Page 51 of The Thief

I nodded to let Will know to back off for a moment, and we waited.

“They asked me if I knew anyone. They wanted a hard man. I gave them Leon.”

“Who? Who asked?” I pressed.

“I don’t know his name.” Will moved forward with his pliers and Holmes’s eyes went wide. “They call him The Ghost,” hesaid, stumbling over his words.

“Let me guess, because he’s never seen?” I rolled my eyes.

“He knows when to disappear. He knows how to make others disappear, too,” he added.

“And? What else?” I urged.

“That’s it. I’ve only met him a few times. He never uses his real name. But he gets shit done. People trust him.”

“And where can we find this Ghost?” Adam asked, picking up a saw and twisting it in the air, inspecting its sharpness.

“You don’t contact him, he contacts you.”

“That’s not good enough.” Adam strode forward, bracing the saw on Holmes’s right leg. Then he started to move it back and forth, ignoring the screams of pain as he stayed focused and kept asking, “We need more. Give us a phone number, address, anything.”

“The... Scottish boys,” Holmes screeched, and I put my hand out to tell Adam to stop.

“Talk.” I waited. Knowing he meant Numbers Four and Five.

“They’re brothers. Rory and Anton Brown. I know they were involved.”

“See...” Adam stood back, his saw dripping with blood as he grinned. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They’ve gone into hiding.” Adam lifted the saw, ready to use it again, and Holmes blurted, “But their mum lives in Faraday Park. Twenty-two, Grange Crescent. If you go there, you’ll find them. They’re the key to getting to The Ghost. But that’s all I know.” He shook his head as he spoke. “They’re the only names I have. I swear.”

I believed him, and he’d given us enough to go on, for now.

“Do we keep him? He might know more?” Colton asked, but Adam shook head.

“He’s given us enough. Let’s finish this.”

Devon nodded, and with his knife, he stood behind Holmes’s chair and cut his throat from ear to ear.

Blood poured free as Holmes gurgled, slumping forward.

“Looks like we’re paying a visit to Faraday Park,” Adam stated. “But let’s clean this shit up first, yeah?”

A few hours later, after making sure we’d covered our tracks, we walked out of the back door of the house. Adam took a lighter from his pocket, flicked it to ignite the flame, and threw it into the hallway, letting the flames burst free. We’d poured petrol over every inch of that house. Over Holmes’s body too. When the police got here, there wouldn’t be a shred of DNA to help them.

“Time to get ourselves cleaned up,” Will said, and we made our way back into the alley, to where the car and van were parked. The heat from the fire warmed our backs. The sound of the windows shattering was music to our ears.

“We’ll see you back at home,” Adam said as I got into my car, and I nodded and watched them drive away.

Before I left, I checked my phone and saw I’d had a message from ‘My Girls’. My heart jumped into my mouth, and panic gripped me for the first time tonight.

What the fuck had happened?

But when I opened the message, I saw a photo of Ava sittingon Jess’s lap, dressed in a little pink nightdress. Her blonde hair all fluffy and both of their gorgeous faces grinning back at me. The caption underneath said, ‘Night Night, Tyler’. And I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I typed back, ‘Sweet Dreams’.

They were the reason I was doing this.