by Avery Flynn
“Thanks, Mom.”
Ruby gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek before they took off together, hurrying through the kitchen and out the side door onto the deserted staff patio. After a quick look around without spotting anyone, he took another few steps out into the garden and pulled her behind a tall trio of shrubs.
“He changed the exchange,” Ruby said, her voice low.
“Looks that way, but I need confirmation before I pull an entire team away from Luxembourg.” Really, it was pretty fucking ingenious. Even if the Silver Knights had known the delivery would have happened this way, there was no way they could have stopped and searched each of the vessels arriving at Fare Island without causing a huge international incident. “If it were me, I’d use the arrival of all the wedding guests like camouflage, but I wouldn’t want to keep a yacht docked with the others, too many prying criminal eyes, and I’d want to be able to have it guarded without drawing attention of the guests or anyone who might be monitoring by satellite.”
The satellite imagery of the island showed several narrow inlets, but none looked to be large enough for a yacht to tuck into.
“Skjult Bay. It’s small but deep. You could moor a yacht without any problems. There’s an abandoned lighthouse there that I used to hide in as a kid. You could use that to minimize the chance of anyone noticing the security sitting around.”
“That’s it.” The maps showed it as the largest cove. It was at the north end of the island, but without being able to go as the crow flies, it would take him twice as long to get there via the winding narrow roads circling the island. “Tell me the Sparrow showed you a shortcut during one of your weird bonding hikes.”
She grinned, her gray eyes sparkling with excitement. “There’s not a single millimeter of this island I don’t know. Come on. We don’t have time to waste.”
His gut twisted at the idea of putting her in a worse position than she was already in by having to delay getting off the island. “You’re not coming with me. It’s not safe. Just tell me how to get there.”
“You think I’m safer in that place?” She waved a hand toward the main house that was filled with some of the most dangerous people in Northern Europe. “I’ve never been safer than when I’m with you. You’re not going to let anything happen to me, right?”
Even the idea of it made bile rise in his throat. “Never.”
She kissed him, just a quick sweep of her lips across his, and he knew he’d never had a chance to win this argument. “Then let’s go.”
It only took a couple of minutes to get to the garage and swipe the keys to one of the all-terrain vehicles. From there it was a ten-minute drive over land and through an apple orchard to end up on the north coast inland from Skjult Bay. Leaving the ATV in the orchard, they snuck down toward the rocky shore and took up a surveillance spot behind a pair of boulders, peeking around it to spot a single yacht anchored in the bay.
Adrenaline roaring through his veins, he held a finger to his lips and then pointed to her and the spot where her feet were, motioning for her to stay put. He had to get closer, but he wasn’t going to risk her to do so. After she gave him a grimace and a nod, he hustled down to a rocky outcropping closer to the water’s edge.
Ruby’s guess had been spot-on. From his new location, he could see guards stationed outside the door of the tall, stone lighthouse, a trio standing under the yacht’s deck awning, and a few scattered stacks of automatic-weapon-sized crates on board.
Between the guns secured in the smuggler’s hold of his jet and Jasper, Clausen, and himself, they could maintain surveillance until the Silver Knights could arrive with the firepower to end the exchange before it had a chance to begin.
He grabbed his phone so he could alert Clausen and he turned to make his way back to Ruby. Something set off his inner alarms. He glanced up from the screen and stopped cold. It took a second for the scene to make sense in his head, and then the pieces tumbled together as the air drained out of his lungs.
Four yards away, Henriksen stood next to Rolf. Both were behind Ruby. Rolf had his Beretta 9mm pointed at the back of her head. The entire world narrowed down to a pinpoint with Ruby at the center and time slowed to a stop.
Your orders are simple. Discover the exchange location. Stop it. Save Elskov. The words were a scream in his head.
Henricksen was unarmed and had the panicked aura of a rabbit gone motionless. Lucas could take him. He could kill the bastard with his bare hands before he ever made it to the gun-packed yacht, but he couldn’t do it before Rolf pulled his trigger.
