Page 168 of Beau and the Beast

They hadn’t heard anything from Beau since they decided to move forward, and the day had loomed large in both of their minds. It was natural that tensions would run high. They didn’t talk at all about the plan in the days that followed that night that Noah brought it up—as if giving voice to the stupid thing they were about to do would be enough to make the other one back out.

But when they both rose on the day of their mission, knowing what they were going to be doing, it was an unavoidable topic.

And so as they sat at the kitchen table in Lincoln’s apartment drinking their first cups of coffee, they argued about when they should mount their harebrained attack on 330 West.

Lincoln argued that they should start in the dead of night, when the people in the penthouse were least likely to be awake and on their guard. Noah dug his heels in, saying that they needed to launch their attack in the middle of the work day.

“They won’t see it coming.”

“They won’t, but every member of the operation is liable to be there,” Lincoln said.

“It’s stupid to do it at night. That makes no sense. And then I’ll be stuck with night guards at NWPD, I’ll have to stay in a cell overnight…”

“One night, Noah. It’s not the end of the world.”

Noah bit his lip. He didn’t want to tell Lincoln his real reason for arguing, but the other man was absolutely never going to let it go.

“If you get hurt, you’ll get better care during the day. ERs get crowded and understaffed at night, and who knows how long it’s going to take to get you an ambulance and—“

“Noah, nobody is going to get hurt,” Lincoln said.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know that at all.”

Lincoln pushed back from the table, shaking his head, and came to squat in front of where Noah was sitting. He put his hands on Noah’s knees.

“I’m going to do it when I have the best chance to find Beau.”

Noah pressed his eyes shut.

“And what if I lose both of you?” Noah asked, trying to keep the fear and desperation out of his voice. “I’ll have no one then, you know. I’m not like you—there’s nobody out there making sure I’m ok other than Beau.”

Lincoln squeezed his knees but didn’t say anything. Finally, Noah opened his eyes. Lincoln was considering his words.

“You want to do it at noon,” Lincoln said. “So we’ll do it at noon.”

Time moved mercifully fast that morning. Lincoln busied himself elsewhere in the apartment while Noah did everything he could do to set up the hack he would put into place at noon.

When the time was right, he would deploy the code he’d written. It would only give Lincoln a fifteen-minute window—twenty minutes, if they got extremely lucky—but it would be enough to get him into the penthouse.

It would also be enough time, Noah noted, for the New Whitby police to be alerted to what he’d done.

Whoever was on the other end of that code was a mastermind. They’d set it up so that the minute Noah touched their security system, a packet of information would be delivered to every single user of the New Whitby Police Department email system—and Noah could only guess at what the packet might contain. Whatever it was, it would be enough to get their attention and send them off with sirens screaming to nab Noah.

It was curious, though, that the codemaker had left enough of what they did visible.

It was almost as if they were sending Noah a warning—letting him know that they knew what he was doing. They didn’twanthim to go to jail. If they already had the incriminating files, they could easily have him locked up. No, it was clear that they didn’t want to get the police involved and would only do so if he violated the wary truce they’d established.

Noah wondered what it was going to be like when he was inevitably arrested later in the day. Would they go easy on him if he didn’t resist? Would they be gentle with him because he walked with a cane?

He didn’t count on it. The NWPD were notoriously rough. It didn’t matter who they were apprehending.

The thought made anxiety squeeze around his heart.

And then there was Lincoln.

The man had no idea what he was walking into—and neither did Noah. Maybe he was right about the security. Maybe, on the other side of those pretty penthouse doors, there were big thugs armed with assault rifles, just waiting for a reason to use them.

Maybe they would simply make Lincoln disappear, the same way they had made Beau disappear—and then Noah would be left to rot in jail.

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