Page 103 of In Control

“You said it yourself, he’s going to have to leave the house. And when he does, we’ll be waiting for him.”

Liam nods slowly, then hesitates. “But what if he doesn’t? What if he cancels everything and stays home?”

“Then we revert back to my plan,” Esra growls with so much venom I’m surprised his words alone don’t melt the fucking table.

I know how to do a stakeout. I’ve done plenty. Following low-life ex-husbands and discovering where they’ve hidden their money, parked their luxury sports cars, or moored their yachts. So we drive straight to the mayor’s house, a stupidly big mansion right on the edge of the city surrounded by parkland. It means anyone can see us coming if we head straight down the main road, so we cut the lights, choose the back lanes and weave through hedgerows until we can see the building in the distance. Most of it lies in darkness, but some of the downstairs rooms are lit up.

“It says on his social media feed that he’s attending a drinks reception for the city’s business leaders later tonight,” Gabe says, peering at his phone. “It’s our perfect opportunity to grab him.”

I park the car on a verge of grass, hidden among the country lanes, and we all bundle out, jogging the last mile to the house.

Esra has a coil of rope slung over his shoulder that he snagged from the boot and Gabe has the pocket knife he carries everywhere with him these days. We’re hardly a fucking army. But there’s four of us and one of him. Of course he may have security, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The mansion itself is circled by high fences, electric fencing rimming the bottom and barbed wire adorning the top. I can’t see any security cameras or motion sensors, though.

“For a politician who’s so well loved, he really wants to keep people out.”

“Or people in,” Liam says darkly, and his words have us all leaping over the electrified wires and shimmying up the fence. At the top, Gabe cuts through the barbed wire with his pocket knife and Liam wraps his hand up in his jacket and peels the razor-sharp wire back, creating a gap for all of us to climb through. The drop on the other side is high, but it’s soft grass beneath. With deep breaths, we suck it up and drop down.

The house is across the lawn, and so close I have to work extra hard to hold back the alpha storming inside.

We draw closer, keeping to the shadows. There are no security guards patrolling the house and no signs of anyone at the main door. We circle the house anyway, on the lookout for cameras and anyone inside. The house seems eerily quiet and my heart thumps at the thought that maybe she isn’t here. Maybe we got the wrong guy. Maybe we got the right guy, but he’s taken her some place else. Maybe she’s already …

I swallow away that thought. It’s too painful to contemplate. We can’t have come so close to finding someone so valuable to have them taken from us.

Sophia is ours. She belongs with our pack.

When we’re satisfied nobody has clocked our presence, Esra peers at his watch. “It’s another hour until the drinks. He’ll probably leave in thirty minutes. What do we do until then?”

“Wait,” I say. “He might come out earlier. If he does, we go for him.”

Esra stares longingly at the mansion, his whole body twitching. “Can’t we just storm in? I can’t wait around outside. He could be–”

And then we hear her scream.

Everything changes.

24

Esra

Fuck calm.Fuck patient. Fuck tactical and planned and meticulous.

When I hear her scream, the world turns scarlet red and every rational thought, any restraint I clung to, blasts away in a thunderclap of rage.

Need to get to her.

Need to help her.

Need her.

I sprint. My legs carrying me like the wind over the grass and to the front door.

I don’t bother to check if it’s open, I crash my shoulder against the heavy door, all my weight and power trained on that damned panel.

It groans but doesn’t budge.

I howl. Fucking howl with rage, barrelling again and again at the door, launching everything I have at the damn wood. Soon the others are there too, helping, and I don’t feel the pain in my shoulder, in my arm, in my elbow. All I feel is need.

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