Ruby stood directly across from him, watching him with that damned bittersweet smile he fucking detested, the one that said it’s okay, screw me over, I knew it would happen eventually and have accepted it.
He tensed his muscles to walk forward into battle. The words came louder this time, so much his ears rang.
Your orders are simple.
Discover the exchange location.
Stop it.
Save Elskov.
There was nothing there about civilian casualties, nothing about saving Ruby—nothing about how to live with himself after. If Rolf didn’t kill her now, he would before Lucas could get back to Fare Island to save her. There was fear in her eyes but a determined tightness in her jaw. She was fighting the panic, but his girl was scared and she should be. She knew the stakes from the first moment he blackmailed her to put her life on the line so he could accomplish his mission.
Fuck his orders. He’d find another way to take down Henricksen. And as for Rolf? He was a dead man, he just didn’t know it yet. Lucas took a step forward, putting every bit of menace in that single movement he’d ever learned over a lifetime of fighting the odds all so he could betray the country that had saved him in order to save the woman he loved.
Rolf let out an acidic chuckle. “Women. They always push us into the wrong decision, don’t they, Luc?” He shoved the gun’s muzzle hard against Ruby’s temple. “Gregers, I have this. Go ahead and take the yacht.”
“Shoot him,” Henriksen demanded. “I’m not leaving witnesses, especially not a Silver Knight.”
“No one dies on my island without my say so.” An angry flush turned Rolf’s cheeks red. “Don’t press it, Gregers. I promise you won’t like the result.”
The other man hesitated, hate hardening his features, but after a few moments of indecision, stalked off toward the yacht. A small voice inside Lucas’s head yelled that he needed to follow Henriksen and take down his number one target, but there was no way he was going anywhere without Ruby.
Keeping his gaze hard and his stance loose, he considered the possibilities. Without a weapon there weren’t many options to be had. He couldn’t rush Rolf, not with his gun pressed against Ruby’s head, but he could distract the crime boss and draw his fire.
He took another threatening step forward. “Let her go.”
“Or what, you’ll glare me to death?” Rolf snarled. “I’m the only one with a gun here.”
The fool thought he couldn’t take a man apart with only his hands? “No, what I’ll do will be slow, painful, and leave you wishing I’d just blown your fucking head off.”
“The only one losing their head today will be you and this bit of fluff who was stupid enough to bring a Silver Knight on my island.” Rolf glanced down at Ruby who, even as scared as she was, looked ready to spit in his eye. “I’ve been waiting for this moment since I first laid eyes on you, girl.”
“Lucas, go!” Ruby screamed as she twisted and grabbed Rolf’s arm, shoving it upward.
That wasn’t going to happen. He charged toward Rolf. The other man’s eyes widened, and he fought off Ruby, shoving her to the ground. He brought the gun up and aimed the Beretta at Lucas.
A shot boomed.
Blood spurted from one side of Rolf’s temple and chunks of pink from the other. The crime boss dropped to his knees, way past dead before what was left of his head hit the grass. Lucas swerved around Ruby and grabbed Rolf’s gu
n from his dead grip, whirled around, and pointed toward the orchard where the kill shot had originated.
Ingrid stood there, her face grim. The Sparrow took the gun from her limp grasp.
Despite the training to go after his main target, Lucas gathered the woman he loved in his arms. Even as he watched Gregers and the yacht loaded down with a cache of arms make its way out into the Northern Atlantic, he knew there was no other place he could be right now.
“We’ve got to get moving, if you’re going to stop that boat before it gets to Elskov,” the Sparrow said. “I suggest we take care of it at my cabin.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ruby clung to Lucas on the ATV ride through the orchard and along the back roads to the Sparrow’s cabin. The speed and the wind prevented them from talking, but the tension in his body screamed louder than words. He should have gone after Gregers, but he’d stayed with her.
