I hope she can run in those fucking shoes.

  "Why don't we wait until we cool our heads to discuss that decision, yeah?” Middleton said. “In the meantime, I'm going to ask that you stay exactly here because my security team shoots on sight, and I don't want anyone to accidentally murder my current employees."

  I grinned, knowing it was more of a sneer. And then I said, "Funny that you should mention murder." And then, quick as a flash, I jabbed him directly in his nose and snatched the glasses off. Quickly, I popped another fist to his face before dragging Emma behind me.

  As we hustled for the door, I popped the glasses on. Jesus fucking Christ, it was so much easier to see with them. "Move your ass, Emma."

  "I'm trying, goddamn it. Have you tried to run in four-inch heels before?"

  "There was that one time in Uni. Don't ask questions."

  All I heard behind me was her snort of laughter, but she kept up as best she could. She had long legs, and she was strong. But at one point, I heard her curse behind me, and then she stopped. "Babe, love, you can't stop. Let's go."

  "Sorry. I'm just taking these goddamn shoes off."

  And then she was running, beating me. Jesus, she was surprisingly quick. And she was carrying her shoes like weapons.

  We headed out of the massive ballroom into the reception hall, to the right, and I could see some people milling about, trying to feel their way along the walls. Down the hall, I saw a security guard with his gun drawn. I immediately tugged Emma to a halt, wrapped my arm around her as we walked, and snatched the night vision glasses off.

  He'd been thirty feet down the hall. I counted silently. Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. And then I put the glasses back on. He still had his gun drawn. He wasn't paying much attention to us as Emma didn't have to pretend she couldn't see. When we were close enough he called out, “Hey, who's there? No one is supposed to be in the hallway. It's too dangerous.”

  Emma was great. She immediately started to feel around. “Oh my God, I really needed the bathroom, and he said he'd come with me, and we just got turned around and it's so dark. Do you know what's happening?”

  The guard seemed confused at first. “Ma’am, you need to turn back around and head back to the ball—"

  I hit him hard and pulled his goggles off his face.

  "What the—"

  Before he got to say anything, I landed another punch to his throat, grabbed him by his lapels, and then snapped my head forward to catch him on the nose. Blood started spurting everywhere, and I patted him down and grabbed his walkie. As he rolled and moaned, I kneeled down and popped him in the face once more for good measure.

  Next to me, Emma gasped. "Bridge, what's happening? What's going on?"

  I took her hand and put Middleton’s glasses in her palm as I put on the other goggles. When she put them on, I could almost feel the tension ease out of her. "What the hell?" She glanced down at the motionless security guard. "Is that a gun? Why does he have a gun?"

  I tucked the walkie in my lapel then took his gun and checked it. Those were live rounds.

  Fucking hell.

  I tried our comms again. "Lucas, come in. Lucas."

  But nothing. They were down. Middleton’s team must be doing something to block communications because they have been using a separate channel on walkies.

  "What do we do, Bridge?"

  "Every person in here, including Roone, is well trained enough to know how to get the fuck out of here. So let’s get out of here safe and sound. We’ll regroup, and if we need to, we'll come back for anyone left behind."

  There was a movement behind me, and before I could respond, Emma whirled and connected one of her bare feet to his femur.

  He grunted and grabbed her ankle. "Easy, pet, I'm not the enemy."

  "Oh my God, Roone, I'm sorry. You just surprised me and…"

  He tapped his night vision goggles too. "Snagged these off a security guard in the ballroom."

  I had never been more relieved to see him. "Jesus Christ. Okay, well, we have you. Where are Lucas and Bryna?"

  "Don't know, but Lucas will get Bryna out of here. He would never leave her behind. If they did trip something, Lucas is probably going to get her."

  I halted. "It’s Bryna. We should go help her."

  Roone shook his head. "No, the prince knows what he's doing."

  I chuckled. "Lucas?"

  Roone grinned. "Remember, he wasn't always a prince. You have more in common with Lucas than you do Ben or East. Trust me."

