The life of a wheelman promised excitement, car chases, and exciting car chases, which made Ringo’s current task—searching the hotel for some computer drive—a considerable let-down.
It was supposed to be a quick job: get in, rob the rich people, flee the scene, and get paid. But the one man they’d specifically been told to mug didn’t have the thing they were supposed to get, and now Ringo was stuck sweeping the south and east wings of the hotel while Yoko handled the north and west.
He’d already finished up his side of the ground floor, turning up a few guests who’d snuck away for a blowjob or a bump of cocaine, but no drive. The first floor was proving much less interesting as he moved from door to door, jiggling the handles to check they were still locked and listening for any sign someone was hiding inside—finding nothing each time.
Ringo tried another handle, which was also locked; when he pressed an ear to the door, he couldn’t hear anything on the other side. But as he stepped back, ready to move on, a shadow shifted beneath the door.
He knocked sharply. “Oi! Come on out, now!”
No answer came, much to Ringo’s relief. Now he got to kick the door down.
The task was more difficult than he thought it would be; it was only after a few tries and a running start that the latch gave and the door flew open. The room beyond was empty and silent—except for the sound of someone trying to breathe very quietly.
Ringo hefted his gun and stalked toward the source of the noise. “I know you’re here,” he said firmly. “Come out before I have to go and get you.”
After a moment, a man emerged from where he’d been hunkered down behind the bed. He was young—maybe Ringo’s own age—slim and a little on the short side, but dressed like one of the guests. His wary look didn’t quite match the flustered panic Ringo had come to expect when he caught someone hiding.
Ringo reached down to his belt; he still had plenty of zip ties left. “You’re coming downstairs with me,” he said, bored by now with this little routine. “Behave yourself, and we won’t have to hurt you. Got it?”
The man’s gaze flicked to the side, over Ringo’s shoulder.
An arm wrapped around Ringo’s neck from behind, braced firmly against his throat; something sharp pressed into his back, right over his kidney.
Ringo’s stomach dropped through the floor.
“Quiet,” said a voice in his ear, low and dangerous. “Behave yourself, and we won’t have to hurt you. Got it?”
Ringo nodded.
“Drop the gun.”
Ringo’s fingers went slack; the gun hit the carpeted floor with a muffled thud.
Over Ringo’s shoulder, the man behind him addressed the one who’d been hiding: “Get his zip ties for me?”
The man in front stepped forward and lifted the ties off his belt. Then Ringo was steered to the foot of the bed and pushed to sit as his hands were tied to the bed frame.
He finally got a look at his unseen captor. The suit said “toff,” but the way he crouched in front of Ringo suggested something far more dangerous. Three long, thin scars marked the side of his face.
Ringo flinched as the scarred man reached for him, but the man simply pulled his mask down, exposing him. His eyes narrowed, studying Ringo with cool detachment.
“Recognise him?” asked the other one, with more authority than Ringo would’ve expected.
The scarred man shook his head and glared down at Ringo. “Who are you working for?”
“Don’t know,” Ringo replied immediately. “Paul put the crew together, but somebody else hired him and he didn’t tell us who. It’s all secret.” He swallowed around the knot of fear in his throat. “Please don’t hurt me.”
The scarred man rolled his eyes and grabbed the mask again, bunching it up to gag Ringo with it. Then he snatched the gun up from the floor and led his companion from the room, leaving Ringo still tied to the foot of the bed.
Keeping a wary eye out for any more of the intruders, Sebastian and Jay slipped back through the door into the servants’ corridors. Jay sat at the top of the stairs and pulled out his phone to sort through whatever he’d managed to pull down from the security system before it switched off.
Sebastian took the opportunity to examine the shotgun in his hands. It was an old piece, the barrel recently cut down to make it more effective at close range. There was a stamp on the wooden stock: a cross, with the letters “D” and “A.”
Fuck.
“How much footage did you get?” he asked.
“I’ve got the last few minutes from most of the cameras,” Jay replied, thumb sliding across his screen as he scanned through the videos. “Had to compress it all down to basically nothing, though.” He spared Sebastian a brief glance. “Something wrong with the gun?”
Sebastian opened the breech. There were two metal plugs welded into the chambers where a pair of shells would normally go. “It’s been deactivated,” he reported. “Can’t even be loaded, much less fired.”
Jay’s brow furrowed, although his eyes stayed on the screen. “The gunshots were fake?”
Sebastian shook his head; he knew real gunshots when he heard them. “There must be at least one real gun, but the rest might be decoys like this one.”
