Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (9 page)

My phone buzzes just as I'm about to climb out my window to go to Taog's. Trevor.

"Where'd you get that list?" He asks without preamble.

"Someone went through a good amount of trouble to find me. She went by the name of Macy, but there's no way that's her real name."

"Gu Bràth?" 

"I reckon not. Just someone not too keen on landing on the pointy end of Granger's knives."

Trevor falls silent. "You said she put them in order of priority as best she could. Do you trust that?"

"I don't know what else to do, Trevor."

"Very well. I'll put surveillance on the first few names, see if they catch any wind of Granger."

"Tell them to stay out of sight. Granger's not exactly unfamiliar with espionage. I'd bet she can spot a tail before you pin it on her."

"I'm not an idiot, Shrike."

"Bloody hell. Just covering our arses. You're welcome for the intel, Sergeant." I feel a surge of heat in my chest and tamp it down. 

I hear Trevor's deep, slow breath. "You're right. I'm sorry. We're on it."

The click tells me he's hung up, and I sit back on the edge of my bed until my blood pressure returns to normal. 

Crawling in bed with Taog brings more comfort than I'd like to admit. When I climb through his window, the muscles in his face relax, and his chest falls with the sigh that escapes him. I've already changed this time, and my trousers are just slightly damp from the spots of rain that fell on them between my window and his. Taog doesn't seem to mind when he folds back the duvet for me.

His arms seek me out, and I nestle into the crook of his shoulder once more. At first I worry that the sleep we both found last night was just a fluke, that tonight we'll both of us be too worked up to sleep again, too fearful of nightmares and starting awake in the wee hours with sweat dripping down our backs and adrenaline pumping tin into our blood.

But with Taog's arms around me and mine bent across his chest, my hand stroking his collarbone, his breathing slows to match mine, and within minutes, he's asleep. I crane my head and gently kiss his cheek before allowing sleep to take me.

When morning comes on Friday, Taog and I stare at each other, our hands and arms still clinging to one another's bodies like we've tasted the good stuff of sleep and are afraid the next fix will never come.

And yet, we pry ourselves out from under the duvet for work.

My job is enough to distract me during the day, and I don't hear a peep from Trevor about the surveillance, which means it hasn't gotten exciting. 

That night, with the Friday crowds in the city centre, I decide I need to see for myself.

Timothy Strand's flat in Morningside is in a nice building surrounded by dormant hydrangeas that likely paint the crescent with colour in the spring. For now, mid-winter, they hibernate with the sun.

I approach on the rooftops, and even my still-undertrained eye catches the two bobbies in unmarked cars that flank Strand's building from a hundred yards away.
Harrumph
. Trevor himself might not be daft, but if I can see the two coppers' silhouettes in the dark, I've no doubt Granger can as well.

The sky is inky black above my head, stained only with sickly yellow from the city's light pollution. No rain falls now, though the mist from the firth leaves the air moist and chills my face.

Strand's flat is on the second floor, and I can't see anything through the curtains. Black-out curtains, if my guess is right. The way they hang suggests they cut out all the light from the street lamps, and I wonder if Strand works at night or just likes to live in a cave.

I perch on the edge of the roof two houses down from Strand's building, leaning out over the edge to see his flat. It's not comfortable, but I don't care. One of the bonuses to my strength and speed and the fact that I have to eat a million calories a day is that my body heals kinks in seconds. I ignore the edge of the roof cutting into my ribcage and wait.

It's the curtains I watch, because I have nothing else to do.

When they twitch, so do I.

I freeze where I am, fingers digging into the concrete lip at the edge of the roof. It could be a cat. Anything. I look down at the bobbies, but they're unmoving. I can't tell if either of them have binoculars or night vision goggles or anything at all that would allow them to see what I just saw. The curtain twitches again, then a shape presses against the window through the fabric.

I'm moving before I can think.

Cats aren't six feet tall.

Reaching Strand's roof, I guess where the window is and drop down, catching myself on the protruding frame at the top. Without hesitation, I kick out the window and launch myself through it. The heavy blackout curtains tangle around me, but I wrench them to the side, stumbling into the flat's darkened salon. 

I see the dark shape on the floor a split second before my foot hits it, and I trip, sprawling out over the parquet. 

The body is warm. A triangle of orange light spills through the disrupted curtains and glints on broken glass and the open eyes of Timothy Strand. They say people look surprised in death. His face is calm and flat. Resigned. As if he saw it coming.

Maybe he did.

A crunch of glass sounds like an avalanche. I leap to my feet.

"You." 

One word from Granger and I feel like I've drank that fateful bottle of Irn Bru all over again. My blood burns in my veins as if my very arteries are heating elements.

I can't see her clearly; she's lurking on the opposite side of a half wall that separates the salon from the kitchen. I launch myself laterally instead of aiming for her, skittering behind the wall. 

"Me." I usurp her voice because I want her disconcerted. Then, on sudden inspiration, I mimic the voice of Andrew Granger, her dead son. "Another murder. More murder, Mum, why always more murder?" I let myself scream the final word in his frantic tenor, and the thud I hear from Granger's side of the wall makes me think she's jumped.

She says nothing for a beat.

"You understand nothing, Gwen Maule."

I already knew she knows my name, but the sound of it still startles me as much as if she'd pulled off my mask. 

"Don't I?" I move again immediately after I speak, edging toward the end of the half wall. She can pinpoint me by my words, but I can locate her by her breathing, which is smooth and unhurried, as if she were sipping a cuppa instead of wiping a bloody knife on her handkerchief. The even
swiff-swiff-swiff
I hear tells me she's doing just that.

