Rowan

by Tilly Delane

“Oh, baby, I’m gonna make you come so hard,” he groans into the crook of my neck as he starts backing me up against the bed.

  In my mind’s eye, Ravenna is standing behind Raven, holding her back with her arms slung tightly around her shoulders, while Raven is already warming up, throwing air punches from beneath the vise.

  Patience, Ravenna whispers in her ear.

  The three of us slip the hand caressing his cock out of his loosening grasp and out of his pocket, only to cup his package fully from the front. His hand follows ours and pushes it down on him, making us rub him up and down.

  “Take him out,” he demands between more bites.

  We fumble with his button and his zipper and free his skinny long penis, pushing his briefs and pants down one-handed, because he still hasn’t released the hand behind my back. Raven is getting impatient, she’s ready to punch him the fuck out, but Ravenna insists we push the briefs down a bit further, pretending we’re gonna go down on him. Until his knees are trapped by the fabric.

  Then we let Raven off the leash.

  And the world turns red.

  Rowan

  It’s the middle of the night when my mobile rings.

  Sol, who’s been sleeping in the valley between my legs, jumps up with a protesting meow when I scramble around to find my phone on the floor by the bed. I peek at the number flashing up. The brightness of the screen hurts my eyes.

  It’s an American number and though it’s probably some kind of scam call, there is a small part of me that, when it sees the country code, can’t help but hope it’s her. Though it makes no sense that she would call me from her private mobile and not from the cottage or her UK company mobile. I don’t even know if she has a private one. Only one way to find out.

  I take the call, my heart doing funny shit in my chest.

  “I need your help,” she says by way of introduction.

  There is everything I need to know in these four words and suddenly I’m more awake than I’ve ever been in my life. And I realise that the amount of people I would bury a body for has just gone up from three to four.

  I don’t ask her the details.

  I don’t ask her what we are talking about.

  I don’t even ask her who it is we need to dig a hole for. Though I have a very strong fucking idea.

  All I say is, “Do I need to bring a shovel?”

  “No,” she answers soberly, and I love the fact she is immediately with me. “I took his vitals. He’s unconscious, but he’s stable. But I don’t know if he’ll bleed out internally. I need to call the police, but I’m scared, Rowan. I don’t know what’ll happen to me. What’s British jail like?”

  “What did you do?” I finally ask, my stomach bottoming out at her words.

  I’ve never been so scared in my life. For her.

  “I beat the shit out of him,” she answers calmly. “You ain’t the only fighter around here, ya know.”

  I knew that already, honey.

  But I don’t say it. I stick to the facts. We might need them.

  “Who is ‘him’?”

  “Rothman.”

  No surprise there then.

  “What happened?”

  “He tried to fuck me.”

  The anger that rises up in me is so all consuming I can’t talk for a moment. The guy’s dead. He might not be dead yet. But he fucking well will be. I’m gonna get my arse to Purbeck right fucking now and I’m gonna finish what she started.

  “Rowan?”

  I hear her voice bore through the roar in my head and realise I missed something she said.

  “Sorry, say that again,” I manage to respond through gritted teeth while I swing my legs out of bed.

  “Don’t go all Incredible Hulk on me. I can hear your thoughts and I’m a hundred and twenty-seven miles away.”

  I note that she knows exactly how far away from one another we are, and that makes me smile despite everything and everything. Somebody has been on the web to figure out the distance between us. And I’d bet my arse that was before she found herself in the current situation. She fucking missed me, too. The thought calms me a little.

  “I need your help,” she reiterates. “But I need you to stay cool. I need your brains, Rowan, not your muscles. I need somebody I trust to figure this out. Before I call the cops. There is more to this. I don’t know. I think Frank’s somehow responsible for Simon’s death. But I can’t see how. The tox screen came back negative. He broke in here to get something from Simon’s room. I caught him and it started from there. I can’t fucking think.”

  Her voice breaks off. She sounds exhausted. I’d bet my life the adrenaline she was running on is wearing off right about now, and in about twenty minutes she’ll hit a complete low.

  “Okay, gorgeous, we’re gonna figure this out, but back up a bit. Where are you now and where is Rothman?” I ask her, as much to get a clearer picture of the situation as to keep her talking.

  I pin the phone into the crook of my neck and pull on my trousers.

