Shade smirked. “Aye, we’ll sit on ye and judge ye after.”
We climbed from the car and moved through the trees, keeping low, using the dark as cover. We crossed the lawn, the grass damp underfoot, and reached the outer wall.
I lifted my hand. Both men stopped.
Similar to the lake house, motion sensors and cameras were our only real issues, but we couldn’t be too careful.
“Now,” I breathed.
We went over the wall.
Shade landed without a sound. Arran’s boots hit and stilled. Three men in black, masks up, crossing history with criminal intent.
The back door was secured with a keypad and digi-lock, two cameras covering the area. Same with the grand front entrance. Hard to find a way through. No matter, as we were going in through a barely protected side door.
Heretic would’ve opened it in six seconds.
It took me five.
Inside, the air was cooler and faintly scented with damp. A hall stretched ahead, unlit aside from the spill of light from a room halfway down and a lamp at the base of the stairs at the far end. We prowled in deeper. Portraits stared down from the walls, generations of arseholes in oil paint, all of them with the same dead-eyed entitlement.
Shade’s gaze swept the ceiling. “No cameras.”
“I know,” I said. “Keep your head down anyway.”
We moved on, passing doorways of empty rooms.
A lounge sat to the left, the source of the light. The clink of ice in a glass punctuated the quiet hum of a television. We spread out and gained a view inside. Terrence Harford lounged in an armchair, robe half-open, one foot propped on a tapestry stool. A tumbler in his hand of some brown liquid.
He turned his head at the soft sound of our entry and blinked, slow realisation hitting him that we were out of place. “What the?—?”
Arran crossed the distance in two strides and slammed him back into the chair by his throat. Shade killed the lamp with a flick of his hand, plunging the room into shadow, only the moonlight piercing the space.
Harford’s breath hitched. He struggled under Arran’s grip then stilled at the glint of a blade.
“Please.” His voice trembled. “There’s money.”
“Yawn,” Shade intoned.
Arran gave a dark laugh and released his hold.
I stepped in close enough that my voice could be low. Intimate. “Terrence Harford.”
Rapist.The man who’d unknowingly hurt Dixie so badly her life had broken into pieces. He didn’t escape blame just because his wife had made him into a puppet.
Annoyance crossed his features, some kind of lazy cruelty underneath. “Who sent you?”
All I’d needed was the confirmation of his identity, just to eliminate any doubt.
I leaned in and let him see my eyes, showing him how I wasn’t here for money. Or to bargain or play. His actions towards Dixie had signed his death warrant, but they also told me he was used to a life where he got his own way. And took what he wanted.
Fury rose.
Something in him recognised the danger. His mouth quivered. “Wait.”
I snapped out a fist, smacking him and the chair to the floor. Both landed with a thump.
“Bag him before I kill him,” I ordered.