How would the queen interpret that? Disloyalty? Treason? What price would he pay for not following orders? There was always a price; she’d grown up seeing people pay dearly for slights much smaller than this one. She refused to let Lucas pay the price for her—she loved him too much for that. The best thing she could do for him was to get out of his life before she hurt him anymore.
As soon as they reached the Sparrow’s cabin, she hopped off the back of the ATV and hustled into the house ahead of him. The sound of gunfire could be heard in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before her stepfather’s minions stormed through the cabin door, determined to protect the remaining Macintoshes. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she had to convince him to go after Gregers now. If he didn’t, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
Jasper and Talia were already inside, both looking fierce and ready for a fight.
“He’s dead?” Jasper asked, looking from Ruby to her mother.
Ingrid nodded. “I need to talk to both of you. Alone. Now.”
“Take the bedroom,” the Sparrow said. “I’ll get these two set up. Sounds like most of the island knows already. Every one of the paranoid bastards at the house is going to think it was a plot by the person sitting next to them, and they’ll all come out guns blazing, thinking they’re next on the hit list. At that point, we’ll be lucky to find a port in the shitstorm.”
Before she could say anything to Lucas, her mother herded her and Jasper into the bedroom and shut the door behind them. Like the rest of the cabin, it was small and Spartan. There was barely enough room for the three of them to stand in a small circle in the tiny space between the door and the bed.
Her mother had just killed a man and instead of looking like she was about to fall apart like Ruby expected, Ingrid was 100 percent in lioness-protecting-her-cubs mode.
“We don’t have a lot of time, but I can’t leave without you both knowing the truth. I should have told you before but…well, I failed you there and I’m sorry.” Ingrid took a deep breath, a steely determination in her eyes. “When I met Rolf I was a young mother married to a very bad man who finally delivered one beating too many. I killed him before he could do the same to me.”
Ruby reached out for Jasper. His hand clamped around hers as she tried to make sense of her mother’s words.
Ingrid took in a shaky breath. “Rolf had been around for months at this point. He was always there when I turned around, like a guardian angel, stepping in when your father started getting angry and drunk, distracting him from his favorite target, me. Afterward, Rolf got me out of there. I was dumb enough to think he was doing it because he loved me. He didn’t love me. He was obsessed with having me. There is a definite difference, one I didn’t learn until years later when it was far too late. By the time I figure it out, I realized that I was trapped here and so were you. He held the possible murder charge over my head to keep me on Fare Island, and once the threat of that lost its power, he promised that if I ever left he’d kill you both.”
Her mother’s confession rattled around in her head like a pinball, crashing into forgotten memories and knocking them over so she could see them from a different perspective. Her mother’s depression. Her insistence on them always doing as Rolf asked. His preoccupation with controlling all of them. He’d threatened her mother with her life as much as he’d threatened Ruby with ruining Ingrid’s happiness. No doubt he’d dangled both of them in front of Jasper.
She turned to her brother. He was as slack jawed as she was.
Ingrid reached out and grabbed their hands. “I know you’ve each been trying to get out in your own way, and I’ve done what I can to help. The initial contact with the Americans while you were at college, Jasper? The Sparrow helped me arrange it. And Rolf finally giving in and allowing you to live off the island, Ruby? That took a lot of maneuvering, but we made it happen. Now that he’s dead, none of us have to worry about him ever again.”
“I don’t understand, why did you stay once we were older?” Ruby asked, trying desperately to understand a woman she’d thought she’d always known. “You’ve had opportunities—the trips to Paris or to Elskov.”
“I couldn’t, not until I knew you both were safe. Especially not with the mad game the both of you were playing with this whole fake wedding business,” she said.
“You knew?” she and Jasper both asked at the same time.
Ingrid laughed. “I’m your mother. I always know what you two are up to.”
“So what happens now?” Jasper asked.
“We get off this island, and after that, it’s up to you. You’re free. We’re all free.” Ingrid pulled her children in for a quick hug. “What do you want?”
