He nodded, distracted. “When Alexei is up.”
The idea of Alexei Ivanov sleeping was perhaps more jarring than anything we would face today, but as I glanced around the silent house, his absence was the last thing on my mind.
“He went out.”Ranger. Jake read me without breaking contact with his screens. “With Saint.”
“To scout?”
“To breathe. They are like trapped lions here.”
“What about you?”
Jake finally looked up. “I believe that tonight will bring us everything we’ve ever wanted, or we will die. I see no in-between.”
Neither did I.
I moved past him to the kettle and the coffee machine. The mugs from when I’d last been awake had been washed and dried. “This is the most civilised safe house I have ever experienced.”
Jake leaned back on his seat, just for a moment. “The Kings are well trained. Ivanov does not care for mess.”
He said it like a warning. As if I had never lived withhim. I made a derisive noise and brewed him more coffee. There was no tea. Mourning its absence and missing Ranger, I made myself focus on Jake’s work, tracking the dots and dashes on his screens. “How many vehicles?”
“Three.” He pointed them out. “We will have to judge on the way in if it is safe to disable them. If it is, Saint will do it.”
I mapped that into the plan expanding in my mind, sharper now I’d rested. “With who? Cam?”
“Ranger. You and Ivanov will take point. I will take the rear with Cam.”
Meaning all lovers had been separated. “You have discussed this with them?”
“He has.” Alexei’s voice came from behind me. “It is time, don’t you think, Viktor? For Pavel’s vision to come to fruition?”
His tone was so dry the walls seemed to crack.
I poured coffee into mugs and handed him one. “All of it?”
“Do not pull on that ridiculous thread.”
With Ranger, I would have tugged so hard the ceiling caved in. Died in the rubble to hear his laugh.
Alexei did not laugh. But he did not stick a knife in my liver either. “Your father thought I was lonely,” he explained to Jake. “Viktor was intended to be my... apprentice of sorts, but it was not to be.”
Because he’d left—because Pavel had set him free, and now here we were, years later, planning the assassination of the men who had killed him.
Humour faded, in all of us.
Alexei claimed the seat beside Jake and studied the screens with equal concentration, seeing far more than I ever could.
The Russian conversations continued. With the bikers absent, our vernacular hardened.
“You will lead—fit or not, you are the sharpest soldier on the ground.” Alexei unrolled a fresh set of blueprints and tapped his finger to an exit. “But if you do not come out here, you will die in the stairwell.”
I agreed and pointed to an alternative exit. “Youwill die here if you fall more than a step behind me.”
“Hmm.” Alexei frowned at the blueprints and selected another way out. One that freed us from the building, but only if we’d left no one alive in our wake. If Jake’s hack to the sophisticated security system held.
“It won’t,” Jake confirmed my fear. “The connection is too weak. It will take seconds to patch another, but that is all someone will need to call for help.”
And in our world, that help would come in the form of more men and more guns. A flood of force that barrelled into us from behind, hitting Jake and Cam, Saint and Ranger, while Alexei and I were trapped facing the threat up ahead. I could only hope I died before I lost Ranger or Jake.
