle, catching the woman before she made it three steps. She cried out as she hit the ground on her injured shoulder, but I didn’t have much sympathy for kidnappers.
I hauled her upright as Fletcher shoved a decorative dresser in front of the door. Someone ran into it a second later. “Mick!” the woman yelled.
“Sarah!” a man shouted back. “Open this door!” He, or one of his friends, shot at the lock, but it didn’t do much good with the dresser there.
“Which way?” I said, and Sarah pointed to the left.
I squinted at her, trying to decide if she was telling us the truth or just stalling until the others could breakthrough into the hallway. The door at the end of the corridor was made of a dark, gleaming wood, geometric designs carved into it, and I figured if I were richer than sin, I’d have my office behind a door like that.
I nodded to Fletcher, and she approached cautiously as I kept an eye on Sarah. Fletcher pressed her ear to the door, eyes closed for a second, and then motioned me forward. Something crashed against the door to the stairs, and the dresser tipped over, spilling our four harried pursuers into the corridor. I threw Sarah into them. One of the men tried to catch her but failed, and all five of them went down in a tangle of limbs and angry shouting as I raced towards Fletcher and Holden’s office.
We burst through the door before the people behind us could recover, and we immediately worked together to push a large armoire in front of it. Panting, I leaned against the cherry wood, hoping my pulse would drop before I gave myself a heart attack.
“Can I help you?” a man with an American accent asked, and I raised my head to see Thomas Holden sitting behind a large desk, watching us with dry amusement.
Twenty-Five
I glanced quickly around the office, but the three of us were the only ones there. Wood panelling lined the room, reflecting the light of the two yellow lamps to cast away all the shadows. There was a second closed door on the other side of the floor, no doubt ready to spit gun-toting criminals at us at any second. Glass cases on pedestals lined the wall across from the desk, seated in front of a large, slightly open picture window. I didn’t know enough about history or anthropology to guess where or when the objects inside were from. There was a tarnished metal shield, a chipped vase with black paintings swirled across it, and a gold and silver necklace, a teardrop pendant dangling in the air.
Thomas Holden himself sat in a high-backed, black leather chair which seemed ready to swallow him up. His shoulders were stooped, his neck drawn down almost like a turtle. His silver hair was slicked neatly back, and the wrinkles on his face were shallow, barely noticeable. The light caught his brown eyes as he cocked his head to regard us, turning nearly black. The pinstripe suit he wore probably cost more than my entire yearly salary.
“Can I help you?” he repeated, and I realized Fletcher and I had just been staring at him as we caught our breath. His voice was dry, like paper rubbing together, and it sent a shiver down my spine.
“Where are Finn Wair and Haruto Sato?” I asked, cutting right to the chase. I rose to my full height and strode to the centre of t
he room, trying to look commanding and not like I’d almost just drowned in the firth.
Holden smiled, but his thin lips made the expression look reptilian.
“Who?” he asked, and I wanted to punch him in his smug face. I still had my gun in hand, but I didn’t point it at Holden just yet.
Instead, I returned the chilly smile. “I am well past the mood for games, Mr Holden. Where are they?”
Instead of answering, Holden took the top off the crystal decanter on his desk and reached under his desk. I tensed, but he simply pulled out three matching glasses and set them in front of him. “You two look like you’re frozen to the bone. Please, sit. Have a drink while we discuss this like civilized people.”
“Your goons stay outside,” I said.
Holden smiled again, and it reminded me of an oil slick on water. “Of course.” He pressed a button on his desktop and spoke into the radio built in there. “Stand by, everyone. I’m going to have a little chat with our guests.” He released the button and arched an eyebrow in my direction. “Now, you do the same.”
I unclipped the radio from my belt and brought it to my mouth. “North Squad, South Squad. This is MacBain. I’m with Holden now. Hold your positions but do not engage. Over.”
Two “Yes, sirs” crackled through the speaker, and Holden nodded, satisfied, as I put the radio away. Fletcher and I holstered our guns, and I sat down carefully as if I expected the chair to try to bite me. I was loath to admit that the leather was soft and supple, luxuriously comfortable, especially when compared to my own desk chair with its broken lumbar support.
Buried Secrets (DCI MacBain Scottish Crimes Book 1) Page 19