“‘Might’ isn’t a reassuring word to hear, right now.” Jay paused the video. “I think I’ve got something.”
Sebastian peered over Jay’s shoulder at the postage-stamp sized image on his phone. Someone was standing in what looked to be Medway Castle’s library, with what might be the drive in their hand. Jay unpaused the video; the person on the screen—who could’ve been Stoddard, although it was hard to tell for sure—walked to one of the library’s bookcases and swung it away from the wall, revealing the doorway hidden behind it. The figure stepped through and re-emerged a moment later, empty-handed.
“Looks like a priest hole,” Sebastian said.
Jay barked a short, hysterical laugh before hastily covering his mouth. “What?” he gasped through his fingers.
“The Holts were Catholic at a time that wasn’t exactly allowed,” Sebastian explained, steadfastly ignoring Jay’s giggles. “Catholic aristocrats had to hide their priests away, so they built secret rooms for them—priest holes.”
“Uh huh,” Jay said, still snickering.
“There is nothing funny,” Sebastian said solemnly, “about the words ‘priest hole.’”
Jay had managed to stifle his laughter with both hands, but his shoulders were shaking. Sebastian gave up his own attempts to keep a straight face.
“All right,” Jay said, muffled behind his hands, “so where’s the library?”
Sebastian considered what he knew of Medway Castle’s layout and groaned. “North wing, first floor. Other side of the building.”
Jay’s mirth dissipated, and he echoed Sebastian’s dismay. “Well,” he said, “going through the courtyard is out of the question. Guess you’re taking the long way round.”
Sebastian corrected him: “We’re taking the long way round.”
Jay blinked up at him.
“Our phones are jammed,” Sebastian pointed out. “It’s too risky to leave you somewhere alone if we can’t stay in contact. You’re safer with me.”
Jay didn’t look too pleased about the idea, but there was utter trust in his eyes as he answered with a nod.
When the codenames were handed out, Yoko had the misfortune to be fifth in line. She didn’t particularly care for the implications, but Paul shut down every one of her attempts to trade the names around.
She’d found another pair of stragglers in the toilets, who’d decided to hunker down when the shooting and screaming started. They went quietly enough once they saw Yoko’s gun and stumbled obediently ahead of her down the hall to the courtyard.
It was something of a relief she couldn’t actually fire the gun, even by accident. She made most of her living off London’s many tourists who saw the pretty young face, heard the practised cut-glass accent, and were all too happy to hand over their holiday cash for fake West End tickets or seats on non-existent tours. Firearms were not a key part of her usual grift.
She had to admit, though, that the prop certainly helped her get into character. And while she held it, nobody questioned a single thing she said.
Yoko and the pair from the toilets emerged into the courtyard; as she herded them toward the rest of the group huddled by the stage, Paul came to meet her. He reminded her of the directors she’d worked with on the infrequent occasions she put her degree to use on stage—he had the air of someone who considered themselves the only adult in the room, and wasn’t necessarily wrong.
“You seen Ringo lately?” he asked quietly.
“Not really.” They’d been assigned opposite ends of the hotel, and Yoko wasn’t surprised they hadn’t crossed paths.
Paul didn’t look pleased with that answer. “He hasn’t reported back in a while.”
Yoko suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She’d had only the briefest encounters with their wheelman in the lead-up to this job, but it was clear Ringo’s focus had a tendency to wander. No doubt he was fucking about somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.
Paul hitched a thumb over his shoulder, toward the south wing of the hotel. “Go check on him. Just in case.”
“Fine,” Yoko sighed, and ducked through the open lounge doors.
A cursory sweep of the ground floor turned up no sign of Ringo, or anyone else. Circling back to the reception area, Yoko trudged up the stairs to the first floor and found herself in a long hall packed with guest rooms.
From somewhere nearby came a sharp thud.
Yoko froze, gun at the ready. The noise came again, and again, regular and persistent like someone was stomping repeatedly on the floor. She crept carefully down the hall.
The noise was coming from behind one of the doors—which hung on the latch, its frame and strike plate splintered where someone had kicked the lock into submission. She reached out with the barrel of her gun and nudged the door open.
On the other side was Ringo, sat at the foot of a bed, his wrists zip-tied to the frame and his mask shoved into his mouth as a makeshift gag.
There weren’t many well-paying, legal career options for a kid from Paul’s neighbourhood. In another life he might’ve gone into law, or accounting; instead, he applied his talents elsewhere. But in this line of work it was only a matter of time before you got caught—unless, when a big payout came along, you took it and got out of the game while you still could.