  So the three of us headed out, not at the main entrance, but using the egress route we'd chosen before. The alarms had already gone off, so we wouldn’t risk tripping anything else.

  I glanced over at Emma once we were in the fresh air. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, I think so. Jesus."

  "You can run?"

  "Yeah. Let's go. Come on."

  Over the crest about a quarter of a mile away and down the path that led to the beach, we had boats waiting in a small cove.

  A crack zipped above my ear as we ran, and I cursed as I dove and tackled Emma, covering her body with mine.

  Beneath me, she struggled. "What the fuck are you—"

  Another crack rang out.

  This time, Roone tucked and rolled and dove beside us. "The fuck? We need to crawl out of here."

  Ten more feet to the crest. We kept low and tried to hide behind shrubbery. The person they had shooting at us wasn't a sniper. Otherwise, we'd already be dead.

  We were under the cover of shrubs, and the shooter was taking blind aim, unable to see us well, and we slowly crawled our way toward safety.

  I glanced up at Roone and he shook his head. "This is bad. This is really, really bad."

  "Can you get her to the boat?"

  Roone frowned at me. "Why? What are you doing?"

  I shook my head.

  Ems was trying to do a tuck-and-tie thing with her sequined dress. "Oh, he's trying to do the thing where he stays behind, so he can go fight the bad guys or something. But what he doesn't realize is that I am not letting him do that. If he stays, I stay. So all of us have to get across that crest. Okay, my darling husband?"

  Roone's chuckle was low and deep. "She reminds me of Jessa."

  The princess, one of my best marketing employees, was no wilting heiress. She had a backbone made of steel, and I would be more than happy to take her into a firefight any day.

  "Fine. Roone, on three, let’s get to work."

  He nodded. "All right, take a deep breath folks. We have movement. They're coming for us," he said before dragging the night vision goggles off. "All right, one. Two. Three."

  We all made the wild scramble. Emma was moving surprisingly quick. But still, I couldn't risk it. I nudged her on the back of her dress and then just shoved her up over the crest. She gave a little yelp, and I could hear her light squeaks as she bowled down the grass to the beach. Roone was over next. Several more shots hit the grass in front of us, and I launched myself over with a Hail Mary. Flying over the crest, practically feeling the heat of a bullet as it whizzed by me again. And then I was rolling. The jarring of my bones as they hit shrub after shrub made pain grate all over my body. And all I could do was pray that Emma was okay. That she had landed safe and sound at the bottom of this fucking beach, and we would soon be out of there.

  When the rolling finally stopped and I could lift my head, I called for her. "Ems. Ems, where are you?"

  She coughed about five feet away. "I'm right here."

  I glanced around. "Roone?"

  He was already on his feet moving toward the beach. "Come on."

  Emma was on all fours, and I pushed myself to my feet, helping her up and running. Because above us, I could hear the shouting.

  As we hauled arse to the boat, I saw two shadows down by the water. "Fuck."

  But then ahead of us, I heard Roone laugh. "You are literally Houdini."

  Lucas called out. "Sorry, getting Bryna out was a little tricky. I tripped something. I tried to send a warning, but the comms were jammed."

  When we reached the boat, I glanced over at my friend and his wife, who was panting and checking everyone over. Bryna said, "Fucking hell, I hope what we got was worth all this."

  I helped Emma on the boat as Roone unmoored it and then hopped in with us.

  "Francis Middleton is even more dangerous than we realized, and we may have dipped our hands into something really, really horrendous.”

  Forty-One

  Bridge

  The boat ride to our private runway and the subsequent flight to London was, in a word, tense. That was one way of looking at it anyway. We were all safe. No one had been hurt. But Middleton… We’d seen the side of him that he usually kept hidden but we’d known was there. That sinister leer wasn’t just a bad feeling. This wasn’t just about corruption and embezzlement. There was something very wrong with him. But now he knew we were onto him, which could be even more potentially dangerous.

