Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
He was much more graceful as he pulled his body inside than I was. Perhaps he’d been a housebreaker at some point.
Erik lifted his head and winked at me, and I was struck by how much he looked like his son.
Daniel hadn’t been lying when he said he had his father’s coloring and build, but he’d definitely been understating it.
My father-in-law cocked his head to the side as if asking what the hell I was doing.
Right.
I led him toward the doorway, listening for sounds of the people in the house. There was definitely someone just outside the laundry room, probably standing guard in the mudroom that led to the back door of the house.
Without a word, Erik moved past me. He opened the door swiftly and silently, stepping through it like it was nothing, and almost as soon as I’d made it out of the room, Erik was already wrapping his arms around the man. It was over in an instant.
If I hadn’t been around Vampires my entire life—mercenaries at that—I would’ve been scared as hell at the speed and efficiency Erik was capable of.
We moved through the entire first floor like wraiths. There were two more men downstairs. One at the front door, and one who seemed like he’d been tasked with roaming the house at random. I took care of one with my knife, but the other was too fast for me and a freaking giant to boot, so I let Erik handle him. Fighting fire with fire and all that.
Shaking out my arms, I jerked my chin toward the ceiling, where we could hear more men stomping around. A lot more men. Erik and I had already taken care of five of them, but there were at least double that tearing apart the upstairs.
Grant had counted ten.
Kids were never reliable narrators.
It was a good thing I loved the little punk.
The stairway leading up to the second floor was too open for Erik and me to move on safely, so I led him back toward the laundry room. There was a doorway just off the mudroom that looked like it led to nothing, but actually was a hidden staircase that came out in the huge linen closet at the top of the stairs.
I stopped halfway up and pointed at the eleventh stair, shaking my head. Then I stepped completely over it. I paused and waited for Erik to do the same thing.
They’d built the staircase back when servants weren’t supposed to be seen more than necessary, but it had creeped Aunt Halle out, so the Cavendishes rarely used it. Ian and I, on the other hand, had smoked quite a few cigarettes in that tiny stairwell where we knew neither of the little boys would come looking for us. That squeaky eleventh stair had once gotten us caught with the contraband, and we’d been grounded for two weeks.
They never realized or didn’t care that grounding both of us, but still letting us see each other, was no punishment at all. We could make our own fun without whatever had been taken away.
God, I hoped Ian and Daniel were okay. I was too preoccupied to look at my watch and see how long they’d been gone already.
Outside the linen closet, I paused again and looked to Erik. He nodded to me. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side.
The door caught on the mess they’d made of the closet. They must’ve already searched it, but somehow hadn’t realized there was a door hidden behind a row of shelves. I stepped inside the room and cringed as my boots dug into all the clean linens that covered the floor.
The men were louder now, and we could easily hear their conversations as they called to each other from different rooms. To the left of us was Seamus and Grant’s room, and I could hear the men throwing shit around. Glass broke. A loud thump that had to have been one of the bedframes being overturned.
“Steady,” Erik said quietly. He paused with his hand on the doorway to the hall.
Once we were out there, we’d be surrounded on all sides. There was no way to hide in the wide hallway that bisected the upper floor of the house. If even one of the intruders was out there, it would be impossible to maintain our cover.
Beau and Ambrose should’ve already been inside the house, but there was no way to know. Hopefully, they’d gotten inside Ian’s apartment and were waiting for a sign from us. If not, Erik and I were kind of screwed.
“I’ll go right,” Erik said after a moment. He turned toward me and quickly grabbed the back of my head, planting a kiss on the hair just above my forehead. “For luck,” he whispered with a wink.
He waited only long enough for me to raise my weapon before he was opening the door wide and stepping out.