  “In Simon’s room. I tied him to Simon’s bed. I’m just sitting here, watching him. Need to make sure he doesn’t choke on his vomit. He was drunk. I guess he needed some liquid courage to break in here.”

  “Gag him,” I say. “We’ll be there in two hours. Three at the most if we run into road works.”

  “I can’t gag him,” she says, matter of fact. “I need to keep his airways clear. I’m a nurse, for fuck’s sake. I swore the Nightingale pledge. Rowan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not coming here to finish him off. I appreciate the sentiment and all, but my life is not some gangster movie. I just need some time to figure this shit out and then we’re doing this the legitimate way.”

  What the fuck is this with everyone’s obsession to go legit today?

  “Okay. We’ll talk about it when we get there,” I concede.

  “Who is ‘we’?” she asks after a pause, puzzled.

  “I’m bringing the cavalry.”

  She takes a deep breath, probably to reiterate the no-killing-Rothman rule, but I cut her short before she can get the first syllable out.

  “Trust me, Raven, you want me to bring the cavalry. Silas is gonna make sure I stay on the straight and narrow.”

  She sighs.

  “Hurry. I don’t know what to do if he wakes up.”

  “Well if you can’t gag him, knock him out again.”

  “Rowan!”

  I chuckle.

  “Chill, baby. We’ll sort it out. I’m gonna hang up now, so I can recce a car and get Silas out of bed. But I’ll give you a ring once we’re on the road. You’ll need to let us in when we get there. Can you do that without leaving him?”

  “You can let yourself in. Use the keypad. I’ll send you the staff code.”

  “Great.”

  “And Rowan?”

  “Yeah?”

  There is a long pause and I’m starting to get antsy ‘cause I want to get going, but I’m glad I stop myself from hurrying her along once she’s spits out what she wants to say.

  “I want you, too.”

  I have an impulse to laugh and make a comment like, ‘You didn’t need to knock some slimy asshole out to let me know that, you know.’

  But I don’t.

  I know it’s probably the closest she’ll ever come to say, ‘I love you’ and if that’s all I’m gonna get, I’ll take it. Without turning it into a joke.

  Instead, I get back to business, though I doubt I can mask the grin in my voice.

  “I’ll phone you from the car. Hang on in there, beautiful.”

  Raven

  I go into a kind of Zen zone for the next couple of hours, only interrupted by the occasional check on Frank’s stats.

  He’s good.

  After a while, I come to the conclusion that he’s more passed out drunk than climbing up the coma scale, which is a big relief.

  Doesn’t change the fact he’ll have bruises tomorrow.

  But so will I.


  I count my blessings that he was two sheets to the wind when he decided to pay Simon’s room a visit. Halosan trains all its nurses in physical restraint and I’ve taken a number of self-defence classes in my life, but that doesn’t change the fact Rothman is a fit enough man who’s a head taller than me. So I am more than thankful for his sloppy punches and that his coordination had already fallen into the bottle.

  I owe Halosan a chair, though.

  The only one that was in here is in pieces. If Rothman were a vampire, I could stake him through the heart with the remnants. I keep one of the legs by my side, just in case he needs another knock over the head. It doesn’t swing quite as well as a baseball bat, but it’s solid enough.

  The lack of chair is why I’m sitting on the floor now, with my back to the door, while I stare at the object I’ve placed on the carpet in front of me.

  It’s Simon’s inhaler.

  I had almost forgotten that Rothman had swiped something from the room by the time the thing fell out of his pocket.

  It slipped onto the mattress when I was using his pants to tie his feet down.

  I had to make do with whatever I could think of. I could have kicked myself for taking the sheets downstairs to the washing machine earlier. But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

  So, currently Rothman is spread-eagled on the bed, tied down with his pants, his belt and his shirt, which I ripped in two. It’s not ideal. I’d rather have kept him in the recovery position. But securing someone down and keeping their airways free is a contradiction. I erred on the side of keeping myself safe. Sue me.

  When I was finished, I threw the comforter over him.

  Then I rang Rowan.

  He called me back twenty minutes after the first call, from the car, like he’d promised, but I told him to hang up and just get here. I was worried any more talking would wake Rothman up.

  I know I said to Rowan that I couldn’t figure out what Rothman was doing in here, but the longer I look at the object he came for, the more of an idea forms in my head.

