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Caelan looked over his shoulder and snickered. “I don’t bargain with Russian scum.”
“But—”
He quickly vacated the room leaving the Russian to stew on his options.
Caelan walked to the room next door where a group of people had been watching on security screens. The woman who’d asked for him especially grinned from ear to ear.
“You’re not going back in tonight?” she asked, her blonde hair piled on her head in a messy bun. Barely twenty-five, she was one of those prodigies with an IQ through the roof. He’d met a few. They bored him. Nearly always had strange routines they had to keep. Weird proclivities, too.
“Nae, tomorrow he’ll be offering everything on a platter. In fact, dinna let him see anyone but the guards before I see him again. Okay?”
She nodded and gave him a playful punch to the shoulder. “Nice work.”
Caelan wanted to wash his mouth out with soap as he left the room, then the building, heading for a meeting he’d set up earlier in the day. The person he’d arranged to meethad to have been waiting hours by this point and he wasn’t sure he’d still be in the city. He might have chickened out.
Leaving the secure facility behind, he headed in a taxi to the Ritz. On the way, he pulled a leather jacket over his fatigues and left the taxi to head straight for the interior. Nobody looked twice as he strode right for the elevators and pressed the button.
People knew that secret service types met up here all the damn time.
Caelan knocked on the door of a suite on the top floor and the door opened up.
He walked indoors and found himself face to face with Logan’s grandfather.
Caelan patrolled the room, seeking gadgets, hidden cameras. Anything.
“You sure nobody followed ye?” asked Caelan.
Blake sat down at the circular breakfast table with a huff, his tracksuit tacky against the surroundings.
“I’m sure,” he groaned.
Blake had discarded a wig, hat and glasses on the coffee table over in the sitting area.
“The passport worked, then?” Caelan asked, nervous energy rippling off him.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. And maybe it’s you we should be wary of being followed.”
Caelan had made sure he wasn’t followed. There was a black spot around the facility he’d been at earlier, anyway. Blake didn’t need to know his business—especially not that his daughter was across town, probably screwing a bad man.
“So she’s really determined to find me, then?” said Blake.
“Do ye want me to go collect those twelve burnt corpses from Scotland? Or will ye just take ma word for it?” Caelan’s jaw clenched and he waited for a retort to his sarcasm.
“Hmm,” Blake sighed, resigned to accept the situation, Caelan thought.
“Ma’s no gonna stop. And Flora will be the one who’ll pay, if we’re no careful.”
Blake rubbed his bald head in frustration, his fate seemingly already set. Sherry wouldn’t stop until someone paid. Until somebody begged.
At least with Eric, Flora remained safe. He wouldn’t let harm come to her. No matter how much it killed him, so long as Flora lived, Caelan could deal with anything. Which meant that while they were busy doing whatever it was they were doing, Caelan was free to finally wrap up the shit going on in the outside world.
“What do you need from me?” Blake asked, more than just jetlag in his eyes.
“It’s returned, then,” Caelan guessed.
Rathbone stared dead ahead. “Yup.”
That made him sad for Flora, for his son, for Blake even. All the rigmarole he’d gone through to get one tiny slice of freedom. A tiny slice of freedom… before the inevitable.
