Page 8

In which we learn poor Arabella is not just waist-deep in the shite, it’s up to her neck and rising .

Logan…

My fist plows into Max’s face and he just takes it, flying backward and landing on the floor, splattering the Persian rug with blood.

“Ya lavvy heided bamstick! How the feck did they get past ye?”

“They got her into a maintenance van that was parked behind the school all day,” he says, spitting blood on the floor, trying to avoid the expensive rug. “We’d checked it earlier and it had standard repair equipment and tools. The men were nowhere around. They disabled the alarm on the back entrance and stabbed Finlay; he was guarding that exit. They shot Marc as they pulled out of the back lot.”

“Motherfecking sons of bitches wankstains!” I shout, running my hands through my hair instead of punching the arsehole in the face again.

“I failed ye and the family,” Max says grimly. “I submit myself for punishment.”

Uncle Cormac’s jaw is tight. “This is some sloppy shite. Ye will do dock work until we have time to address this. Dr. Maura says Finlay’s gonna pull through, but Marc is dead. Now get out.”

I’m pacing the Chieftain’s office, Uncle Cormac heads up the clan and runs all the family’s legitimate and completely, blatantly, criminal activity. He looks uncannily like my Da, with dark hair and green eyes, even though my father is four years younger. Today, Uncle Cormac looks every bit his age, groaning and rubbing his forehead.

“Ye know that prick Anselm has her,” I growl. “I canna believe I let her out of my sight.”

“Georges and Xenia managed to track the van via traffic cameras to a private airfield near Uddingston,” he says. “The eejit pilot even filed a legitimate flight plan. They’re landing in Copenhagen. I’m thinking Anselm would want her close so he could draw ye in to kill ye himself, aye?”

“He’ll have her taken to Rolig ?,” I say, rapidly categorizing everything I know about Anselm’s stronghold. He keeps a penthouse in his office building in Copenhagen, a mansion in Switzerland, another in St. Petersburg, as well as a couple more in London and New York.

But he’ll want Arabella where he feels most secure, which is his enormous estate on a private peninsula on the coast of Copenhagen, surrounded by his platoon of soldiers and his fawning entourage.

“He’s a spiteful bastard, so he’d want her in his compound,” I say, wanting with everything in me to punch a hole in the office wall.

Not like I’d be the first.

“My personal jet’s already fueled and ready,” Uncle Cormac says. “Michael, Kai, your Da and twenty of our best people are on their way to the airfield.”

“Your best? Like those wankstains who let Arabella be taken, not knowing what the feck happened until her students raised the alarm?”

Now, I’m seeing the Chieftain of the MacTavish Mafia. The room’s temperature seems to drop ten degrees.

“If our clan makes an error, we make it right,” he says, his words cold, and clipped. “The lass saved your life. We’ll save hers in return. Regardless, you will never speak to your Chieftain like that again.”

The air’s crackling with tension between us. If he were any other man…

Dipping my head into a nod, I force out, “Aye. My sincere apologies, Chieftain.”

He tilts his head toward the door. “Go on with ye. Get the girl back.”

Our tech genius Xenia is on the jet already, lounging at the conference table with six laptops spread out around her. Her partner Georges is terrified of my brother Kai after Georges went snooping and put his wife Luna in danger, so he stayed behind at MacTavish International for “additional research.”

One of Xenia’s minions is setting up three drones with additional heat signature cameras and heavy-duty clips that I know will be holding explosives.

“Heya, Logan,” she says cheerfully, “we’re gonna kick some fucking ass tonight, huh?” Xenia looks like a rich girl from Connecticut - which she was - until she opens her mouth. Then she’s 100% hood rat and I like her all the better for it.

“Ach, I got a metric tonne of targets for ye, lass.” I tap on the walnut tabletop with my knuckles. “Thank ye for coming.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she chirps, logging onto a site on the dark web. I’ve seen some strong shite, but even my stomach’s turning inside out after seeing these images. Xenia keeps stuffing fish crispies into her mouth and humming as she scrolls through the site.

“What are ya looking at?” I say, forcing my gut back down my throat. “Does it pertain to the mission or just a wee bit of light reading?”

She narrows her eyes, making me wait until she’s finished off a Monster energy drink. “Oh, I think your mission just expanded, if your father and Chieftain are as angry about this as I am. After you fucked over Anselm by taking all his Bitcoin fraud data and violating his patents on his illegal pharmaceutical research, well, what’s a lad to do?” She spins one of the laptops around to show me the screen.

It looks like the aftermath of a battle, a dozen broken, bloody bodies lying sprawled in tattered sheets or naked. “What the feck has he done?”

“Anselm - and may that fucker die a horrible death - is deep into human organ trafficking,” she says, polishing off her drink and cracking open a new one. “There’s still a shit ton of pharmaceuticals coming out of his labs, but the organ trade… We didn’t know about this until you blew up his other hobbies and side interests. He’s kicked it into high gear.”

“Ye know, I’m already planning on killing him.” I run my hands through my hair, “Now, I’m thinking I’ll take my time.”

She smiles wryly. “Yeah, he deserves it.”

“Xenia, we’re taking off in three minutes, secure your gear, aye?” My Da slaps me on the back with a grin. “Mind joining the rest of us? It sounds like we have a mission to plan that’s getting more complex by the minute.”

“Aye, it is,” I admit. “But extracting Arabella is still my first priority.”

