“They need to die,” Saint ground out.
“I know, brother.” Rubi got up and went to him, wrapping him in a hug that even Saint couldn’t Houdini his way out of. “Butweneed to be whole more than anything else right now. You sure you got no clue where Alexei went?”
Saint shook his head, shrugging out of Rubi’s hold, though he didn’t go far.
Rubi turned to me, the same question in his eyes, but I had no more for him than I’d had for Cam. Except... “Folk never told me where they were going. Just that it was dangerous and he didn’t know how long it was going to take.”
“But you think they should’ve been back by now?” Rubi swung his gaze back to Saint. “Why?”
Saint didn’t answer. Just slid down the wall and buried his face in his arms.
Rattled, Rubi threw his hands in the air. “Fuck this.”
He strode back the way we’d come.
A few seconds later, Cam appeared, and as his worried gaze landed on Saint, I hauled myself to my feet.
After checking on Ivy again, there was nowhere to go but back to the kitchen where Rubi, Nash, Mateo, and Embry were seated around the table.
Nash pulled out a chair for me. I sank into it and surveyed the men around me, grateful they were the easiest brothers to read, terrified that the stress on their faces matched mine.
“All right.” Rubi rapped his knuckles on the table. “Nashie, get the kettle on. I’ll find the biscuits. Then we can think about this logically instead of having a collective heart attack.”
Nash made tea. Rubi dug through Orla’s cupboards until he found the bourbons and ginger nuts the old timers favoured and slung them on the table.
No one was hungry, but we ate them anyway, lost in sugar and silence until Cam and Saint returned to the fold.
Nash gave Saint the same herbal tea as Embry and brewed a mug of dark coffee for Cam. “Where are we at?”
Cam sighed. “Fucking nowhere. The tracker in Folk’s phone can only be accessed by Alexei, and his phone powered down in Bristol an hour after they left here the other day. Saint tracked it to the penthouse. Folk’s phone is there too, and I reckon they did that on purpose.”
“They don’t want to be found,” Rubi concurred.
“Not by us.”
“What if someone else left their shit at the penthouse, though?”
Cam reached for a biscuit. Picked it up. Put it down. “That would mean someone got through Lexi’s security systems and then outwitted and overpowered himandFolk. Call me fucking biased, but I don’t know who could do that without an army of men big enough for civilians to notice.”
Lexi. It usually warmed my heart when Cam slipped up and called Alexei that around other people, but my head was too busy providing me with HD images of the scenario Cam was doing his best to discount. I tried to picture Alexei’s penthouse as I knew it from the one night I’d ever spent there with Rubi, Juana, and Lili. There was one way in, unless some crazy fucker repelled from the roof, but this was downtown Bristol, not Aleppo. That shit didn’t happen over here.Unless...“What if the feds got them?”
Every face at the table turned to me. Cam’s was the grimmest. “Why would the feds come for them? Folk’s squeaky clean and Alexei doesn’t exist. Besides, we’re still bent enough that I have every copper worth anything in my fucking pocket. I’d know if anyone was looking at us that hard.”
“Would you, though? What if it’s some Interpol shit? And what if that was Sambini’s next move? They can’t fight you on the street, so they take you out a different way?”
Cam’s frown deepened. “That’s a lot of what ifs, and nothing’s impossible, but if that’s what’s happened, it’s come out of nowhere. And I can’t even begin to unpick how Sambini could do us like that without fucking themselves over in the process.”
I accepted his reasoning. Cam had played this game his whole life. He wasn’t naïve or stupid. But he was in the dark. We all were, and the longer it went on, the worse that feeling became.
“We can’t even look for them,” Mateo said. “Where the fuck would we start?”
“No one leaves,” Nash snapped. “Not until morning. If someone’s after us, we need to stay low.”
Irritation flared in Mateo’s fiery gaze. He’d been quiet so far, watching over Embry instead, but in his own way he was as bad at inaction as Saint. “Someone’s always after us. What are we supposed to do? Sit here waiting for it to happen?”
“No one leaves,” Nash repeated.
“Agreed.” Cam’s tone was absolute. He jabbed a finger at Saint. “I fucking mean it.”
