“I already told him.” Tristan stepped forward from the side of the building, wiping his eyes for some reason. “He’s gone. What’s the situation?”
Niamh came out next but didn’t stop to chat. She pushed Sebastian in front of her and over the grassy knoll to a hole in the fence beyond, dumping them both into an alley.
“Do ye mind telling me what we’re doing?” she asked, thankfully not yelling at him anymore.
“We need to call everyone off. Bringing these mages in is the wrong play.”
She stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “Are ye positive? I can still go in and bag those mages. If you made a mistake, it’s fixable.”
“I’m positive. One hundred percent. You see—”
She waved her hand. “This isn’t the place to go over the particulars. If yer sure, let’s call them off and get back. We can talk about it with Jessie and Austin Steele.”
Tristan put his hands on his hips while biting his lip, his body shaking.
“You okay?” Sebastian asked as Niamh started to strip.
“No,” he said with a wheeze, wiping his eyes again. “I think I’m going to have a hernia from holding in laughter. I don’t know how I didn’t crack in there. I had both hands over my mouth and was shaking against the wall. I almost blew my cover.”
Niamh looked skyward while shaking her head. “Easily amused.”
“I was not at all amused,” Sebastian grumbled, and Tristan slapped his hand over his mouth and turned away again.
Next time, Tristan should be the butt of Niamh’s jokes. They’d see how he liked it.
Sebastian’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out.
A text from Jessie: Nessa is MIA. Is she with you guys?
“Hold up.” Sebastian put up his hand. “We need to stop by the warehouse to see if Nessa’s there.
She’s gone from Jessie and Austin Steele’s house.”
“Now Tristan, how’s that? Ye stick yer nose in and see what happens?” Niamh asked. “It’s probably for the best anyway. We should check on Edgar. Lord only knows what he’s got up to.”
TWENTY-THREE
NESSA
TRISTAN CUT through the night like a predator, every movement of his large body graceful and sleek.
The shadows slid over his face, accentuating those glowing eyes as he walked up the pathway to the little bungalow he shared with Gerard from the Khaavalor cairn and Gerard’s lead enforcer. Kingsley had made the accommodations available, figuring a cairn leader should have more space than a hotel room, and Tristan was worthy to share it.
His shoe scuffed the concrete before he stepped onto the dark porch, looking up at the dead light.
Not broken, just a loose bulb. There’d be no signs of tampering—Nessa had made sure of it.
Only the moonlight reached him now, allowing Nessa to see the loose, hardly buttoned shirt and trousers with the belt undone and fly open. It wasn’t like him to be so messy in his appearance. Then again, he was clearly home for the night after visiting those bars and taking down those mages.
Probably interrogating them as well. Why not? He’d shown he was incredibly competent in getting information. They wouldn’t need Nessa so long as Tristan was on the scene.
Frustration and fear ate away at her. She didn’t know what she’d do if she became irrelevant.
There was no family to cushion her fall. No friends to share in her misery. If they took her purpose and Sebastian, she’d have nobody. Nothing.
At the front door, he hesitated a moment before reaching for the doorknob.
She was action.
She launched from her hiding place in the rafters at the corner of the porch, tossing a rope around his neck as she did so. That dark rope had been looped inconspicuously around a rafter board and tied to her belt. It pulled tight as she landed on top of him, jerking him backward. He staggered, immediately starting to grapple instead of reaching for his neck. She’d figured he would react that way.
She slipped a loop of a parachute cord with an arbor knot around his reaching hand, sliding it down to his wrist and pulling tightly, first one hand and then the other. It connected to a series of pulleys above, adding much-needed strength to this rig. She hadn’t dealt with someone this large and strong before, but she was a master engineer when it came to this stuff. The adjustments hadn’t taken but a little thought.
As he grabbed at her waist, she yanked the ending of the parachute cord with all she had.
The pulleys whined. The taut cord nearly dragged her body from his, but she wrapped her legs