“It doesn’t look much like a cottage.” Rosie stared out the darkened window of the black van they had traveled up to the Lake District in. In front of them was a large gray-stone three-story house nestled among some trees at the foothills of several craggy-looking mountains.
The cottage Casper said belonged to Caesar Bortkov, and where he said he could still detect the signal for Cara’s cell phone.
Rosie had managed to fall asleep on Max’s shoulder for a couple of the five hours it had taken to drive up here. Not easy to do when there were four large men dressed in black clothes and heavy combat boots inside the van with her. Along with two very large dogs, also male. To help her blend in with all their black tactical gear, Rosie had changed before leaving Kingston Manor into a navy blue sweater and dark blue jeans.
Once they reached the cottage, Sinclair parked the van among some trees so they could see Bortkov’s property, but still be far enough away that neither they nor the van were visible to anyone inside the house.
If there was anyone inside the house.
Because it looked deserted.
It was a little after nine in the morning, so there wouldn’t be any lights on inside the house to indicate it was occupied, but despite that, it somehow had a neglected and unlived-in look to it. The curtains at the windows were all drawn back precisely. There were no outward signs that anyone was there either. Most especially there was no car parked outside.
Adding to the feeling, despite Casper’s confirmation Cara’s cell phone was still inside, there was no one inside the cottage.
Max sat beside Rosie, with Casper seated on her other side. Adam was in the front passenger seat, the dogs in a designated space behind a metal grill at the back of the van. They hadn’t made so much as a sound during the journey. They didn’t make one now either.
Was that an indication they didn’t sense any humans inside the house either, or were they just so well trained they wouldn’t move or make a sound until instructed by Adam to do so? Rosie had a feeling it was the latter. No doubt the dogs were more eager than usual to show that obedience after the fiasco with the raw meat.
“Anything?” Max sat forward to prompt Casper, his youngest brother having been engrossed in his laptop for the past ten minutes or so.
Casper nodded. “There’s a sensor alarm system fitted inside and outside the house, and it’s currently switched on. It’s also far too high-tech for what’s supposed to be a weekend cottage. There are also cameras inside and outside the house. Again, too many of them to be classed as normal security for a house listed as a private residence.”
“Do you think Bortkov is inside?”
Casper glanced down at the laptop screen. “I’m not picking up any thermal readings to indicate there’s anyone in there.”
Rosie’s heart plummeted at the thought of them having traveled all the way up here only to find Cara wasn’t here after all.
Unless…
Casper wasn’t picking up any thermal readings of anyone alive.
She felt sick just from having allowed that thought.
“Can you disable the alarm system and cameras so it’s safe for us to take a look round?” Sinclair prompted.
Casper frowned. “I can, yes. But the alarm has been manually switched on, so someone was here, and recently. I’m concerned there might be other security measures in place that my system isn’t currently seeing.”
“Disable what you can,” Sinclair instructed briskly. “Then Adam can let the dogs out and let them do the preliminary check.”
Rosie didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Oh, but—”
“This is what Thor and Loki are trained to do.” Max gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
“But they could be hurt if that monster has put some sort of booby trap in place,” she protested.
“I think it’s more likely to be trip wires in the garden that are hard to see with the human eye, stuff like that,” Casper soothed. “There’s nothing but the tech I’ve already mentioned coming up on my system. Thor and Loki are trained to avoid land mines and trip wires,” he comforted as she still looked concerned.
Rosie glanced at Adam. He’d been very grim faced and silent since they left Kingston Manor.
Now that her memories of that day ten years ago were back, she remembered Adam from the past too, and the way he had taken care of Cara. For such a big and scary-looking man, he had been surprisingly gentle with the then fourteen-year-old Cara. He’d held her in his arms and talked softly to her until, like Rosie, she’d been calm enough to pass on to the medical team. After which they had never seen either Max or Adam again.
Rosie and Cara had agreed long ago never to talk about that day. For Rosie, that was because she couldn’t remember a lot of what Cara said had happened, and Cara couldn’t talk of it at all without becoming upset.
But even though Cara had never mentioned Adam, Rosie somehow doubted her sister would have been able to forget someone with such a forceful nature.