  Dawn has already turned the night into early morning when I’m about to reach for it and take the canister out of the blue plastic shell to inspect it further, but I think better of it at the last moment. My fingerprints are already all over the outer. If my hunch is right, I’m contaminating evidence if I go in without gloves. I need gloves. And an evidence bag. And my laptop.

  I get up, walk over to Rothman, check his vitals and flinch as he groans in his sleep.

  But he doesn’t wake up, so I decide I’ll risk it.

  Rowan

  Silas and I drive without conversation.

  He’s at the wheel, while the stereo of Sheena’s Capri blares Dropkick Murphys all the way. It’s pretty much the only intersection of his and my music taste, so we never argue what to put on.

  Other than the Murphys, he is very fucking British in his music choices and I’m very fucking American. Same with literature. Same with cars. Same with bikes. I don’t have a bike licence but if I had, I’d get a Harley. Don’t care if it’s a cliché. Big git like me belongs on one of them.

  Silas does have a bike licence and he is all about Japanese sports bikes. Which, again, is the British choice ‘cause there ain’t a British bike industry left. He had one. A Honda. Had to sell it. Because of me and my debts. He doesn’t know it yet, but as soon as I’m sorted, I’m gonna save up to buy him another one. Or whatever else he wants now. I think I saw him ogling Kawasakis the other day.

  Much as I try concentrating on mundane things, such as making amends to the guy next to me, and what bike to buy him, my thoughts keep flitting to Raven and what she is doing right now.

  I rang her as soon as Silas and I got on the motorway, just like I promised, but she told me to hang up and just get our asses there. She didn’t want Rothman to wake up from her talking, but she didn’t want to leave the room either. I had to concur. She shouldn’t. She should keep a close eye on him until we get there and I can keep her safe.

  Which is gonna be in around about five minutes.

  I turn the volume down on the stereo as Silas turns off the main road and onto a single track that leads directly to The Village.

  “We can’t drive in, right?” he says.

  His first words in a hundred and twenty-five miles.

  “Guess not. It’d be better if we weren’t seen.”

  We both glance at the clock. It’s twenty to six. He drove with his foot to the floor. I’m relatively sure that in a few days there’ll be a friendly letter from Dorset police asking for a fixed penalty fine and informing him that he’s got himself a few points on his licence.

  “Any early morning worshippers there?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Only Raven, as far as I know.”

  “That’s alright then.”

  He grins happily. Silas is fucking handsome as shit when he smiles and somehow looking at his profile as his lips split wide enough to show his front teeth really chills me out.

  Stoic Silas is great to have on your side.

  Silas enjoying himself is the most powerful weapon in the universe.

  “Okay,” he says and pulls into a passing place. “Showtime. Let’s park up and walk from here.”

  We do as he says, and I want to throttle him when he starts going through the whole pathetic locking up procedure for the Capri. It’s a classic with no extra security features, so Sheena insists on a steering wheel bar. It’s a pain in the arse to lock in place and costs us valuable minutes, but Silas shoots me one look and I keep my mouth shut. He’s right, Sheena would kill us if we got the girl but lost the car.

  When he’s finally finished twatting about, he emerges from the Capri and launches straight into a jog.

  “Come on, then,” he shouts as he scoots ahead.

  I catch up with him in two seconds flat, and we fall into rhythm next to one another easily. There is something really soothing about the familiarity of this. About jogging side by side with my brother in the quiet of an early morning.

  “Have we got a plan?” he asks when the entrance to The Village comes into sight.

  “No.”

  “Alright then,” he says under his breath, as we come to a halt in front of the gate and I start punching in the code Raven gave me. “Good to know.”

  We step into the complex and stop for a moment to look around.

  As expected, there is nobody about yet.

  I follow Silas’ eyes as he scans the curtains of the houses, all still drawn.

  “We gotta be quick,” he says factually. “Whatever the plan is.”

  Raven

  I’m so deep down the rabbit hole of internet research, I’m completely lost in a warren of info around RoSt Cosmetics and their associates by the time I hear the door open downstairs. I look up from a research paper I’m reading by one Dr. Phillip Stiles, who may or may not be related to the Stiles part of Rothmann & Stiles aka RoSt, on the potential medical usage of endorphin stimulating agents in the suppression of cravings, to listen out for the footfall on the stairs.