What Ruby wanted, she couldn’t have—not all of it. Rolf being dead didn’t change the fact that the Silver Knights would never be able to see her as anything other than a criminal’s daughter and the reason why Gregers made it off Fare Island, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Lucas may think it wouldn’t matter, but the Silver Knights were his family, and eventually he’d resent her and hate himself for it. She refused to let that happen.
“I want to start over,” she said. A new place. A new life. It’s all she’d ever dreamed of and it was the last thing she wanted.
“I can make that happen,” Jasper said. “But it’s going to hurt.”
…
Lucas shrugged on the bulletproof vest Talia handed up from the storage unit hidden behind a false wall in the cabin. The Sparrow hadn’t been wrong. The sound of shots could be heard in the distance. The shooters would make their way here eventually. The cabin was on the way to the dock and the airstrip. If his shitty luck held, one of the Macintosh crew would be by to deliver the bad news about Rolf to the Sparrow and tell him to start sharpening his knives.
Still, even knowing that, he kept his attention focused on the bedroom door, waiting for it to open and Ruby to come out.
“You gonna keep staring a hole in that door, or are you going to pick a damn gun?” The Sparrow pointed at the gun rack filled to capacity.
“I’ll take the Uzi.” If he was going to have to fight his way to his jet on the airstrip in the midst of total anarchy, he wanted something that fired six hundred bullets a minute.
The Sparrow handed him the submachine gun as the bedroom door opened. Ruby walked out with her mom and brother. The moment she spotted him, she went still and two pink spots bloomed on her cheeks. His sixth sense went into overdrive. Whatever was coming next, he wasn’t going to like it.
“Are you ready, Hamish?” Ingrid asked.
The Sparrow nodded. “Yep. You’ve said your good-byes?”
She wiped away a tear and nodded.
“Okay then.” He opened the pantry and pulled a hidden latch to reveal a set of stairs. “Down through the tunnel. Follow me, and we’ll end up at Frihed Inlet. I’ve got a boat waiting.”
Ingrid gave Jasper and Ruby each a long hug, whispering something he couldn’t hear and then followed the Sparrow down the secret staircase, pulling the trap door shut with a final thunk.
Classen pres
sed her finger to the comm unit in her ear. “Copy that.” She turned to him. “Sir, the exfil unit is five minutes out. We have to go now.”
As soon as the first gunshots sounded outside the cabin, he’d known getting to the tarmac with Ruby was going to be too dangerous so he’d mobilized the offsite team commanding them to a rendezvous point away from the tarmac and dock. “Let’s go.”
Jasper shook his head. “And miss a once in a lifetime opportunity like this? The agency is going to love having a double agent of their own with access to everything the Macintosh organization knows.”
Fuck. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. The Americans would have access to information about all of the arms and drug deals happening in Northern Europe that were being used to fund terrorist activities. Turning down that opportunity would be insane.
“Understood,” he said, then turned to Clausen. “Looks like you’re riding solo.”
Clausen’s gaze lingered on Jasper for a heartbeat longer than necessary before she hustled out the backdoor without a word and climbed on one of the ATVs, ready to make a run for the airstrip.
He crossed the room and reached out for Ruby’s hands, but she kept them clasped in front of her.
She shook her head. “I’m staying.”
Two words that hit harder than a heavyweight punch. “Ruby—”
Another round of gunfire interrupted him. This time it was closer and accompanied by shouts.
“I’ll watch out for her. You don’t have time to argue.” Jasper said. “I can slow down the first wave of Macintosh soldiers, but they’ll be looking to sequester anyone who’s not family by any means necessary. You’ll have a five-minute head start, and after that, it’s all up to you.”
Oh, he’d make it out of here, and he’d do it with Ruby on that jet.
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She gave him that sad smile he really hated. “You have to go. Stop Gregers. Save Elskov. Be the good guy that I know you are.”