by Maria Luis
Rowena’s voice breaks the stillness: “Barker has him.”
Inaudible words strike the rope as Guthram wrenches his body to the left. Gritting my teeth, I shove him back into line. “What’s their ETA?”
“Samuel says twenty minutes.”
On a quick look back, I see Rowena shove the mobile into her joggers while her gaze rakes over the subterranean space like she’s never encountered anything like it—and I doubt she has. Before the Westminster Riots, the Bascule Chambers regularly welcomed tourists wanting a glimpse of the massive Victorian counterweights which lift the Tower’s suspension bridge and allow ships passage down the Thames. Nowadays, the chambers are home only to the run-off soul looking to escape London’s streets.
And us.
“Let him know that we’ll be ready and waiting,” I tell her, fighting the flare of anticipation that sends my pulse into a quick clip. “We’re almost there.”
Soon.
Freedom. Happiness. Sunshine.
Fucking hell, I can almost taste it now.
But when we pass through the arched tunnel and finally enter the dimly lit, cavernous space, it’s only to find a familiar figure sitting on the theater-style brick steps that dominate half of the chamber.
With deliberate ease, Guy unfurls his body from the steps and rises to his feet.
The sight of him sends Guthram lurching forward with a muffled snarl and I snatch the back of his shirt to lock him in place—but my narrowed stare never veers away from my brother. “You’re supposed to be in Crowthorne right now.”
“I sent Hamish.” The clip of his boots echoes hollowly within the chamber, growing more distinct the closer he comes. “He’ll meet the Southampton team, as planned. The anti-loyalists will go home to their families, as planned. Nothing changes from me not being there.”
Maybe not but it still doesn’t change one crucial fact: “You called this is a suicide mission.”
His stride visibly falters.
Shadows chase across his chin, his throat, but a splice of light from the emergency lamps reveals those shrewd blue eyes scanning the exposed bascules in the brick-lined ceiling. Then, “When you go to battle, brother, you don’t do it alone.”
“You should have stayed with—”
“He’s not alone.”
My chin jerks to the right, where Rowena has stepped in beside me. She rolls her shoulders back, holds her head up high like the queen she is at heart, and throws me a fierce look. An involuntary intake of breath expands my chest, and Jesus. We’re standing in a room submerged beneath a city, hidden away from all of London, and I swear that I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. Holyrood is my family, Guy is my blood, but Rowena has somehow become the hope that beats mercilessly inside my veins.
The she-wolf. The phoenix rising.
A vision of life when I’ve always been a man consumed by death.
“He’s not alone,” she repeats firmly, dragging her gaze away from me to address my brother, “but I’m sure we can use all the help we can get. They should be here in”—she pulls out the mobile, its screen glowing bright—“eight minutes.”
“Or less,” I mutter, checking my watch, “if Barker starts running.”
Guy’s palm flattens over his holstered pistol. “Why the hell would he be running?”
Before I can answer, Guthram throws his weight against my hand—I don’t bother playing nice this time. Spinning his flailing frame under my arm, I shove him back, back, back until his heels hit the brick steps and he collapses onto his ass. Pulling the wire coil from my kit, I sink down to one knee and begin looping it, tight, around his ankles. Over his guttural shouting, I say, “Because I may have implied that Robert, here, will lose a limb for every minute that Marcus runs late.”
“You’re mad,” Guy says.
“Devious,” I grunt under my breath, “I prefer devious.”
Reaching into my armored vest again, I pull out a wool sack that’s eerily similar to the one Carrigan’s men used on me. One look at it and Guthram immediately tries to scramble backward but all he manages to do is send his restrained body teetering onto his side.
“This isn’t . . .” Struggling for the words, I stare down at the sack hanging harmlessly from my palm. A month ago—hell, even a fortnight ago—I would have taken great pleasure in killing Robert Guthram. It would be a lie to pretend that I don’t feel that way now too. “Pa would be disappointed in you. Everything you’ve become, everything you stand for”—I squeeze the wool tight in my fist then meet a pair of dark, furious eyes—“you’ve become the man you once slaughtered without a second thought.”
