Page 162 of Lock Up the Darkness

“You mean, make it a whole eight times that you would’ve laid it out for me?”

“There’s a lot riding on your part.”

Right, yeah. I would be the one going in first.

I had the closest build to Revenant, so Amethyst wouldn’t suspect that she’d been duped until it was too late. I was even dressed as he would be—information pulled from both Aurora and Asher’s recollections—in a pair of black tactical pants, a black muscle tee and a dark brown aviator jacket, complete with a black baseball cap that hid my facial features well when I angled it right. He never wore a hood when he met with her because it triggered her, it being an Infidels thing through and through. While the High Infidels wore ridiculous gold hoodies, the rest of us went with camouflaging black.

While Jonah was too big, a muscular hulk, Asher was more hard, compact muscle without the overly broad shoulders to add to the whole linebacker aesthetic.

“Yeah, I get it, I answered. “It’s a Goldilocks and the Three Bears situation.”

Aurora chuckled and eyed me over the shoulder of her seat. “I better not be Goldilocks in this scenario.”

“Nah,” Jonah said. “Your hair isn’t golden blonde. Way more lighter, white really.”

“It’s not about the hair color,” Asher said, and I saw him roll his eyes in the mirror.

“If anyone is Goldilocks, it’s Amethyst.” I grinned at her. “You’re a crossover character, a warrior princess type.”

Jonah laughed and slapped my shoulder. “Damn, that was smooth, Pretty.”

Asher cut through the amusement, reminding me, “Still awaiting an answer to my question, Killian.”

“I’m good to go. I’ll get out first, head to the house, draw her out from the shadows and to me, into the house. By the time she realizes I’m not Revenant, the three of you will be there blocking the exits, so she can’t run without speaking with us and giving us what we need. If things take a turn, the three of you will defend, while I’ll get her to our safehouse. If everything goes to plan, we’ll take her there together.”

It was a safehouse that not even our fathers knew about. Basically, we’d purchased it as a failsafe should there ever come a day when they became our outright enemies, instead of the shadowed, cold war kind of state things existed in. And it was about to come in handy, big time, and finally serve the purpose we’d acquired it for in the first place. With the intel that Amethyst had, the acts she’d committed against the Head Infidels, and the very real threat she still posed just being in possession of said intel, she needed to be protected and sequestered far away from them and anything connected to them. That included Hexwood House.

“Very good,” Asher said, satisfied I was ready to handle it and get the job done.

And I was.

I was beyond ready and willing.

This chance wasn’t slipping through our fingers.

Not for anything.

* * *

“A hundred feet out and closing,” I whispered into my earpiece, communicating with Asher, Jonah, and Aurora, who were all spread out through the forest surrounding Site A, as I approached the house up ahead.

“Copy that,” Asher’s voice sounded in my ear a moment later.

Copy that. Yeah, he really took the whole commander-in-chief thing to its max when we were on mission.

I continued on walking for another few moments, closing the distance gradually toward the house. I’d rather have used quick, long strides and hurried in my step, everything in my body was urging me to, knowing we were so close to getting what we needed to change all of our fates. But I’d also promised myself and the other three that I wouldn’t screw this mission up, so I was holding that extreme sense of urgency in check and taking it easy and cautiously. Following protocol and the plan Asher had laid out perfectly. For once.

I was about fifty feet out when I caught sight of a shadowed figure emerging from the trees and making a beeline for the house. They approached the back porch, gave me a hand signal that I didn’t understand, then disappeared fully around the back. I heard the creak of the storm door I remembered from the plans Asher had made us study. A chirping sound of an electronic lock being disengaged sounded a moment later. The lock didn’t chirp again, indicating the figure had left it open—for me. Or Revenant, as they believed me to be.

“Engaging in one minute,” I spoke into my earpiece. “Contact has entered the house.”

“Roger, Pretty,” Jonah’s voice came down the line.

“Charlie Mike,” Aurora’s voice came next.

“What?” I whispered back.

“Continue Mission,” Asher answered.

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