Page 414 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘He just told me to bring you here.’

‘Is he…?’ Kade closes his mouth sharply. He knows now that the full moon is difficult for Riley to endure. Maybe he just needs to be away from everyone, but him being exposed up there terrifies Kade. He’ll go and bring him down. ‘OK, fine.’

‘See you soon,’ Cole says, his gaze locked onto the screen.

Kade climbs the ladder and shoulders the heavy steel hatch open against the wind and rain.

‘Fuck me,’ he mutters, climbing up. It’s bitterly cold and raining so heavily that he’s instantly drenched again, just like beneath the Tower. ‘Riley.’

His brother is standing by the edge.

He’s wearing that jacket and those boots.

‘Hi, Kade.’

‘Get away from the edge right now,’ Kade snaps, already angry about whatever the fuck this is. His radio is getting soaked. ‘I’m not kidding!’

Riley moves closer to the centre.

Kade resists the urge to grab him and yell. ‘Why are we up here?’

‘This is my favourite place.’

‘You could have told me that downstairs.’

‘One of the only places I was ever at peace.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘He would chain me to the roof up here—’

‘Do you know the insider? Is that why we’re talking up here?’

‘—and I’d dream about you and Mimi with the moon above me. It was the closest I ever felt to being happy.’

‘Riley, we can talk about this downstairs!’

‘There’s nowhere to talk anymore.’

‘This is your Tower. We can talk wherever you want, but this is a fucking thunderstorm,’ Kade tells him, laughing with a hint of mania. ‘This isn’t the best place.’

Riley smiles. ‘It is for me.’

‘Why are we here?’

‘I have to tell you something. You need to let me say all of it.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

‘Seven years ago, Troy brought you and Mimi here. I thought he’d kidnapped you both. I thought he meant to keep you the way he kept me, and I couldn’t bear it.’ There’s not a single part of Kade’s body that isn’t freezing and wet. ‘I’d never seen anyone younger than me,’ Riley goes on. ‘She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.’

‘Riley, we can’t stay up here.’

‘I snuck out of the room, went down to Troy’s office and figured out a way to call your father. I told him who had taken you. I told him everything I thought I knew,’ Riley says.

‘You wouldn’t do that.’

‘I’m the reason it all went wrong for you and Mimi.’