Which wasn’t of the least importance at this moment, she chided herself. Ascertaining whether or not Cara was inside the cottage, along with her cell phone, and alive and well, was all that mattered right now.
“I’m going to let the dogs out.” Adam pushed open the sliding door of the van and climbed out before going to the back of the vehicle and opening the doors to the area where the dogs had been penned for the journey.
Rosie watched him, letting out a small gasp as, instead of standing back and watching as the dogs checked out the area, Adam followed behind them.
“Fuck!” Max swore as he climbed past Rosie and Casper to jump down onto the soft forest floor. “Adam, what the fuck are you doing?”
The other man didn’t so much as glance back at them. “I trust these dogs with my life.”
“Unless raw meat is involved,” Max reminded.
“The second word is off!” Adam snarled.
“Jesus, Max has some balls reminding Adam of that at a time like this,” Sinclair muttered as he opened his door and got out before taking some keys from one of the many pockets of his combat trousers. He then he bent into the section of the van where Rosie and Casper still sat.
Rosie glanced back to where Adam and Max were now locked in a heated verbal argument.
She turned back in time to watch Sinclair unlock the large black metal box at the end of the bench seat, drawing in a sharp breath when she saw the contents.
Guns.
Half a dozen of them. Each snugly contained within its own padded space. In a separate section were the magazines
“Max and Adam still have strong connections to the military and are trained in several unique abilities they’re still happy to supply if called upon. As a result of that, they’re licensed to carry a loaded weapon.” Casper glanced at his eldest brother. “Sinclair doesn’t need to be armed to be lethal, but it doesn’t hurt that he is,” he added softly as Sinclair straightened to push a magazine slickly into place before striding over to join his brother and cousin.
It took only a few softly spoken words to Max and Adam from him for the other two men to stride back toward the van.
“Can I have one of those too?” Rosie prompted as Max and Adam quickly armed themselves before Adam strode away to join Sinclair at the edge of the property’s garden. “I started taking lessons the day after I turned eighteen,” she told Max when he frowned at her request.
“Learning how to fire a gun so you can hit an unmoving target and actually shooting a human being, if necessary, are two entirely different— Fuck,” he swore as Rosie gave him a pointed look.
“Exactly,” she drawled. “We both already know I can shoot a human being, if necessary.”
A nerve pulsed in Max’s clenched jaw. “I’d rather you stayed in the van— Why the hell are you so stubborn?” he demanded impatiently when Rosie just continued to look at him with obvious challenge.
She smiled. “I don’t think you’d like me if I wasn’t.”
A frown darkened his brow as he glared at her. “Who says I like you now?”
“I do.” She leaned forward, her gaze holding his as she placed her lips gently against his.
Max gave a low groan as those perfect lips moved against his in a slow and exploratory kiss. Tasting. Sipping. Feeding the arousal that was never far away when he was with Rosie and which now caused his cock to thicken and engorge.
“You don’t need a gun to be dangerous,” he muttered after Rosie had ended the kiss to look at him with seductive green eyes. “Okay.” He nodded abruptly when she continued to arch a questioning eyebrow. “But don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to, because you really aren’t licensed to carry a firearm under these conditions. I’m only allowing it now— Yes, I’m allowing it,” he repeated at the sound of her snort of disbelief. “Because I would rather you were able to defend yourself than not. But don’t think you’re going to win all our arguments this easily,” he added as he took a second, smaller gun and magazine from the metal box and handed it to her.
She loaded the gun with experienced efficiency. “You think we’re going to argue?” She feigned shock at the suggestion.
He sighed. “Without a doubt. And you can stop smirking and get your arse out of the van.” He glared his displeasure at Casper, his brother making no effort to hide his grin as he listened to their exchange.
“I never thought I’d see the day when the great Max Kingston had to give in to a woman. To anyone, in fact.” Casper chuckled as he climbed out onto the soft forest floor. “I guess hell can occasionally freeze over after all.”
“Fucking comedian,” Max muttered before turning back to Rosie. “I want you to stay behind me and keep the safety on until I say otherwise.”