And while robbing a charity gala was a massive risk, even one-fifth of the promised payout was enough to retire on some tropical island, far from the reach of British law.
But Paul’s client—anonymous, as were most of his other clients—had been very specific. The crew wouldn’t get paid until they handed over one thing: an external hard drive, carried by a man named Stoddard.
Which brought Paul to his current problem. The longer they took to find the drive, the higher the odds were that something could go wrong. Especially with this many nervous hostages about.
Paul kept an eye out as he paced a circle around the group, George doing the same on the opposite side. An older man in a pinstriped suit sat at the edge of the crowd, head tucked down to avoid Paul’s attention as he passed. Closer to the centre was a plump woman in a pink dress, reassuring another woman in hushed tones; she glanced up as Paul entered her field of view, meeting his gaze firmly for a moment before looking away.
No sign of open rebellion yet. But if one of the hostages tried something—if things got violent—the situation could spin out of control very quickly.
Motion from the lounge doors caught Paul’s eye; Yoko had returned, Ringo following anxiously behind. Something was wrong—and if they started babbling, that might spook the hostages.
He met George’s eye across the circle and signalled for her to stay where she was. She nodded, and Paul strode across the courtyard to intercept the other two.
“What’s wrong?” he asked once they were within earshot. “And keep your voices down, for fuck’s sake.”
“We’ve got somebody loose in the hotel,” Yoko said, quick and hushed.
“Two of ‘em,” Ringo corrected. “Some big scary fucker, and then there’s, like … a little one.” He added, in a resentful grumble, “Could’ve handled them if I had a real fucking gun.”
This was exactly the kind of complication they didn’t need, especially now. Whoever these two were, Paul and his crew needed to contain them before they caused any more trouble. Which meant shuffling the limited resources they had at their disposal.
Paul turned to Ringo and said, “Go pull John off the door.”
The way Moran explained it, the man who eventually became Lord Cabot the First had extensively renovated Medway Castle after he bought the place. The Edwardians were dead-set against ever laying eyes on their own household staff, and therefore the servants’ passages led just about everywhere within the building. But because most of the house was constructed hundreds of years earlier, said corridors had to be wedged into an existing floor plan; the end result was a maze of corridors that took long, meandering routes to get where they needed to go, even if that meant routing them underground.
Based on the route they’d taken so far, Jay guessed he and Moran were somewhere beneath Medway Castle’s north wing. Ahead of him Moran quietly counted off steps under his breath, memorising their route. The tunnels down here looked far older than the above-ground passages, and there was a faint smell of damp in the air—perhaps a sign the moat was flooding the place.
Finally, their labyrinthine path through the tunnels led to a set of stairs, heading up. Another roundabout route through the passages on the ground floor brought them up to the floor above, and shortly after that they reached a door.
Moran took the lead, nudging the door open to peek through to the other side. Jay caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a parlour; not the library, but at least they were on the right floor.
A quick glance in Moran’s direction confirmed they were both thinking the same thing. They could try to find a way to the library through the servants’ passages, but that might take time they didn’t have. It would be quicker to reach the library via the main halls—at the risk they’d be seen by the other crew.
It was a risk they’d have to take. “Let’s go,” Jay said, and Moran nodded, leading the way through the door.
The room beyond turned out to be a billiard room, with plush armchairs and a massive green-baize table with low-hanging lights. It had one other door, leading out into the hall; Moran paced quietly toward it, peered outside, and motioned for Jay to follow him out.
John wasn’t convinced that leaving the front door unguarded was the best course of action, but his employers tended to prefer when he didn’t ask questions or voice opinions. They got unnerved when what was supposed to be dumb muscle turned out to have a brain. So instead he’d obediently joined the sweep of the hotel, keeping an eye out for the two guests on the loose while Ringo and Yoko continued their search for the drive.
At least he had one of the real guns. He’d heard it was harder to lay hands on firearms this side of the Atlantic, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the pain in the ass it had been to acquire even two old, serviceable shotguns. They’d had to arm the rest of the crew with deactivated weapons originally sold as collectors’ items.
John had only been in the UK for a few months, following his swift departure from Philadelphia over a misunderstanding with the scion of the Tornincasa family. The misunderstanding in question involved a broken collarbone. It wasn’t precisely John’s fault; Eddie Tornincasa should’ve known better than to sucker-punch him in the face. John never could hold his temper when that happened.
His boss had told him to lay low, but laying low wasn’t exactly possible when he loomed over just about everyone he met and outed himself as not-from-around-here any time he opened his mouth. Then Paul came calling, and offered him enough money to get away from the Tornincasas for good.