She doesn't care that I can hear her. She's either thicker than I remember or actually not afraid of me.

Maybe those two things are the same.

I leap onto the half wall and lunge for her.

Something hits me full in the chest, and my muscles turn to steel all at once. I tumble to the floor, limbs akimbo and heart glugging. 

It hits me again. My foot kicks out against a cupboard with a hollow thud.

"We'll meet again," Granger says. Her voice sounds far away. And then she's farther away, even farther, with her last word snaking through my throbbing head, weaving through sputtering synapses until even that fades, and the glinting of light on glass and dead eyes is the last thing I see. 

"She used a stun gun on you."

The line between Trevor's eyes has deepened every time I've seen him since August, and I find myself thinking that if I were to put a bit of card stock there, the crease would hold it straight out without any help.

We're in the finally-deserted salon of Timothy Strand's flat. The blood pool has gone sticky, and the morning light brought with it a flat downpour of rain mixed with snow. My whole body feels stiff, and I allow myself to stretch a bit. The scene around me is all too familiar by now. Body. Blood. Blame.

I force myself to look Trevor in the eye instead of staring between them. "Aye, I reckon I sussed that one out." 

She must have used an incredibly powerful one to drop me like that. I felt little fizzy jolts for the next two hours after I woke up with one of the bobbies prodding me. 

One had a hand on the tie to my mask, and I almost broke his wrist hitting it away.

They both backed up a few feet after that.

"Why didn't your surveillance team see her go into the flat?" I know why; they were about as subtle sitting outside Strand's home as a TARDIS in the middle of the High Street. But I don't say that. I don't want to make this worse. The whole thing's a bloody cock up, and it's no one's fault but our own underestimation of Granger.

You'd think we'd learn.

I tell myself she won't catch me with my knickers down again. Stun me once, shame on you.

I'm not going to get to the shame on me bit.

Trevor takes off his hat and runs his fingers through his hair. "They must have been trying to make me look bad."

"I'm sure that's it." I resist the urge to roll my eyes. "What next?"

"Unless you've figured out a way to clone yourself, I'll get some better surveillance and give them a crash course in being stealthier. You check up on the list members as much as you can."

"Anyone with them during the day?"

"Granger's only hit people at night so far."

"Exactly. She's not stupid, and she's not always that consistent. Make sure you've got people on round the clock."

He nods. The two final forensic workers exit the flat, leaving Trevor and me alone here. 

"How are you holding up?" The question bubbles out of my mouth before I can stop it.

Trevor blinks at me, then replaces his hat and straightens his spine. "I'll sleep a lot easier once we get Granger."

"Won't we all." I don't tell him that before tonight, I've actually had two decent nights of sleep. I wonder if Taog was able to sleep with me gone all night. My money's on no.

"We're not incompetent," he says after a long pause. "I've got my best people on this. The longer this goes on, the more people will get scared."

"Do you think we've heard about all the murders?" It hasn't occurred to me to ask about that yet. What if Granger's hit more people we just don't know about? Some of the folks on Macy's list try to stay off the grid — maybe they wouldn't be immediately missed. Or don't live in areas where someone would notice an intruder. 

"I've wondered the same thing, but there's no way for us to know. It's no like we can see every house and flat in Scotland."

"Can you send someone to check up on the people who aren't living in the city?" 

"If we can find them, aye. I'll put detectives on it."

There's a silence as both of us contemplate the situation. Granger got away again. It's likely Macy didn't give me a full list of people Britannia wants silenced, and Granger could easily hit people whose names aren't on it. I think about the Gu Bràth security detail that is kept for Taog, and I suddenly feel a lot less confident about their abilities to keep him safe.

The need to get home to him almost overwhelms me. If I crawl through his window to see naught but blood and broken glass and a body…I shudder, and this time not from my muscles recovering from thousands of volts of electricity.

nine

Even though Saturday is my day off, I can't bring myself to try and sleep when I return to Taog's flat.

He's half-heartedly poking at a document for Gu Bràth on his laptop, and I don't remark on the fact that I've seen him highlight the same paragraph three times.

The day passes in quiet tension, and at twelve-thirty, my phone buzzes. Magda.

"Oi, Magda."

"Did you see my note?" 

"I've not been home since yesterday morning."

Her voice turns coquettish. "Oh, are you at Taog's?"

"Aye, but it's no what you think. There was another murder."

She goes quiet, and for a moment I imagine a day when she could call me and I could giggle about Taog and how nice it feels to have someone. Someone to feel safe with. Someone you know
you
make feel safe. But instead I allow the silence to grow heavy, because as much as my arms around Taog may make us able to catch a few hours of elusive sleep, safety is only an illusion.

"Can you come out tonight? There is a party to celebrate my contract signing, and I would like you to be there." Magda sounds like she desperately wants to be excited.

My chest compresses, and I cringe. I wish I'd waited to hear why she was ringing me instead of blurting out more depressing news. "Tonight? Isn't that a bit sudden?"

"It's not a big party," she says. "Just me and my team and the investors. But I would like it if you came."

"Of course I'll be there," I say automatically.

She gives me the name of the lounge and the address, and I tell her to text me the information once we're off the phone.

I relay the plan to Taog, and he gives up on his Gu Bràth work to help me research the other names on the list from Macy. He suggests we put Tasha on the case, especially since she's on the list, but I don't want to include anyone I don't have to. Trevor I trust. Taog I trust. Magda I trust. But I don't want to risk Tasha or anyone else at Gu Bràth any more than they already are.