Page 175 of Nothing More

“I tried to stop it,” he said, “but it was too late, apparently. I’ve told Fox off for it, for all the good that does.”

“King,what?” she snapped, losing patience. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

The six square windows set at the top of the back door glowed blue with the last of the day’s winter sun, and a silhouette reared up suddenly beyond the glass. Two silhouettes.

“Jesus!” Raven hissed. Cass clutched at the back of her hoodie, and Toly’s knife winked back into sight. Shep lowered his gun, muzzle aimed between Tenny and Toly’s shoulders on the door.

A pale, bare hand pressed flat to one window, and then a face filled another. Blue eyes, high cheekbones, lock of blond hair. Reese.

“All clear,” he said, voice muffled through the glass.

“Who the fuck’s with you?” Tenny barked, and he was all business now, nobabe, no whining over Monopoly.

Raven’s heart knocked hard, but she looped an arm around Cass’s shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s alright,” she said, because that was the sort of thing you said in these kinds of situations.

And it had to be, right? Reese wasn’t the sort who’d go along with an intruder. Even if he’d been threatened, even if his arm was twisted behind his back and a gun put on him, he wouldn’t cooperate to help an enemy get inside and get at them.

Also, odds were slim to none anyone driving a Jaguar could get the drop on him in the first place.

In the window, Reese made a face. “You’re not gonna like it. But it’s safe.” Another face. “Open up.”

“Raven?” Oh, King was still on the line. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s alright. It’s…”

“Dad,” she said, and nearly choked on her own spit.

Another face appeared in the window beside Reese’s, lined from sun and wind, but still handsome, the eyes still the same, startling blue that Raven, and Cass, and Tenny, and King, and all the others shared.

“What…what the fuck? Devin?” Tenny sounded like someone had dumped cold water down his back.

Devin – and yes, it was definitely him – waved. “Hiya, son. How’s things?”

“Yeah,” Walsh said through the phone, sighing again. “Surprise, I guess.”

~*~

“Tell me you have something stronger than beer,” Tenny said, voice gone very flat.

Toly went to an antique wardrobe in the living room that, once opened, proved to be a fully-stocked bar. He got down glasses, cracked open a bottle of Glenlivet, and started passing them around. Raven accepted hers with a murmured thanks where she stood behind the sofa, her gaze trained on the armchair that Devin had settled into as though it was his right.

Once the initial fear-shock had given way to realization, and swift dismay, Raven had stepped into the kitchen to grill Walsh.

He sighed yet again; might have been developing some sort of sighing condition. Devin would do that to a man. “We were having dinner at the farm last week, and Tenny called Fox. Mission report.”

“Ugh,” she had said, and then the implication hit. “Wait, what did he–”

Walsh had sounded grim. “He took the call in my office. Put it on speaker.”

“And let me guess: you were there?”

“Yeah.”

Hot anger had itched across her skin. She hadn’t had to ask what Tenny had told them; she already knew: that Raven was sleeping with Toly, that he was sneaking off, that she’d had Tenny follow him and he’d found him meeting with his old bratva mentor. The whole sordid lot; she could imagine it in Tenny’s judgmental tones, filling the handsome, wood-paneled confines of Walsh’s office at Briar Hall.

“That wankstain,” she’d hissed. “I’ll throttle him.”

“Fox was going to go himself, but with the baby–”

“What’s wrong with the baby?”

---