“Afraid I might shoot you by mistake?” she taunted.
His scowl deepened at Casper’s chuckle. “I’m not willing to take that risk.”
“Oh, and after I kissed you so nicely—” She broke off to glance over toward the house as the dogs began to bark outside the wooden front door.
“I need to check this,” Casper excused himself to hurry away and join Adam and Sinclair.
“I mean it, Rosie, I want—I need you to stay safe,” Max warned as he took advantage of these few seconds of being alone with her. “I accept you’re concerned for your sister, and because of that, it isn’t fair of me to try to stop you from coming with us. But at least promise me you’ll listen if I give you an order. I have other human lives and two dogs depending on me to keep them safe, which means I can’t allow myself to be distracted by worrying about what you’re going to do next.”
She gave his forearm a reassuring squeeze. “As far as I’m concerned, this is a combat zone, and that means you’re the officer in charge. Of course, I’ll listen to you.”
He looked at her face searchingly before giving a satisfied nod and then striding out of the trees to join his brothers and cousin at the perimeter of the cottage garden.
Rosie hung back as the four men fell into a discussion on the best and safest way to gain entry to the building now that the dogs’ reaction, the two of them still barking and snarling at the front door, had ruled out entering that way.
“—we’re agreed I’m going to take my chances and smash and enter through a downstairs window?”
The longer the men talked, the more Rosie’s thoughts had drifted away from their conversation, her tension deepening at the delay to enter the house.
Any thoughts of what was going on between herself and Max had been firmly put to the back of her mind.
Right now, she was mostly concerned by the fact Casper still hadn’t found any thermal readings inside the house. She had no doubt they were all aware that could mean one of two things: either Cara and Bortkov weren’t inside the cottage, or Cara was no longer alive to give off a thermal reading and Bortkov had gotten away.
Her ears pricked at the grim determination she now heard in Adam’s growling voice.
She stepped forward to stand at Max’s side. “Let me do it. Hear me out,” she encouraged when he immediately opened his mouth to protest. “There’s every possibility that Bortkov has booby-trapped all the normal ways of entering on the ground floor. Which is why I’m proposing I use parkour to climb up to the second floor to smash a window and enter one of the bedrooms that way.”
“No,” Max answered without so much as a pause to think over the suggestion.
Rosie gave him a censorious glance before looking at the rest of the Kingston men. “There are five of us, and as Max is refusing to take a practical decision on this, I propose we take a vote on it.”
Max took a tight grip of her arm to turn her to face him. “What happened to ‘you’re the officer in charge’ and ‘of course I’ll listen to you’?”
“I have listened to you. I just think your decision-making on this subject isn’t as unbiased as it should be.”
“Because I don’t want to see you shot or blown to pieces in front of me?” he snarled.
Rosie swallowed. “That isn’t going to happen—”
“You don’t fucking know that!” His face was now only inches away from hers as he glared at her. “We’re trained to do this, so let the professionals handle entry and make sure it’s all clear before you come inside.”
Rosie wanted to continue arguing, but the ferociousness of Max’s expression told her that if she pushed him too much on this, he was going to stop her from entering the house at all.
“Fine,” she accepted tersely before turning away.
Casper drew in a hissing breath. “I think you might be made to suffer for that one later, bro.”
“Piss off,” Max snapped, releasing Rosie’s arm before turning back to Adam. “You make the call.”
Adam glanced at the house and then back at Rosie. “Sorry, but I agree with Max on this. I need to make sure it’s all clear in there before I’m happy letting anyone else inside.”
Rosie frowned at the bleakness she could see in his eyes. Whatever worry and tension she felt in regard to Cara’s safety, Adam was feeling it too.
She managed to give him a brief, and hopefully encouraging, smile. “Just take care, hm?” The last thing she wanted was for any of the Kingston men to be hurt because she had dragged them into this situation. Not that they had been kicking and screaming about doing it, but she would still feel responsible if any of them were injured. She knew Cara would feel the same.
Oh God, Cara…
God knows what her sister had gone through the past few days.
