I saidwebecause I was determined to go with Bram and the Hawks, although I had a feeling they had something else in mind. Little did they know I had no intention of staying alone at this little house on the mountain while they killed the man who’d killed my parents, first because the house was isolated and more than a little spooky, and second because I’d been through too much at Dimitri Kaprolov’s hands to sit back, miles away, while someone else did the dirty work of killing him.
Even if that someone else was Bram. Especially if that someone else was Bram.
I wanted to be there. I was owed that much.
We parked next to the truck driven by Bram and got out of the car as he and Jagger did the same.
It was colder up here than it had been when we’d landed in the valley, and I watched my breath leave my body in a puff of air. “I take back what I said about the cold. It’s freezing.”
“Let’s get inside,” Jagger said. “There’s a chimney and that means there’s a fireplace.”
The guys grabbed our bags and we filed up the wood stairs. Bram lifted the mat in front of the door and used the key he found there to unlock the door.
It opened with a creak and Bram stepped inside to get the light.
By the time I filed in after Hawk, Vigo and Jagger behind me, the main living area was awash in weak yellow light from an end table next to a worn plaid sofa. There was a TV — an old one with an antennae — and a coffee table, and through a doorway I spotted a small kitchen.
I walked hesitantly down the hall and found a single bathroom and two small bedrooms, both with stripped mattresses.
“We need Daisy,” I said when I returned to the living room. “This place is bleak.”
“We won’t be here long,” Jagger said, carrying the two bags of groceries we’d acquired at the general store into the kitchen.
“Looks like Rafe came through,” Jagger said, crouching next to a row of duffel bags, one of which was unzipped to reveal several big guns, the kind the men at the paper mill had been carrying when they’d tried to kill the Hawks and me.
I instinctively recoiled. “That’s a lot of guns.”
“You know better than anyone that Dimitri’s men are armed to the teeth,” Hawk said. “Being prepared means the difference between life and death.”
I swallowed my repulsion. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to think about guns, about violence.
But this wasn’t a perfect world. I knew that better than anyone too.
Bram and the Hawks — my brother, my men — would be taking on a group of men trained to protect Dimitri. If being well armed gave them a better chance of coming out of it alive, then I wanted them well armed.
“Let’s make some food,” Jagger said. “Start a fire.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Hawk started looking around for matches and paper to start a fire with the wood stacked next to the fireplace. “Then we plan.”
I helped Jagger make dinner, nothing fancy, just something to give us energy and keep us warm: pasta with jarred spaghetti sauce (and American brand, of all things), garlic bread, and broccoli (there had been mo fresh produce for a salad at the general store).
We ate in the living room, the fire Hawk had started crackling in the hearth, the cabin cozy in the firelight where it had before been small and dark.
Jagger poured shots of vodka but I passed. I was already tired and didn’t trust myself not to nod off, and I was determined to stay awake to make my case for going with Bram and the Hawks to Dimitri’s compound.
The guys were more than happy to partake though and I was happy to see they were getting along, Bram as friendly as Bram ever got.
“This is the main house,” Jagger said, pointing to his laptop after we’d fished eating.
I was surprised the cabin had WiFi, but I guess I shouldn’t have been: Rafe had set us up here and Rafe seemed prepared for anything.
I looked at the house on Jagger’s screen, the image slightly grainy thanks to the satellite that was beaming us the image. The Kaprolov house wasn’t as big as I would have expected, not a multi-wing mansion but a luxury lodge with two floors and three chimneys built in a clearing at the end of a long driveway.
“What are these?” Bram asked, pointing to four smaller structures tucked near the tree line.
“Hard to say,” Jagger said. “Could be quarters for security.”
