Chapter 166 Long time no see
_Author’s POV_
Alaric told Rowena she was staying behind when they were barely out of the elevator.
He said it quietly, walking beside her through the hotel corridor toward her room, like if he kept his voice low enough it would somehow land easier. He laid out the whole argument carefully and without rushing it, he also reminded her of her predicament. The ribs, the wrist that was still wrapped and still healing, the left side that the doctor had been firm about, the fact that she had no wolf to fall back on if something went wrong inside that house.
Rowena listened to all of it as she walked beside him and let him finish every single word without interrupting once.
When he was done she stopped walking and turned to look at him. “Virella put her hands on me four times in that facility,” she said, her voice was completely level, not angry or dramatic. “She had me cuffed to a bed, set a room on fire with me in it, walked in and out of that place whenever she felt like it, said whatever she wanted to say and did whatever she wanted to do.” She held his gaze without blinking. “I will be in that room when you find her. You can either plan for that or I’ll follow the vehicles myself. Your choice.”
Alaric looked at her for a long moment in both awe and exhaustion. There were about ten things he wanted to say but he held his tongue.
She could see him working through them behind his eyes, weighing each one, and then setting each one down as he realized it wouldn’t move her. He would be wasting his time if he tried talking to her.
He turned and looked at Kasper, who was standing a few feet behind them pretending to check something on his phone with so much attention. It was obvious he didn’t want to get involved.
“Stay close to her,” Alaric said to Kasper. “The whole time.”
“Understood,” Kasper nodded, still looking at his phone.
Rowena said nothing to them, she didn’t thank him for it and he didn’t expect her to. They just started walking again, and that was the end of the conversation.
They left the hotel at nine in the evening, they took three vehicles but were moving separately so they wouldn’t arrive as a convoy. Alaric had been specific about that, he had told them that they had to do nothing that looked coordinated from the outside or anything that would stand out on such a residential street at night.
He tried his best to make the day look like a normal day.
Rowena sat in the back of the second vehicle beside Alaric with Kasper in the front passenger seat and one of Alaric’s men driving.
Nobody said a word during the twenty minute drive. There wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said. The plan was clear, the roles were clear, and talking about it again wouldn’t make it any clearer.
What suddenly settled in Rowena’s mind was the absence of her wolf. She missed her Kyra more than she wanted to admit.
That was the reason why she needed to get back at Virella because she caused Kyra’s absence.
She wanted nothing except catching Virella.
She wanted the woman held accountable for every specific thing she had done, and Rowena had a very detailed and organized list of those things in her head that she had been quietly adding to since the beginning.
Alaric’s hand suddenly found hers in the dark of the car. He didn’t look at her when he did it, he was looking straight ahead, his expression even and focused, already somewhere inside the plan they were about to execute.
But his hand was there, his fingers closing around hers in an intimate way.
She looked down at their hands for a moment then she looked back outside the window and left her hand where it was.
The house was smaller than she expected, that was the first thing they both noticed when the vehicle slowed.
The house was tucked into a residential street between two other ordinary looking houses, set back from the road slightly behind a low hedge, there were lights on behind curtains on the ground floor.
You could literally walk past houses like this a hundred times and wouldn’t know which a placed houses a criminal.
All of Virella’s planning and conniving only for her to hide in such a place at the end of the day.
How pathetic.
Celeste was already there when they arrived, they were parked further down the road with her three people waiting. She appeared at Alaric’s window when the vehicle stopped and leaned down to speak to him briefly.
“The back entry is clear,” she said. “There’s one vehicle in the driveway, there are lights on in two rooms on ground floor but there’s no movement visible from outside.”
“She might not be alone,” Alaric said.
“I’ve accounted for that,” Celeste said simply, and straightened up yheb walked back to her own vehicle.
They moved into position quietly. Celeste and her team went around the back of the property, disappearing between the houses without any noise at all. Alaric’s team approached the front, spreading out without being told to, each person already knowing their place in the plan.
Rowena stayed at Alaric’s shoulder. He had asked Kasper to stay close to her and Kasper was there, just behind her left, present without crowding her. She was aware of her ribs with every breath she took, but at this point, none of that mattered. All she wanted was to finish this and catch that woman.
Alaric tried the front door and realized it was locked. He looked at one of his men, who stepped forward and dealt with it in under thirty seconds, and then the door was open.
The ground floor was a sitting room and a kitchen visible at the back. There wete ordinary furnitures in the living room with a coat thrown over the back of a chair, a half empty cup of something on the table by the sofa that indicated that someone had been sitting there recently.
They cleared the ground floor in under two minutes. Celeste came in through the back and informed Alaric that the back was also clear.
That left just the stairs.
Alaric went up first and Rowena followed with Kasper just behind her.
When they reached the top, he moved to the door with the light under it and looked back once, checking the people behind him, and then he pushed it open.
The room looked simple but okay. And the woman they came for was right there sitting in front of the mirror with her back to the door, running a brush through her hair.
She was humming something quietly to herself without noticing the new presence.
Nobody moved for a second as they just watched her. Then Virella’s hand slowed on the brush and her eyes shifted in the mirror, adjusting to something in the reflection that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and she looked up and saw the room full of people standing behind her.
Her eyes moved across the mirror until they found Rowena standing at the back of the group.
Her hand stopped completely, including the humming.
The brush slipped free from her hand falling to the ground.
“Hi, Virella,” Rowena said with a wicked smile. “Long time no see.”