I sit on the terrace off my bedroom for most of the night, watching the moon rise and sinkagain. For the first time in my life, I deeply regret refusing to get a tracker implanted under my skin like most of the family. I’m also certain that Michael will likely pounce on me the minute I’m back home and hold me down while Ma gets the insertion device and puts twenty or thirty of them in my arm. My back. I wouldn’t put it past her to shoot one into my arse.
At this point? I might nae even fight them on it.
My familymustbe close.
I just have to hang on ‘till then.
An unwelcome thought pushes through.If Lucas were still my bodyguard, he would find me.
He could always find me, even when I dinnae want to be found, he was there. A solid, reassuring presence at my back.
Straightening my shoulders, I go back inside. He isn’t my bodyguard anymore. And he’s never coming back. Every time I remind myself, it hurts just as much as the first time I realized he’d left me.
***
Bon sang- French for damnit
Je vous demande pardon? -French for, “I beg your pardon?”
Scunnered - Scottish slang for feeling like complete crap
Chapter Eight
In which we learn just how fast Lucas can move when properly motivated.
Lucas…
Three days later…
“Mate, you’re gonna have to admit mine’s bigger than yours.”
Ryan’s always been a cocky bastard, but this seems the wrong time to start another dick-measuring contest. He wasrelentlessabout it in the service, always complaining that he’d be getting more lasses than I did if the girls knew what he “had roaring under the hood.”
The man has the emotional maturity of a chocolate biscuit.
“Are ye really starting that shite right now?” I rub my eyes. It’s been three days since Cat was taken and just covering Dubois’ known residences has spread MacTavish family members and security all over the globe, and we still haven’t come up with a hint of where he’s taken her. “Give me something to work with. Please, dinnae make meregret calling ye for help.”
“I’m just saying. When ye hear this, you’re gonna have to print up some kind of plaque I can put on my office door. Something like, ‘Behind this door is Ryan Aitken, Biggus Dickuss.’”
“You’re a fecking moron, and that’s going on the plaque first,” I snarl. “Give me the intel before I come down and rip that substandard dick of yours right off.”
“Someone’s in a mood…” he grumbles. “But aye, I think I’ve found where Dubois is keeping Catriona. Ye know he loves Morocco.”
“Aye, I’ve already sent people to both of his houses there. He hasn’t visited them in months.”
“Because he’s been busy rebuilding his castle in the Atlas Mountains,” Ryan says proudly. “I checked his financials and he’s been funneling a shite tonne of money to a contractor he’s used on half a dozen projects in that region. Then, I hacked into the contractor’s accounts and he’s been sending work crews and building materials to a castle located in the Atlas Mountains. It’s isolated, just a few tiny villages around it. The closest city is Marrakech. Perfect for a super villain, aye?”
“You’re brilliant, mate,” I say fervently.
“I know. Also…” he drags the word out with a certain relish, “I then hacked into Dubois’ pharmaceutical vendors’ accounts and they’ve been sending tens of millions of euros worth of equipment and compounds into Morocco.”
“He’s been building a research lab.” I nod. “That’s it, then. He needs something he thinks Cat can give him, and he’s stocked a lab for her.”
“Isn’t his side gig poisons?”
“Aye, he sells them for low-key assassinations, and his clients use them as coercion to get people to sign over their assets and their companies.” I stare out the office window at smoggy Edinburgh. “Upon occasion, their political office.”
I can hear him unwrapping something and taking a big bite, chewing noisily in my ear. “That’s brilliant. He’s a right bastard, but that’s mighty impressive.”