The rope scrapes the inner corners of his mouth when he clenches his jaw, looking like he’d spit on me—like he spat on Rowena—if he could somehow manage it.
“I should kill you, Guthram, but it turns out that I want my freedom more than I want your life.” Lowering one knee to the brick, I angle him upright and then slide the sack down over the top of his head. Once a legendary Holyrood agent, he’s been reduced to this: bound feet slamming against the ground and shackled body twisting wildly as he fights for escape. It’s too little too late. “Do as I told you and you’ll live. Whatever your son does with you after that isn’t my problem.”
And then I turn away from the man who once sheltered me from danger after our return from Paris. I feel the pinch of guilt in my chest. I taste the sour note of bitter regret on my tongue. None of it, however, is enough to deter me from the end game.
Freedom. Happiness. Sunshine.
Soon. Now. Fucking finally.
Hiking up the back of my shirt, I grasp the revolver that I took from Rowena’s wardrobe and approach her. She’s dressed in all black, from the jumper that covers her scarred forearms to the trainers that barely emit a sound on the brick as she meets me halfway. Her head immediately tips back, lips parting to speak, but I cut her off.
“If something happens, you shoot,” I say, my voice low, reaching for her hand, “and you won’t think twice about the consequences—do you hear me?”
Her surprised stare flickers up to my face. “I told you that I’ve never fired a gun.”
“And I believed you until I found this hidden in your room.” Nestling the grip in her palm, I close her slender fingers over the engraved metal. Then I meet her gaze. “You do everything with grit, with purpose. You’d never carry a firearm unless you made sure that you knew how to use it.”
“Damien, I—”
“Here we go, brother,” Guy mutters from behind me, “I can hear them in the tunnel. Get against the wall before the commissioner sees us.”
I tug Rowena behind me, drawing her into the shelter of shadow, but it’s the gut-wrenching memory of her arms slipping into the air at Broadmoor that has me growling, “Promise me that you’ll shoot. Promise me.”
“I promise, but—”
There are no but’s.
There are no if’s.
In this world, there are only when’s, and so I slam my mouth down on hers to swallow the undercurrent of fear marking her husky voice. The same fear that marks my soul. I devour her, forcing her lips open with a thrust of my tongue. She tastes like dreams. She tastes like life. My body aches to curl around her, to pull her flush against me until I can feel her heartbeat flutter against my chest. Freedom. Happiness. Sunshine. Almost there, almost there. With a clenched jaw, I tear away before I lose myself completely.
Those violet eyes lift to my face on a shattered breath.
Her fingers curl into her palm, shoulders rising and falling with emotion, and then she presses two fingers to her lips like she can hold onto the taste of me forever. No cunning smiles to issue a challenge this time. No lethal grins to make me feel duped. Instead, Rowena slides the revolver into the waistband of her joggers, as if it’s a move that she’s done a thousand times over, and then she shifts onto her toes and presses those same two fingers to my own lips.
Her touch is a vow.
A vow that she’ll
walk with me in the darkness, that she’ll dance in the pits of hell at my side. A vow that she is here, beside me, and I’m not alone.
Her whispered words hit me at the same time that I hear commotion entering the chamber: “Have no mercy.”
41
Damien
The Met’s police commissioner enters the Bascule Chambers exactly as I figured he would—with a sobbing Alfie Barker held at gunpoint.
I touch Rowena’s wrist to make sure she doesn’t make a sound.
We can’t reveal ourselves until the right moment or this will all come crashing down on our heads. Barker knows the plan; Samuel and Gregory—who should be trailing behind at a safe distance to avoid being seen—know the plan. And while Guy doesn’t know much of anything, he hasn’t failed a mission in the twenty years since we’ve returned from Paris. He’ll catch on, quick.
