“Touché,” he allowed. Then he told her, “You celebrated a birthday three months ago, and I overheard you telling one of the women back at BKI that you could no longer get away with making silly mistakes. That it was one thing to cock things up in your twenties. You could blame it on youth. But once you hit thirty, being young and inexperienced didn’t hold any water.”
“Eavesdropper,” she accused.
“Loud talker,” he fired back.
Glancing over his shoulder, he found her head down. She was watching her footing over the uneven, leaf-strewn ground, and her damp hair created dark, wavy curtains that hid her face from him. The forest held the earthy aromas of moist soil and wet moss. But even so, he was almost certain he could detect the slightest hint of her shampoo.
Without glancing up, she said, “But you’re still two years older than I am, so my statement holds. Age before beauty.”
“Fine.” He blew out an overly dramatic breath as he returned his attention to the path. “I’m old, and you’re beautiful.”
He heard her boots stumble to a stop behind him. When he frowned over his shoulder, the look of astonishment that wallpapered her face brought him to an immediate halt. “What? I just let you win. Why are you staring at me like I’ve sprouted a second set of twig and berries from my forehead?”
“You think I’m beautiful?” The last word winged up an octave.
His brow pinched. “Of course I do. Any heterosexual red-blooded man would.”
Emily shook her head. “I’m too skinny. I don’t know how to put on makeup. I barely have any boobs.”
“Are you serious? Or are you fishing for compliments?” How could she not know how truly lovely she was? The woman had occasion to look in a damn mirror.
“I don’t even own a set of high heels.” She set her jaw at a mulish angle. “My preferred mode of dress involves hair ties and sweatshirts. I am the most unglamorous woman I know.”
Okay. Apparently she really didn’t know how lovely she was. It was the bloody damnedest thing.
“Glamour doesn’t have anything to do with beauty, darling. As for your breasts…” He allowed his gaze to travel over her chest, even though he couldn’t see past her puffy coat. Warmth stole into his blood, making him glance off into the distance. “Most men would say they’ve no use for more than a mouthful.”
Speaking of mouths, when he turned back, it was to find hers slung open. Deciding he’d said more than he should, he set off after the others. After a couple of seconds, he heard Emily’s hiking boots crunching atop the wet leaves behind him.
“On the subject of secrets…” she said, even though they were well past that stage in the conversation. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you still owe us an explanation for why you didn’t join Boss in Chicago right away. Plus, that bit about your folks requires further clarification, and you know it.”
“And now who’s Christian Watsoning her way ’round the subject?” He purred the words, but there was steel woven into his tone.
Chapter 8
“Which way did they go?” Ben glanced right, then left at the Y in the road.
“You’re asking me?” Lawrence growled incredulously. “You were the one who was meant to keep watch on ’em while I was driving.”
“I was!” Ben shot back. “But we waited too long in the valley between those hills, and I lost sight of ’em.”
“And whose fault was that? You said they were parked and that we needed to hold steady to make sure they hadn’t spotted us.”
“They were parked. And for a bloody long time too!”
Red once more tried to crowd Lawrence’s vision, but he blinked it away. He couldn’t let his anger consume him. He had to keep sight of the goal, which was saving Ben’s sorry hide, saving his own sorry hide, and finally balancing the scales of justice for his family. “Damnit, Ben! We’re not meant to be fighting about this. We’re not each other’s enemy. They’re the enemy.”
“Why?” Ben shook his head perplexedly. “Because maybe Christian Watson was the stupid prat who got our brother killed? We don’t even know for sure if—”
“We know,” Lawrence insisted, his fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. Time was of the essence. And this conversation was wasting precious amounts of it.
“No. We don’t,” Ben insisted, the vein pulsing in his forehead.
Lawrence’s little brother could be infuriatingly stubborn when he wanted to be. Lawrence recalled the time when Ben was eight years old and had gotten fed up with his older brothers always picking on him. To solve the problem, Ben had pitched a tent in the back garden and lived there for two whole months. It was only once winter set in and their mother feared her baby boy would die of hypothermia that she finally, with great crocodile tears in her eyes, convinced him to move back into the house.
“We don’t know if Watson is guilty,” Ben continued. “We suspect. That’s a different thing entirely. As for the others? They’re innocent. I think we needa slow down and rethink this—”
“Innocent?” Lawrence spat incredulously. “Would innocent people set off an explosion in a tiny seaside village? Would innocent people take the back roads to a private airport hangar when the motorway would have been twice as fast? Would innocent people knock off from the scene of a crime? For Christ’s sake, Ben. Think about it. They set off the explosion to escape the press. They took the back roads to avoid the CCTV cameras. They knocked off from the scene at the airport because they don’t wanna speak to the authorities. They. Are. Not. Innocent. They are bad people doing bad things. And even if it wasn’t our job to take scum like ’em off the streets, remember that doing ’em in is the only way we’re getting out of this without being thrown in the clink.”
“Speaking of cameras,” Ben said, “who’s to say what happened at the airport wasn’t recorded, huh? We could’ve been caught on tape—”
“No.” Lawrence didn’t let him finish. He could almost hear the second hand of an imaginary clock tick-tocking in his ear. “There weren’t any cameras.”
