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Damn it.
“I need it too, honey.” She comes to me and gently grabs my shoulders before pulling me into a warm hug.
When she releases me, everything about her has softened, but her eyes sparkle in that same way they do before we’re about to strike a new deal and meet our next clients.
“I’ve been preparing myself for this for a while, psyching myself up, planning. You’ve been thinking about it for half an hour,” I tell her in a gentle tone.
“The adventures we’ve had in the last few years have come with a different kind of pressure. It was thrilling, no denying that, but this is… unlike it. It’s personal. Exhilarating in a whole new way I cannot possibly pass on.”
I know what she means. There’s a heat growing inside my chest the closer I’m getting to the moment it will truly happen. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, scream with joy in anticipation of the little chase I planned and the unknown it will bring.
“Okay, but, Hanna, I’m not messing around with your safety. You have to be really, really sure. It could go terribly wrong.”
“It could. But so could everything else. Everything about this life could go terribly wrong at every single moment and turn. And just like you… I need this. I feel like I’m not done.”
“If you’re sure…”
She might be able to convince me to go her way, but there’s no way I’m changing her mind when she’s set on something. And who am I to tell her it’s wrong when she’s doing it for the same sort of reasons I am.
“I’m sure. Now, walk me through the plan.”
CHAPTER 4
RONAN
We burst into their houselike we thought they’d actually still be in here. Rushing through its empty corridors like we didn’t already know it would be devoid of furniture, no speckle of dust, no life. I bet my left arm that if we check every inch of this villa, even the fingerprints will be wiped clean. They’re gone. Fled to yet another city, dumped yet another identity. We knew it was unlikely that Ingrid Thorp and Erika Brand were their real names, but Carter confirmed it today. No trace of their real ones yet, though.
But the villa they called home during their stay in Queenscove is not entirely empty. Even in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have fathomed findingthis.
She’s right here, steel eyes sparkling through the brush strokes painted on this canvas, innocence staring back at me as Vin re-reads the handwritten text we found on the back of it.
By the old cottage, deep into the woods,
Where the water runs warm from the hills above,
One night a year they all gather,
Filling the forest with their songs and laughter.
I’m joining them just this once,
Hiding amongst their sways and their songs.
I will give back all that you seek,
I only wish to know if your cravings run just as deep.
A taunt. That’s exactly what this is—a taunt, sitting neatly on a wooden pedestal in the middle of this large room.
It took my fucking breath away when we opened the double doors and found it.
There is no Lady in White here, though. This is Ingrid. Her nose, her defined jawline, her high cheeks, perfectly supple lips. But it’s her eyes that draw you in, because beyond all that innocence, something new looks back at you from the canvas’s surface—need. A challenge.
I can’t make sense of this. She’s painted in the same style, in clothes from the same era, she’s just closer in the frame. Close enough to see every beauty mark, the faint freckles that dust her nose, yet these brush strokes look like they were painted centuries ago.
It might as well have been done by Dubois himself.
How the…