With his circuit of the ground floor complete, John had moved on to what the Brits insisted on calling the first floor but was obviously, by any sane standard, the second. An upper gallery cut across the north side of Medway Castle’s massive two-story great hall; as John made his way along, he glanced over the rail to where the gala’s silent auction had been set up below. There were a few pieces of art, some event tickets, and a handful of “experience” lots promising lunches with movie stars or tours of famous, private residences.
From ahead, through the open doorway into the corridor, came the faint creak of a floorboard.
John ducked to the side, concealing himself behind the wall next to the door. Slow, quiet footsteps approached his position—then paused.
Whoever it was coming down the hall, they knew—or at least suspected—that John was there. He rolled into the open doorway, swinging the butt of his shotgun around at roughly solar plexus-height.
His opponent was tall, albeit shorter and leaner than John, with three long slashes scarring one side of his face. He turned away from John’s blow, taking it along his side rather than right up under his ribs as he whirled around to drive his elbow into the underside of John’s jaw.
John staggered back, further out onto the gallery, rage pulsing up his throat until his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Someone was standing in the doorway: a second man, smaller and lighter, young. Rage and instinct swung the gun in his direction, John’s finger on the trigger.
There was a furious snarl as the scarred man surged forward, too fast for John to switch targets. At this range he couldn’t bring the gun to bear—especially once the scarred man grabbed for it, pushing the muzzle up towards the ceiling.
“Get down!” the man barked over his shoulder; his companion in the doorway ducked to the side, taking cover behind the wall.
John struggled to wrench the gun from his opponent’s grip; he had the advantage of height and weight, but there was something unsettling and feral about the scarred man as he bared his teeth and refused to let go. John took a step back for leverage, but his opponent followed, staying close, driving him further away from the door.
The railing of the gallery slammed into John’s back with an ominous creak, and his hazy rage drained away into horrified clarity.
His opponent knew he’d never get the gun away from John; that hadn’t been the plan. He’d only needed to keep John’s attention on the weapon and not the room around them.
With a mean, crooked smile, the scarred man released his grip on the gun, hooked John’s ankle out from under him with his foot, and shoved him hard in the chest. John’s own weight did the rest of the job, tipping him over the railing.
There was a sick, weightless sensation as John tumbled from the gallery to the room below. One of the auction tables broke his fall, collapsing under him; John landed flat on his back, all the air knocked from his lungs in one gasping rush.
Eyes blurred with tears, struggling for air, John managed to squint up at the gallery. His mysterious opponent, and the man he was protecting, were both gone.
If Sebastian’s grip on Jay’s hand was too tight, he didn’t see fit to complain as Sebastian dragged him down the hall to the library.
Too close. Too fucking close.
The commotion the masked man had caused as he fell from the gallery would draw attention, but they had at least a minute before he could draw enough breath to tell the rest of his crew what happened. Maybe another minute before any of them made it up to the first floor, which gave Jay and Sebastian just enough time to grab the drive and disappear back into the servants’ corridors.
Medway Castle’s library was cosy and intimate: built-in wooden bookcases with elaborate scrollwork along every wall, thick rugs on polished hardwood floors, overstuffed upholstery, velvet drapes. There was an adjoining door to another room—probably the reading room—but it was half-closed, the space beyond it dark and most likely empty.
Jay moved immediately to the bookcase he’d seen in the security footage, tugging firmly at a protruding lower shelf; the hidden door swung easily outward, revealing a room just barely bigger than a closet. The rafters were bare, the floor unfinished wood, the walls all exposed stone and brick. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling—the only indication this room had seen use more recent than the seventeenth century.
There was a notable lack of anything resembling an external hard drive. Somebody else had got here first.
The sharp crack of a gunshot rattled through the library. Sebastian spun toward the source, shoving Jay behind him; there was a vague silhouette in the dark of the reading room, standing in the doorway with a gun in its hand.
Sebastian backed quickly away, keeping his own body in front of Jay’s as they retreated toward the door behind the bookcase. There was another crack; something punched Sebastian in the arm, forcing a grunt out of him.
There were shouts from across the building—shock, alarm. The other crew had heard the gunshots.
Sebastian ducked slightly to fit through the doorway into the priest hole and grabbed the edge of the bookcase, hauling it shut to seal himself and Jay inside.
He paused there for a moment, pulse pounding in his chest and throat. There was a tickling sensation down the skin of his arm—something warm dripping down the inside of his sleeve. He instinctively tried to brush it away with his other hand.
It came back wet and stained red. He’d been shot.
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