Stumbling forward from the brightly lit tunnel into the darkened chamber, Barker lifts his arms in surrender. Tears streak down his cheeks. Blood beads on his temple. He begins to beg, shamelessly, the second that the pistol jams, hard, into the back of his skull: “I have children. Daughters. Don’t . . . Oh, God, please don’t do this. Please.”
Marcus Guthram’s expression remains rigidly impassive. “You should have thought of that before you kidnapped him.” He shoves Barker deeper into the chamber. “Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” The impassivity contorts, revealing a fury that flares his nostrils. Like father, like son. “You sent me pictures of him nearly dead, you spineless twat! And now you want to tell me that you don’t know?”
A tendril of light reveals Barker’s trembling fingers. “He’s here, I promise. He’s—”
“Alive,” I finish for him, stepping out from the darkness. “Although for how long remains completely up to you, Commissioner.”
At the sound of my voice, Marcus’s head snaps in my direction.
The gun aimed at Barker now swings to me, and he snarls, “I should have known you were behind this.”
“And yet you came anyway.” I hold my hands up high to show that I’m not carrying. Not that he expects me to be empty-handed—and he’d be right. I’ve three knives tucked away, and two handguns holstered, one at my waist and the other at my ankle. I prepared for nothing less than war. “Some might even say you came hoping that I’d be the one waiting for you.”
“This piece of—” Lip curling, he slashes his arm and nails Barker in the back of the skull with the gun. The thud resonates through the chamber and Barker crumples instantly, his legs ceding defeat beneath him. Over the sound of his limp body hitting brick, Marcus taunts, “Having others do your dirty work now, Priest? Or were you too scared to meet me on your own?”
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
At the now-familiar words, I nearly bark out a laugh. “And here I thought you never missed a thing but maybe . . .” Rolling one shoulder, I keep my hands lifted by my ears. “Maybe you’re just too busy to notice when six of your men don’t return from a mission. Not great leadership on your part, I’ll say that, but no one’s ever accused you of knowing what the fuck you’re doing.”
The line of his arm barely dips. “Where are they? Priest, you better tell me—”
“Casualties of my own survival, unfortunately.”
“You bastard!”
A cruel smile touches my lips. “Don’t worry, they called me much, much worse.”
Though the pistol trembles in his grip, his dark eyes narrow to slits of rage. “I’m going to ask you this only once—where are the bodies?”
Stopping beside Barker, I touch my boot to his shoulder and roll him onto his back. His lids are closed, all the color gone from his face—but he breathes. I feel the rise and fall of his chest under my sole. He’ll wake with a hell of a concussion but still have his life. And he’ll go back to those two girls of his, his debt to Holyrood paid off in full.
“Did you hear me, Priest?” Marcus barks. “Where are the bodies?”
Without ever turning away from him, I step backward. “Already buried.”
“Where? Where did you—”
“All except for one that is.” Another backward step.
His mouth falls open and I hear only his harsh rush of breath when he slides his forefinger over the trigger. “Who? You tell me which one of my men you have or I’ll rip your blasted heart out. Do you hear me?” He follows me as he speaks, storming across the chambers to keep the distance between us tightly knit—and I let him.
Closer Marcus.
I retreat.
Come closer.
He advances.
On my periphery, I spot my brother on the move and purposely scuff the soles of my boots against the brick to muffle the sound of his stride. Back I go, back I move, and all the while, Marcus never removes his finger from the trigger.
A little more.
Just a little . . .
“You coward! You brought me here to the fucking underworld of London and now you run when—”
The words turn strangled when he spies Guthram’s bound feet.
Disbelief chases rage across his ashen features. The pistol follows me south as I drop to my heels and put a hand on Robert Guthram’s shoulder.
“You may recognize my guest,” I murmur, kicking up my chin so that Marcus stays in my line of sight. “Since he is, obviously, the reason that you’re here in the first place.”
