Page 82 of Their Mate

Declan nudged a half-open cupboard with his boot. “I’ll take hope and a rummage.” He kicked it wider. Inside was a shoebox full of cables, a police scanner with a cracked face, and two antennas.

Jamie barked a laugh. “Bless whoever lived here, a proper apocalypse starter kit. Look at that, a Baofeng special.”

I knelt beside the shoebox, stripped the good antenna, found a BNC-to-SMA adapter in the tangle, and swapped it onto Logan’s handheld. I cleaned the contacts with a corner of my shirt, then waggled the jack into place. “Power on.”

Logan thumbed it and the screen lit up.

His radio crackled and then he spoke. “Wolf One to River Team, radio check. Zara, it’s Logan. Radio check.”

Static. And then—thin and distant, threaded with wind—his sister’s voice: “—copy—Logan? We’re—downstream—bank.—fine.—you find Declan? The—signal’s poor.”

Logan closed his eyes, exhaled, and keyed again. “Copy. We found Declan.”

“—copy. Watch your backs.” The line died in a round of static.

Declan’s chin tipped. “Boat first, then?”

“Boat first. We go after our mate. I’ll radio Zara. She has her own pack to look after her. She’ll be fine,” I said. “Weather’s turning—if the wind stacks the tide against us, we hug the coast, then head east by northeast to the Isle of Man.”

“At first light we all go to the quay, secure the best hull, and cast off together. If we happen to spot Sera, we shadow her.” Logan laid out the plan in his typical no-nonsense manner.

Jamie spread his hands like a man surrendering in the heat of battle. “Aye, aye.”

When the room eased into the twitchy quiet of men pretending to rest, Aidan glanced up. “You think she’ll let us follow?”

“She won’t ‘let’ us do anything,” I said. “We’ll do it anyway.”

“You ever going to forgive him?” Declan asked, jerking his chin at Jamie.

“Probably not,” I said. “But I’ll settle for kicking his ass when this is all over.”

Jamie’s mouth crooked. “Big of you.”

“Want me to do it now?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Aidan pushed up on an elbow, his eyes hard. “Get in line.”

Declan’s scowl deepened. “You’ll have to take a number.”

Jamie spread his hands, tired grin not reaching his eyes. “We handing out tickets or just swinging wild?”

“That’s enough,” Logan said, not really all that loud, just sounding as though he’d heard all he cared to. He didn’t move from the window. “We need him right now. Take your pound of flesh from him when she’s safe.”

Silence stretched between the lot of us.

Jamie broke it first, sounding more chastened than he had been all night. “I didn’t do it to spite any of you.” He looked at each of us and didn’t flinch. “I did it because she was already planning on leaving, with no help, and she needed to know that at least one of us believed in her.”

“Say that again when we’re fishing her body out of the Irish Sea,” Aidan almost snarled, uncharacteristically.

“I won’t have to,” Jamie shot back, and then, lower, “because I’ll be in the bloody water with her.”

“Hero talk doesn’t fix bad calls,” I snapped.

“Neither does pride,” he countered.

Declan sat up, forearms on his knees, voice flat. “Trust is fragile, Buchanan. You put a crack in it tonight.”

Jamie’s jaw worked. “Then I’ll replace the window.”