“How can you know that?” Ben’s face had turned candy-apple red.
Lawrence was meant to be the hotheaded one, so it irked him to have to be coolheaded now. “Remember that stabbing six months back? The one where two airplane mechanics got into a row in the car park over a woman, and one came away from the scuffle with a screwdriver lodged in his eye?”
Ben frowned. “The charges on the screwdriver stabber were dropped, weren’t they?”
“Indeed.” Lawrence nodded emphatically. “Because the stabber insisted the victim accidentally ran into the screwdriver when he went on the attack. And since there were no cameras or recordings to prove the stabber wrong, he walked away scot-free.”
“That was here?” Ben shook his head. “I mean, back at the private hangar?”
“The very same. So as long as we play our cards right, we can get outta this.”
“But killing ’em all, Lawrence? That’s going too far.”
Lawrence begged to differ. “Why? They’re obviously mixed up in some bad shit. How do we know they’re not murderers themselves? That explosion back at Port Isaac? It was ruddy huge. I’d be surprised if there weren’t casualties. And besides, slotting ’em all not only saves our hides, but it also gets justice for our family. Haven’t we always talked about making the one responsible pay?”
“Yeah…but…” When Ben swallowed, his throat sounded sticky. “How will we explain five dead bodies?”
A slow grin spread across Lawrence’s face. Ben blanched and backed away as if Lawrence had spiders crawling between his teeth. “We won’t have to explain anything. Old Man Murphy is pouring a foundation for his new barn tomorrow night. We’ll simply go in late and dump the bodies in the concrete before it dries. Then pour more over the top of ’em and even it all out. No one will ever know.”
Lawre
nce had never fancied their neighbor. The stodgy old farmer had always looked at Lawrence out of the sides of his eyes, like he didn’t trust Lawrence, like he sensed something was off with Lawrence. But now the grumpy, gray-haired fart would come in handy.
“You’ve watched too many gangster movies,” Ben accused.
“And learned from the best of ’em.”
“But what about the dead man at the airport?”
“See, the beauty of this plan is that we won’t have to explain anything as long as we take care of the witnesses.”
“But my weapon is in the ballistics database. Once they pull the slug from him, they’ll—
“We’ve access to the database. We’ll go in and swap out your information so no one’s the wiser. Don’t you see? If we do everything just like I say, no one will ever know we were at that airport.” Ben opened his mouth, which compelled Lawrence to play his trump card. “And before you try to throw another spanner in the works, remember our parents. Remember what happened to ’em.”
“Jesus,” Ben breathed, shaking his head.
“I already told you to leave him outta this.” Lawrence flipped on his blinker. “And we’re going left here.”
“Why?” Ben looked around confusedly.
“Because they did their best to avoid the CCTV cameras before, and I’d bet my left bollock they’ll do their best to avoid ’em now.”
Ben eyed the GPS display on the console of Lawrence’s SUV. “But there’s nothing this way,” he insisted as the hedgerows grew on either side of them. “It’s a drafty old manor house that’s been kept up by the National Trust.”
“Then a drafty old manor house is our destination.” Lawrence stomped on the gas as a sense of fate grew inside him. This day, this moment was what he’d been waiting years for. It was his destiny, when he put right all the wrongs done to his family.
* * *
Trenor Manor…
Emily mimicked the men by taking cover behind the mossy trunk of a tree near the edge of the clearing that surrounded the old estate house.
Her heart hammered. Not because she was scared they might be seen or because the mile trek through the woods had been all that arduous, but because she was still reeling from the fact that Christian thought she was beautiful.
Not cute. Not kinda, sorta pretty. But beautiful.
To recap: he’d popped a boner every time she climbed into his lap. He’d kissed her without warning—holy duck balls had he ever! And he’d admitted to thinking she was beautiful.
And guess what that means, boys and girls? she thought a little desperately. That means I’m in serious trouble.
It was one thing to withstand his savage good looks, his smooth British charm, and his panty-melting accent when she thought he didn’t like her. Haters gonna hate, and all that jazz. It was another thing entirely to withstand it when she was getting the impression that the exact opposite might be true.
How would she ever be able to look at him, talk to him, work with him knowing that he wanted to, in the parlance of their time, introduce his boy part to her girl part?
Then again, she could be making a mountain out of a molehill. There had been that look on his face after he kissed her. And then there was the itty-bitty, not-so-insignificant fact that he hadn’t brought it up since.
Not a word.
Not a gesture.
Not even a silent eye-convo.
So perhaps, like he’d said, his erection didn’t have a thing to do with her. And perhaps that kiss had been nothing but a knee-jerk reaction in the heat of the moment—something he immediately regretted. And perhaps him saying she was beautiful was simply a matter of semantics, like… Did he think spotted puppies and babies were beautiful?
Glancing two trees over, she tried to catch Christian’s eye. She wanted to ask him, So, you want to do me or what? Unfortunately, he couldn’t feel her eyes tapping him on the back. Or else he was ignoring them. Which left her with no recourse but to sigh and turn her attention toward what seemed to hold his. Namely, the manor house.
