DARIAN WAS about to say goodnight to Sholto, who we’ll be honest and say wasn’t the last face he wanted to see before he went to sleep—that honor belonged to Angela Vicario—when Sholto’s phone rang. It took an almost indecent struggle with his hand reaching into his pocket before he pulled the phone out, leaning back and wrestling with his seat belt as he did. God knows what anyone walking past outside would have thought was going on.
Sholto frowned at the number and answered. “Hello, Sholto Douglas.”
Darian sat and listened but only because he knew from Sholto’s formal response that it was work and might have been about the party. If he had thought it was Mrs. Douglas he would have given his boss some privacy. This was someone Sholto wasn’t sure of and the pacey mumbling on the other end told Darian the subject was something someone found exciting.
Sholto said, “I’m in the car with Darian, we’ll come straight round.”
He hung up and Darian said, “What’s this?”
“That was Warren Corvo.”
“Who or what the hell is a Warren Corvo?”
“You know him, one of the three lads from Challaid Data Services along the corridor, I can’t remember which one of them, they’re all the same to me. He called to say that someone’s breaking into our office and that we need to get round there sharpish if we want to stop them.”
As he was talking Sholto was putting the car into gear and pulling out from the side of Havurn Road, heading east to try and get to the office on Cage Street. Darian was thinking about the phone call and sticking his brain in the holes he found.
“If they know we’re being broken into why aren’t they stopping the burglar? They’re twenty feet along the corridor.”
“They’re not at their office. He was calling from home.”
“Then how the hell does he know we’re being broken into? Does he sleep under his desk?”
“I didn’t exactly have time to interrogate him, Darian, I was a little too concerned about getting off the phone and onto the road. Now stop talking to me, you know I can’t drive quickly when I’m distracted.”
The problem with that statement was the crucial point it left out. Indeed Sholto couldn’t drive quickly when he was distracted, but that was principally because he couldn’t drive quickly at all. This was the painfully annoying part for Darian, having to sit in the passenger seat knowing that if they stopped and switched places they would spend thirty seconds stationary but get there minutes quicker. He couldn’t suggest it because Sholto would call that a distraction and his pride would never accept it anyway. If he was going faster than usual then to him it meant they were already going remarkably fast.
Darian knew all these streets, could recognize them even in the false light of urban nighttime when the city was clothed so differently and the familiar tried to look strange. They were on Raghnall Road, or Rag Road to locals who mostly don’t remember the sketchy story of the eleventh-century hero it’s named after. There were the two sets of gates to the dock on the south bank of the loch on their left, once the entrances for working men who powered the city and now a monument to the gentrification that had slain the soul but kept the wallet of the area. That meant they were about five minutes of Sholto’s driving away from Cage Street, three if Darian had been behind the wheel.
Stuck at traffic lights, watching two cars go past and knowing that neither could possibly be in as much of a hurry as they were, then they were pulling away again, minus the screech of tires Darian would have aimed for and going past the Glendan HQ building on Bruaich Drive with its glass frontage, and Darian knew they were two minutes from Cage Street, a minute and a half of his driving, so beyond the point where switching roles would help.
He had been thinking on the journey that this couldn’t be a coincidence. They were on Eilean Seud when someone decided now was a good time to try and break into their office. Oddly perfect timing. So who would know? Raven Investigators because their boss Bran Kennedy had eyeballed Sholto at the party? One call to an underling and they could have had someone forcing the door, believing that Sholto and Darian were hiding on the island and bound to be caught there. They were the most likely candidates but that brought questions.
Darian said, “How are you going to handle this?”
“We’re going to go in and try to stop our place from being turned over.”
“But how do we stop them? There might be three or four of them and they might be armed. Do we attack? Do we hold back and box them in?”
“Oh, chee whizz, I didn’t think of that. Maybe we should hold back. I do like my office, but not enough to give it my last breath.”
“We’ll get closer and play it by ear.”
“I do wish my hearing was better.”
Sholto found a spot on a double yellow on Greenshank Drive and they got out, heading round the corner and onto Cage Street.