  The whole trip, Emma had been crashed out, too exhausted to do much more than exist. Her adrenaline levels had dropped. Bryna had been quiet, contemplative, and on her phone for most of the flight. Lucas, oddly, had passed out like a baby. Snoring too. Mouth open, drool coming out of the side of his mouth. How could he sleep after something like that? Telly, who had met us at the dock with Alex and Amelia in the van as planned, had her headphones on and was hunched over her laptop.

  Roone was shaking his head when he looked at his friend and brother-in-law. "You forget, he's used to these kinds of situations. Literally running for his life. It juices him up. Us mere mortals, however, we think that shit was a little too close. That was nothing for him."

  I glanced at Emma. She had her knees drawn up, and was curled into a little ball with the blanket around her. She didn't look particularly comfortable, and she probably wasn't. I tried to get her to go into the bedroom in the back of the plane, but she wouldn't. And I understood. She wanted to be close to me and everyone else. I didn't want her away from me either. One thing was for certain; there was no way in hell that she was ever going back to Middleton Communications.

  Once we arrived back in London, the first stop was Covington House. It had better security than the hotel did. Far less civilians too.

  Telly had made sure to keep Middleton’s plane grounded. His plane experienced all kinds of technical malfunctions she’d applied to make sure of our safe return home. Middleton could come for us, but he’d have to do it on our turf. When we arrived, almost everyone was already there. Livy and Nyla were carrying snacks Ben’s housekeeper had prepared for us into the great room.

  I glanced down at the food as I settled Emma on the couch. "Wow. Isn't it a little late for all this?"

  Livy shrugged. "I figured you guys might want to eat something when you came back, adrenaline and all. Also, it’s the Ghanaian way. Healing with food."

  I gave her a thankful nod and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. Ben clapped me on the back hard. "Hey, mitts off my bride, yeah?"

  I chuckled. "Bride-to-be, you mean. How is it I got married before you did?"

  Livy shrugged. "You know, that's a very good question. Is there still time to upgrade to Charlie Hunnam or Idris Elba?”

  Ben smacked her arse. “You already have the best. Maybe I need to remind you.”

  Livy giggled, and I had to keep from gagging a little.

  Once everyone was settled, we all took a collective breath. Like we somehow needed a breather after all that had happened. Lucas however, was in a great mood. When he came back from the bathroom, his grin was huge. "Why are you guys acting like someone died? We're all fine. And we probably have some good information."

  He tossed one flash drive to East, and one to Telly. "Between Bryna and I, we probably have something useful on those.”

  Bryna shuddered. “I’m so sorry, you guys, I almost got us caught.” Her gaze met mine and then went to Emma's. "I'm so sorry. There had to be some security protocol I didn't check. I'm really sorry."

  Ems shook her head. "Don't do that. Don't make your brain spin out on what could have gone wrong. Just focus on what you were able to get. Something, anything, is better than the nothing we had before. It's more than I've been able to get in all the weeks I've been there. The first info I got was completely useless."

  "Oi,” East called from over in the corner with his laptop. “Not useless. Telly and I just couldn't get into it. That data was so dense and encrypted, and I get the feeling it's junk."

  Telly seconded that. "There are hackers that will literally build you systems that if anyone attempts a copy, all they get is pure junk. Which is why even our super computers couldn't unfurl all that data. It's like a digital burning. Don't be upset."

  Bryna shook her head.

  "I don't know. I just thought I was so smart." Emma mumbled.

  I squeezed her nape. "Don't worry about it. Alex hasn't been able to come up with anything either. Middleton's smart. Smarter than we gave him credit for."

  Emma ran her hands through her hair. "I just feel like I failed at all of this and I put everyone in so much danger. It was really unnecessary."

  "Aw, stop that." Bryna shook her head. “Didn’t I already try flogging myself?”

  Nyla stood and grabbed herself a cream puff. "Do you understand how much danger I've put this team in before? We've all been there. We are a family. We have each other's backs." She spoke around the puff in her mouth.