Large by American standards, but likely somewhat small in a British nobleman’s estimation, it was two stories of weathered gray stone. Its deeply pitched, gray slate roof sported six chimneys, and its leaded-glass windows were a web of diamond-shaped patterns that caught the weak sunlight straining through the brooding cloud cover overhead. The front lawn was well kept with bushes shaped into fanciful creatures. And two timeworn rock lions guarded the gravel footpath leading up to the gabled front door.
Like most historic homes in England, the manor house looked like something straight out of a fairy tale. Again, Emily was hit with the image of herself twirling around in a frilly yellow dress. Of course, the image was ruined when she let her mind’s eye travel down the length of her imaginary gown to her weathered hiking boots. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she didn’t own a pair of heels.
“Brilliant. Looks like we’re good to go,” Christian whispered. “Let’s fan out. Check the security system. Emily, you and Angel go ’round to the right. Ace and Rusty, you two head left. I’ll see to the front, and then we’ll all meet in the back garden, yeah?”
It didn’t escape Emily’s notice that Christian had paired her with Angel. If he was lusting after her hot bod—she couldn’t resist a mental snort—he would want to keep her with him, right? Right. So she had been making a mountain out of molehill.
When Christian finally turned to look at her, she gave him a smile, trying to make it look friendly, all calm and serene. You know, the total opposite of what she was feeling. Her expression must not have been very convincing, however, because Christian frowned at her. His pretty green eyes asked, What the bloody hell did I do this time?
Instead of answering, she dropped his gaze and walked over to Angel. “All right, partner,” she whispered. “In the timeless words of Larry the Cable Guy, let’s git-r-done.”
Angel cast her a hooded glance. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
She shrugged. “Figured I’d take a chance. You did whip out that Batman quote earlier. Thought maybe you were getting hip to American pop culture, yo.”
He snorted before quietly sliding from behind the tree.
She followed in his footsteps, ignoring the urge to creep after him on tiptoe with her arms drawn up and her hands curved into claws like some sort of cartoon character. Especially since Angel walked with an easy, almost lazy confidence. He was all nothing to see here, folks. Just out for a stroll.
Of course, there was a catch. He wasn’t making any sound. His footsteps didn’t scuffle over the grass. There was no hitch in his breath when they paraded down the slight embankment toward the manor’s front lawn. Which, conversely, drew her attention to her own labored breaths, to the sound of her own hiking boot snapping a rogue twig in two.
“Damnit,” she hissed.
Angel sent her a look.
She wasn’t sure what kind of look. His face was as impassive as ever, so she was forced to whisper, “What?”
“Act natural,” he said. His gravelly voice barely carried through the windless air.
“Right. And what’s natural about skulking around a five-hundred-year-old house looking for weaknesses in its security system?”
One corner of his lips twitched. “Everything. Just another day on the job.”
“For you maybe.”
Thirty seconds later, they were around the side of the house. Angel scanned the exterior, his eyes alighting on the windows, skimming over the roofline, scrutinizing the perimeter.
Since she didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to be looking for, she contented herself with a close-up examination of the manor. The gray stone of its exterior looked thick and substantial, but there were places where lichen and moss had taken root, lending whole sections a fuzzy, greenish hue. The vast two-story wall—speckled with eight
windows, four on each level—was an imposing sight, seeming to reach up into the sulking clouds. And the grass around the manor stopped a good six feet from the foundation, as if it dare not intrude upon the stately grandeur of the place, leaving that task to a bed of mulch and a row of well-tended rosebushes.
All in all, it was quite a house. A throwback to an era when things were built to last and landowners ruled the roost.
As an American, Emily was impressed by the sheer gravity of a structure that had seen armies rise and fall, watched rulers come and go, and withstood the ravages of five centuries of wind and rain and chaos.
“Come.” Angel distracted her from her inspection.
“What’s the verdict?” she whispered, following him around to the back of the house.
She was shocked to discover that unlike other historic homes she’d seen during her short sojourn in England, this one didn’t boast a vast back garden. The English seemed to really get off on bushes and shrubbery. Instead, there was a simple rock patio running along the back of the manor. Beyond it, the forest hulked, tall and dark and slightly foreboding. Emily thought it whispered of mysteries, at least to anyone who cared to listen.
Whoever had built the place had obviously valued privacy over opulence. Or maybe it was a simple matter of neglect over the generations. Perhaps the original owner’s descendants had grown too poor or too indifferent to keep up the grounds, and so had let the trees reclaim the land.
“No cameras,” Angel said. “No motion detectors. No floodlights. Only sensors on the doors and windows. Very elementary. Easy to disarm.”
“Just another day on the job?”
His dark eyes glinted. “Exactly.”
“Christian will be glad to hear that. I think he was looking forward to staying here tonight. You know, a walk down memory lane or whatever.”
“And you are happy to make Christian happy, no?”
She stopped in her tracks, frowning at Angel. “No. Well, yes. I mean, I want everyone to be happy. What’s wrong with that?”
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