Well, they were here to save her now, and if that meant Rosie standing back while the Kingston men effected a rescue, she was okay with that.
Rosie remained where she was, Casper beside her, as the other three men circled the house to decide on the best point of entry. In the end, they chose a window at the back of the house that appeared to go into what looked like an office.
Adam climbed inside the house through the broken window before disappearing. “They’ve done this dozens of times,” Casper assured as Rosie’s tension grew by the second after.
She continued to watch the house as the minutes ticked slowly by. “Not on my behalf they haven’t.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded. “You’re good for Max, by the way.”
She gave him a startled glance. “In what way?”
Casper shrugged. “I have no idea why, but he’s been almost as closed off and unapproachable as Sinclair this past year. Today I’m seeing a return of the old Max.”
According to Max, seeing her again was the reason he’d become distracted and distant. If Casper had noticed that change in him then the other Kingston men probably had too.
She still had no idea what they were to each other. Or even what they could be to each other. That would all have to wait until the situation with Cara was resolved.
But she knew what she wanted them to be…
“Report,” Max instructed tersely when, long minutes later, Adam opened the front door.
The dogs went to him immediately to reassure themselves he was okay. “There were explosives set to go off the moment the front door was opened from the outside,” Adam stated grimly, the two of them having worked in tandem like this dozens of times before, Max as commanding officer, Adam as his second. “Obviously, I’ve disarmed them. We’ll need to do a thorough sweep of the rest of the house before giving the all clear for Rosie to enter.” He released a heavy sigh. “But so far, I haven’t detected any sign of Cara or Bortkov ever having been here,” he added with displeasure.
“The cell phone?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look for that yet. I thought it more important to defuse the bomb.”
“Casper says the cell phone is definitely here.” Which, Max knew, didn’t mean Cara had been too. Casper had suspected from the start that the cell phone signal might only be a red herring they were meant to follow.
The explosives set to go off if the front door was opened was proof that someone had been here, but that didn’t mean it had been either Cara or Bortkov. Bortkov could have just paid someone to bring the phone here and set the explosives, while he sat back and watched them chasing their own tails.
Max turned to give Sinclair and Casper the signal they could enter the house. As he’d expected, Rosie came with them. “You stay behind or beside me, or you don’t enter at all until we are one hundred percent sure there are no more explosives,” he warned her, waiting for her nod of agreement before adding, “The first sign of trouble and I’ll ask you to leave again, okay?”
“Okay,” she confirmed softly.
Max placed his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face until her gaze met his. “We’ll get her back.”
She blinked away the sheen of tears in her eyes. “What if she’s already dead and that bastard is just playing with us?”
Max’s jaw clenched. “Then, no matter how long it takes, there isn’t a place on this earth Bortkov can hide that Adam and I won’t find him.”
Rosie’s bottom lip trembled as she nodded. “I’ll want to be there when you do.”
An emotion Max didn’t know how to describe swelled inside his chest. Pride and admiration, perhaps, at the courage of this young woman who should have known only safety and happiness in her life, but had rarely known enough of the former to be able to feel the latter. When this situation was over Max intended doing his very best to ensure she never felt unsafe again.
In the meantime… “I didn’t expect anything less,” he answered gruffly. “Now let’s go and see if the bastard has any more surprises in store for us.” He turned to enter the house, gun at the ready, the safety off, as he, his brothers and cousin, began to search stealthily through each of the downstairs rooms.
The amount of dust on the furniture and lack of any personal items lying around backed up Adam questioning whether Cara and Bortkov had ever been here.
That changed when they reached the kitchen.
Casper and Sinclair stood just inside the doorway. Casper was checking readings on his laptop while Sinclair looked through narrowed lids at the slender black cell phone sitting on top of one of the pale granite worktops.
Rosie rushed forward. “It’s Cara’s phone!” She reached out for it.
“No—!” was all Casper had time to warn before Rosie had the cell phone in her hand. “Everybody out!” he shouted. “Now!”
Max didn’t need telling twice. He grasped Rosie’s arm to pull her down the hallway toward the front door.
They had almost made it outside when the first deafening explosion sounded behind them and flying debris knocked them to the ground.