The sound of the front door slamming open made everyone jump.
Apparently our company had finally breached the main house.
Collum, who was helping a maid load a rifle into a laundry basket, looked up at me with a grave expression.
I gave the man a slap on the back. “Come on, Collum, this your first coup?”
“Unfortunately it is, sir,” the stone-faced man said, straightening as he tucked his pistol back into the holster. It would be removed almost immediately, but we needed him to have it to keep up the little play we were about to put on for the old men coming to try and take our lives. “But let’s hope it’s also our last.”
“I’ll cheers to that if we make it out alive,” I said, groaning as the gunshot wound in my shoulder began to ache sluggishly. I would need medical attention, and soon. “Oona, if I make it through this? Please have Dr. Stedmeyer on speed dial.”
Hopefully the asshole would patch me up once more for old time’s sake.
“Edison Keane! Come on out here if you value the lives of your men.”
Apparently, Liam Flannagan had decided that he would lead the invasion of my home.
Good. I had some unfinished business with the asshole.
“Ladies,” I turned to the maids who looked innocuous now that all of their weapons were out of sight. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” came their whispered chorus.
Turning to Oona who was busily tucking a dainty pistol into her apron pocket I sucked in a deep, steadying breath.
I could get through this and once I did I would go to the ends of the earth to find Perrie and Rhodes again. To find my pack.
“All right then, I guess it’s showtime.”
Epilogue
Three months later…
Dublin, Ireland
“Is your coffee all right?” Rhodes asked, nodding to the cup in front of me. We were sitting just inside of a cafe watching tourists run through the sudden winter rain that had begun to fall outside.
“It’s decaf,” was all I could say as I glumly stirred more sugar into it.
“Decaf isn’t that bad,” Rhodes said, reaching across the table to pick up my cup, taking a sip and doing a terrible job of hiding his grimace.
“Uh-huh, would you like to tell me again how not bad it is?” I asked with a grin as I reached across for his own cup of blessedly caffeinated bean water which he promptly pulled out of my reach.
“And I’m not the one who is three months pregnant,” he told me curtly with a shake of his head.
Shooting him a pout I settled back into my seat and glared at the cup, not even wanting it anymore.
“You’d think at least one of these cafes would make a decent cup of it, but we’ve been to about twenty of them at this point and I think they may actually be getting worse.”
Every day we drove into the city and visited a cafe for one purpose and it wasn’t to try the coffee.
We’d been putting it off today, the dreary weather outside making our daily task even more hopeless.
Rhodes reached into his jacket, pulling out the burner cell phone that had been in the large duffel bag waiting at the end of the tunnel that day.
I’d fought him the entire way, yelling for Edison until he hushed me when we heard footsteps overhead. Then he’d loaded me up into a car and we’d driven to a private airport to flee the country.
Leaving Edison behind had never been something that sat right with me even long after we’d left the estate.
Apparently, the two had hatched up this stupid plan when we all agreed to be a pack and decided that I didn’t need to know even a little bit about it.
If anything went wrong, Rhodes was to take me and leave and Edison was supposed to meet up with us later by contacting us on the burner phone currently in his hand.
We only ever switched it on in the most bustling parts of the capital of Ireland, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves if the wrong person had a hold of the other phone and could track us.
So every day we ventured into the city from the old stone cottage an hour and a half out and Rhodes switched the phone on to check it.
And every day I held my breath, hoping that Edison would be on the other end, ready to tell us that it was time to come home.
Rhodes pressed his thumb on the power button, waiting for it to switch on as his brows drew together in anticipation.
“Well?” I asked after a few minutes, my patience already thin from the lack of caffeine and my usual nausea courtesy of my unborn progeny who liked to make their presence known just like their father did even if they were currently the size of a plum.
“Nothing,” Rhodes said, sounding more disappointed than I felt.
I shouldn’t have expected anything. It had been three months and there was no news from our third packmate.
