“Christ.” He set it down like it had burned him. “No demand for money, only for them to be gone. Who would want that?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question all night.” I walked over to the window, unable to look at those photos any longer. “Whoever did this knows me, Cal. Knows what I value. Knows that threatening them was the fastest way to bring me to my knees.”
“That’s a short list.”
“Too short. None of the people who know me that well would do this.”
He gathered the photos and slid them into the envelope. “Which means someone’s been watching long enough to figure it out. Or someone talked.”
The second possibility sat between us, ugly and unspoken.
“I need Rafe here,” I said. “Gus too. We have to work this together. And we need to read Snow in.”
“Emergency channel.” Callen was already pulling out his mobile. “I’ll send the alert.”
The five of us had established a secure line years ago—encrypted, untraceable, known only to the foundingpartners of the Thorned Thistle. We’d never had to use it for anything like this.
Within seconds of Callen sending the message, responses came in.
“Rafe’s already headed this way from Glasgow. He should be here within the hour.” He glanced at the screen again. “Gus is leaving Edinburgh now.”
I’d read the message he’d sent. While he’d told them enough for them to understand the urgency, they had no idea how bad the situation truly was.
Callen’s mobile buzzed. He glanced at the screen. “Snow.”
He typed rapidly, then held the device over the desk and photographed the contents spread across the blotter—the surveillance shots, the club photos, the note—and sent them through the encrypted channel.
We waited.
Snow never used voice calls. Never video. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen his face outside of in person, and even then, he had a way of being present without being memorable. No photographs existed. No recordings. He was a ghost who happened to be one of the most dangerous men alive.
Three dots appeared on Callen’s screen. Then a message:
I’m on it.
Nothing else. No questions about who, or how, or what we planned to do. Three words, then silence—already hunting, already working angles none of us would see until he chose to reveal them.
Callen pocketed his phone. “Well. That’s Snow.”
It was, and whoever had sent these photographs had just made themselves his target.
Rafe arrived at ten thirty,his face thunderous. “Fucking show me.”
I handed him the envelope. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he sifted through the images. “Someone got inside my club.” He dropped into a chair and accepted the whiskey Callen poured him. “Inside the private rooms. Past every obstacle I’ve spent five years building.”
When he reached the club shots, a muscle jumped in his jaw. “This is impossible.”
He stood and spread the photos across the desk, studying the angles and lighting with fierce concentration. “The semi-private rooms are surveyed only by our own cameras. Access is restricted to members who’ve been vetted for years. No one brings phones or recordingdevices into those spaces—we have detection equipment at every entrance.”
“Someone bypassed it,” Callen said.
“Someone made a bloody fool of me.” Rafe’s voice was quiet, which made it more dangerous. I’d seen him kill men with less anger in his eyes.
“The angles on these shots,” I said. “What can you tell from them?”
Rafe held up one of the photos, turning it to catch the light. “This was taken from above. There’s a maintenance catwalk near the ceiling—we use it for lighting adjustments before events. Members don’t have access.”
“Staff do,” I said. “The regular crew, along with the technicians we bring in for special events.”
