We stopped by the lift.
“Listen up.” I didn’t need to raise my voice. “Aye, Dixie is back. She’s unharmed and ready to talk. If ye rush her, we’re leaving. We’re going upstairs to my apartment and will invite people in one by one.”
“Ty—” Cassie started.
I cut her off. “No. You’ll wait. We’re doing this Dixie’s way or not at all.”
She folded her arms and scowled until the lift doors shut her out.
We travelled up.
At last, Dixie straightened from where she’d been glued to my side. “Thanks, hun. I thought I would die walking in the door. You made that a cinch.”
The tremble in her hands told a different story.
At the seventh floor, we exited.
I paused outside my apartment. “There’s something else I need to tell ye. In line with being a psycho stalker.”
“Lay it on me. I can take anything you’ve got.”
I opened the door, revealing the space, decorated like a city pad version of my cabin. A smarter leather sofa I’d never used. Boxes everywhere, atop furniture Dixie would know well.
Another liberty I hadn’t asked permission for.
It had all come from her flat.
Chapter 17
Mila
I paced the corridor until my phone lit with a message from Tyler, asking me to come up to the seventh floor, only a minute after their shock appearance.
First. That should have made me happy. She’d picked me above anyone. But instead, pain pierced my chest. Maybe because of what she had to say.
Lovelyn rubbed my arm. “This is what we wanted. I’m just so surprised. Why didn’t Tyler tell us?”
My brother’s scowl remained fixed in place. “That’s what I want to know.”
Cassie lifted her chin at him. “He sent ye to Edinburgh in pursuit of her, correct? Redirecting your search from the Isle of Skye?”
Kane grunted agreement, and they swapped a glance I didn’t like.
Hot emotion rushed through me, heightened from the run downstairs. The first glimpse of the slight figure buried under Tyler’s coat. She’d looked so scared. “I’m sure whatever it is, she’ll tell us. You heard what he said. She’s obviously fragile. No one is going to push her.”
“Of course not,” Lovelyn said.
If Kane and Cassie agreed, I didn’t see it. In the lift, Convict pressed the button, and he and I travelled up.
“Are you okay?” my boyfriend asked.
I couldn’t catch my breath. “Not even a little bit.”
“If they don’t let me in, I’ll be right outside.”
The doors slid open to an empty hall. My spine prickled with awareness, as if I were facing a firing squad.
Tyler’s door stood at the far end, closed. Just across the hall from where we’d supped cocktails in Cassie’s place, wishing for this very thing.