We settle in a big grouping of seats around a low table in the main cabin. Uncle Cormac’s jet is a Gulfstream G700, a lavish thing with more teak trim than your average sailboat, huge black leather chairs and its own armory. He did issue a moratorium about cleaning and loading weapons onboard after a couple of “unfortunate episodes” involving my cousins Jack and Wallace.

“And they all think I’m the reckless one?” I murmur. Da raises a brow and I shake my head. “Just thinking.”

“Good,” he says crisply, “we’re going to need all the brainpower on board and back home for this fecking mess.”

“I knew Anselm was an impressive piece of shite, but this…” My cousin Michael shakes his head. “How did he get so deep into the organ business without anyone catching on?”

“We were hyper-focused on more pressing matters.” Da says. “We sent in Logan six months ago after Anselm stole three patents from our medical research division, and he’d just put his new computer virus up for the highest bidder on the dark web.” He gives me an approving smile. “Logan came back with a treasure trove of additional information, including the research and development numbers from a side of his medical division we’d not seen before.”

Xenia clicks a remote and the monitor on the wall shows images of happy patients, grinning at the camera like fecking eejits and hovering models in doctor’s coats. “This is from one of the brochures his people have been distributing in South America,” she says. “They’re recruiting subjects for a new ‘research study,’ supposedly for one of his pharmaceutical trials. What they’re really testing for is organ compatibility for specific clients.”

“Anselm’s running a boutique organ harvesting operation for rich arseholes?” I say. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he’s outdone himself.”

“He started with the ‘grab and slash’ style some of the cartels used,” Xenia says, looking a little green around the gills. “I have pictures, but you don’t want to see them. Then, he moved up to simply buying them from desperate people in Asia and Europe. It looks like that business model was too expensive for him. One of the key requirements for the applicants for the clinical trials is a lack of family or friends who’d raise a fuss if they disappeared.”

“We need more information,” Da says. “Xenia’s done a masterful job of picking up what she has, but we dinnae have any credible intel on where he’s running these clinical ‘studies.’ Until we do, there’s no stopping him.”

“Oh, I’ll be stopping him,” I say. “Ye storm the compound looking for what ye need and I’ll pick up Anselm after I’ve got Arabella to safety.” Pulling my KA-BAR knife from my boot, I rummage through my jacket to find my whetstone block and begin sharpening it. The stone makes a low, scraping sound as the steel passes over it.

“We’ll do the frontal attack with the drone flyover,” Kai says, “dropping the charges over the-”

Scrrrrrch.

“Over the guard’s building and the IT section Xenia’s located in-”

Scrrrrrch.

Kai glares at me, but we’ve worked together too long for that to be a deterrent.

“Once the tech net over the compound is-”

Scrrrrrch.

“Logan, haud yer wheesht, ye nyaff!”

One more pass with the stone to make sure the blade is sharp enough to cut through bone and I stop, smiling pleasantly. “Ye were saying?”

“Are ye remembering what we’re doing here?” Kai snaps, “The rescue plan?”

“I’m thinking ye dinnae bother to check Xenia’s latest scan,” I say calmly. “Take a look at the 3D topography.” Xenia shoots me a wink, the wee shite. She was gonna let Kai walk through the whole thing before correcting him.

“All right, ye slinky minx,” he sighs, “what did ye uncover?”

She taps the east corner of the island. “See the variation of the shoreline? It’s artificial, there’s a tunnel there. They must use it to offload shit they don’t want to take through the front gate.”

Da’s watching the exchange, running his finger along his lower lip to hide his grin. He finds Kai and me facing off a highly entertaining thing.

Kai shoots me the middle finger and changes the plan, dividing the crew up. “Who do ye want at your back, brother?”

“I might be utilizing some explosive rounds of ammunition in my approach,” I admit. “Best I work alone.”

Even Da lets out a groan at that. “Son, as much as I appreciate your ‘Take no prisoners’ approach, your ma’s gonna kill me if I bring ye back as a charcoal briquette.”

“No faith in your son,” I tsked. “So disappointing.”

It takes the full three hours and twenty minutes to Copenhagen for my pompous arsehole of a brother to make sure “everyone was on the same page,” but finally that shite was over and I wrestled myself into my wetsuit.

“Two island missions in less than six months,” I grunt as Michael zips up the back of my suit.

“Eh, you’ve always been a fish,” he says. “Remember that vacation to Italy where ye snorkeled into the underwater caverns that were absolutely forbidden by our folks and the tide came in?”

“I will always maintain that the rest of ye missed out.” I check my waterproof kit bag and add two Glocks and stuff in more ammunition. “It was fecking beautiful, though that dive mask was more useless than the ‘g’ in lasagna.”

“Ye got out by holding your fecking breath and your sense of touch!” Da says irritably. “Now hush it. I dinnae need the stress of remembering that day.”

Michael and I smile and shrug. Parents.

The two boats we’re using hover just outside the Anselm compound’s radar range in the channel between the mainland and his island.

“Everyone stay sharp, aye?” Kai says. “We’re rescuing an innocent. That comes before gathering intel and ideally, just killing that Danish fuck.”

I’m planning on action items one and three for myself, but no need to argue with my brother right now.

“Ya lavvy heided bamstick!” Scottish slang for “You toilet headed dipshit!”

“Haud yer wheesht, ye nyaff!” - Scottish slang for “Shut the hell up, you idiot!”