  East, of course, watched his fiancée's arse as she bent over the coffee table and grabbed another pastry.

  Amelia had her laptop too. "I'm doing a deep dive on the security team he used. I'll ask my contacts from work and find out exactly who he used. See if anyone is willing to talk off the record. Someone had to have seen something. Someone has to know about him or what he's been doing. We'll figure it out."

  We had the whole team on this. But I could still see defeat in Emma's eyes.

  "I'm so dumb." She glanced up at me. "You all tried to tell me. You all tried to warn me that I was in way over my head. You tried to get me to stop, to listen. You tried to get me to let you handle this. And instead of listening, instead of working together, I just made this worse."

  I smoothed a hand over her hair, the silken tresses slipping through my fingers. "Look, nothing I say is going to make you feel better right now. You're determined to blame yourself, but we are the London Lords. We look after one another. And Toby was one of ours. We were always going after Middleton. And chances are something like this was going to happen anyway. The only complication is that he's too fixated on you. He's already tried to hurt you once. We have to protect you while taking him down."

  She licked her lips nervously. "Maybe I had that wrong. Maybe—"

  I squeezed her hand. "Stop it. Stop it now. You didn't have that wrong. I saw him at the party. He’s unhinged. I'm not putting you in that line of potential danger again. Under no circumstances."

  She nodded. "I know. I know. It’s just… The whole time we had a plan, and I just kept thinking about things I could have done in a million different ways."

  Telly sat up straight. "Holy shit. I think I have something."

  East growled from his corner. "The fuck you do. I'm still trying to crack psychiatry reports from Eggston Psychiatric where he spent some time."

  "You should have picked a different flash drive," she said and stuck her tongue out at him. "Okay, on this flash drive, we have a list of missing girls. Dozens of them. Organized somehow in three groups. I can’t figure out the rhyme or reason. There is a sub-folder with bank details. We already know Middleton senior was paying into some accounts in Barcelona. But what we didn't know is that those accounts and payments always seem to coincide with Middleton having been to Barcelona. Junior, not Senior. The amounts vary from five to fifty thousand euros, except for one large payment of two hundred thousand pounds. For the most part, they go to shell corporations which are endless threads to follow. But I was actually able to track the largest one of them. Not necessarily because the person got sloppy, but because the amount was different and larger. I found this."

  She brought the laptop over, and we all crowded around. I dragged Emma into my lap so she could see better. We eventually had to pass the damn thing around. When it got to me, I frowned. "Okay, so who is Collette Windham?"

  "Collette Windham is a close family friend of the Middletons. She grew up with our friendly neighborhood psychopath. The two of them had been holidaying in Barcelona. After that holiday, through a series of shell corporations, Collette was paid two hundred thousand pounds."

  I frowned. "Jesus Christ. Why would Middleton senior have paid her that kind of money?"

  Telly shrugged. "That's the question. We will need to talk to her. And here's the kicker. That was not the only payment made to Collette. Every month since the initial payment six months ago, they've made another deposit of fifty thousand pounds."

  "You think he hurt her?"

  Telly shrugged. "I don't know. I've been looking for hospital records on her. I haven't found anything though. That'll be harder to crack."

  "All right. If we can get her to talk, we have leverage."

  I glanced around at my mates, East, Ben, and Drew, and they all nodded. We were so close. We knew that he had a tendency to hurt women, and there had to be more than Collette. And if there were others, we might have a legal avenue, or a not so legal avenue. Either way, we had him in the crosshairs now.

  Forty-Two

  Emma

  The following day, I left the mansion with security in tow to go meet Nyla and Amelia for lunch. They had a community outreach partner they wanted me to work with to build up their profile. It was a small job for a friend of Amelia's, but it was something. I’d take it, as I couldn’t go back to Middleton’s, and I still didn't feel comfortable working for Bridge. Even though he told me point blank that I wouldn't be working for him directly, it was still his company. And I needed a little bit of separation.