“You—you—”
“You’re in a bit of a conundrum, aren’t you, Commissioner?” I smile, slowly, and reach for the sack covering Guthram’s head. Pulling it free, bit by bit, I reveal the rope still tied over his mouth and his bloodied nose. At the sight of his son, Guthram’s struggle begins again. I return my gaze to Marcus. “You could kill me, if you wanted.”
The gun inches closer.
“The problem with killing me,” I continue, flattening my hand on Guthram’s chest to keep him still, “is that you’ll never know where poor Kendrick is. That’s his name, right? He had a devil of a time saying much of anything after I was through with him.”
The commissioner’s roar hits the back of his clenched teeth.
“Tough choice, isn’t it?” Raising my brows, I lean over Guthram to make sure the rope is snug between his lips. “You kill me for your old man here or you find out where Kendrick is being held. You can’t have both.”
“Why.”
Steadily, I meet his stare. “You know why, Marcus.”
His lips peel back angrily and the gun collides with my browbone. “I know what you can do, you bastard. Anytime in the last seven months you could have taken the damned bounty off your own head.”
Oh, I’d thought about it.
Every fucking night, every bloody day—but it wouldn’t have mattered in the end. Because while I can hack my way in, I can’t convince the people of Britain that I’m not worth the thousands of pounds that the Met’s commissioner put on my head. In a time where people are struggling to carry on, the green that comes with turning me in is a first-class ticket to a better life.
“It has to come from you,” I edge out, despising the fact that I’m forced to grovel, “or it’ll mean nothing at all.”
The pistol digs in, canting my head at a sharp angle that makes me see red. “So, what you’re telling me is that your life is in my hands.”
I grit my teeth. “Kill me and you’ll only kill yourself, Marcus.”
“Take the rope off him.”
My stare catches on Guy, who’s moved stealthily to a few paces behind the commissioner. Don’t shoot, I want to shout. Jesus Christ don’t shoot. Until Marcus rings in to remove the bounty, he stays alive or this—every risk we’ve taken—will all be for nothing. Rowena nearly died to see me go free and I can’t . . . fuck.
“Take. Off. The. Rope.”
Each syllable is punctured with the pistol shoving my head farther bac
k. Fury swirls in my gut. Desperation claws at my lungs. If I remove the rope, Guthram will give away that we aren’t alone, but if I don’t . . .
There’s a good chance that Marcus will decide that he doesn’t give a damn about saving Kendrick. He’ll shoot me, then. Paint the bricks red with my brains. And Rowena will see it all unfold. A lifetime of nightmares where she’s surrounded by flames and then, in a heartbeat, she’ll remember me dead in this chamber forever after.
“Ease back,” I grunt, “and I’ll do it.”
The gun barely shifts.
Unable to turn my head, I trace the length of the rope from the back of Guthram’s skull. He twists his body and thrusts his chin away. It gives me pause, for less than a second, that he’s actively trying to pull back. I don’t let him. Sinking my fingers beneath the rough threads of the rope, I yank him into place.
The rope tears free and the commissioner turns away to face his father and, in that split-second moment where time slows and hell rises to destroy us all, I watch my brother pull the trigger.
A shout lodges in my throat.
Robert Guthram’s body spasms from the force of the blow.
And then Guy shoots again.
The commissioner’s anguished cry reverberates throughout the chamber. His right leg twists inward, his weight collapsing hard and fast. He lands on the ground, less than an arm’s length away from a dead Robert Guthram, but still has the wherewithal to lunge for the gun he dropped.
I launch for it at the same time.
He curses in my ear when I swipe it away and push up to my feet. Whirling on my brother, I hiss, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Hurrying shit along.”
His blue eyes don’t bother to meet mine as he holsters his firearm. Without another word, he crosses over to the commissioner and grabs him by the arms to prop him on the brick steps beside Guthram.
Fucking hell.
Oh, bloody fucking hell.
“Broadmoor is looking for him.” Wide-eyed, I look from one Guthram to the other. Father and son, both white-haired, both bleeding. “Jesus fucking Christ, the hospital has people looking for him and you killed him.”