Page 84 of Crowe
Houston. Ashford Grove. The SUV. Locked doors, reinforced glass, more security features than I could name.
Am I safe?
Yes.
What’s true right now?
What was true was that Jackson was inside that house right now, making sure it was safe. What was true was that there were two guards on the ground secured with zip ties by the service entrance, and Corvane’s security would have a very bad week explaining the gap in the footage. What was true was that somewhere in that house, a woman had a bag packed and documents in her hands waiting on us to come and get her.
The earpiece crackled.
“Noah.” Jackson’s voice. “I’m coming to get you.”
I had to fight the urge to hop out and run to him, but I’d promised I would wait, so I waited. I watched as he strode across the drive. When he reached the SUV, I unlocked the door. He pulled it open and looked down at me.
“You don’t have to come inside. You can wait here if you want.”
“No, I’d rather be with you in there than sitting out here in the dark by myself.”
“Okay, let’s go then.”
I got out of the vehicle, and he placed his hand on my back as we walked towards the door. We had to go right by the guards, and I looked up at him. “Are they okay?”
“They’re still breathing.”
“Good.” These guards were just doing their job, so I didn’t want them to die. Of course they should’ve chosen to work for someone who wasn’t basically a monster in human form, so there was that.
Jackson checked his watch. “We have maybe thirty minutes before Kat says we should assume someone checks in.”
“Imogen?”
“Upstairs. She’s almost ready.” He put his hand at my back and steered me through the service door and into a back hallway that smelled like cleaning products. “She did good. She waited upstairs like Wolfe told her to.”
We took the back stairs. On the second-floor landing, I could hear Gator’s voice, low and steady, like he was managing a situation and keeping someone calm. The bedroom door was open.
Imogen Corvane was standing by the window with a bag at her feet and a leather portfolio held against her chest with both arms. She had her hair pulled back, and she was wearing dark pants and a sweater, very practical clothes. She looked nothing like the elegant woman in the deep blue gown at The Hargrove.
She looked at me when I came in.
“Hi,” I said.
Something in her face shifted like a held breath finally allowed to go. “You actually came,” she said.
“I said we would.”
She looked down at the portfolio in her arms. “I have everything. Every document I could find. Account numbers, communications, three years of financial records he kept on a hard drive he thought I didn’t know about.” She looked up. “I hope it’s enough. No, I know it’s enough. It has to be.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said with a smile. I wasn’t sure at all. I had no idea what it would take to bring Anton Corvane down, but I knew that right now, she needed to believe it was enough. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Crowe
We were in the upstairs hallway, Imogen’s bag in Gator’s hand, just seconds from going down to the vehicles, when Hawk’s phone buzzed. He looked at his screen, and his whole body changed.
“Kat says there’s a car coming through the front gate,” he said.
I was at the window at the end of the hall before he finished the sentence. Below, the front drive was lit by the motion sensors, and a black sedan was moving slowly down the driveway.
“That’s his car,” Imogen said from behind me. Her voice had gone flat. “That’s Anton.”
