Fuck.
“Do you have the footage ready?”
“Yes, Boss.”
We all shift around to see the screens as Theo hits play. There’s a different angle of the coach house on each one, and my eyes flick around for the longest time, just waiting for something to happen.
We’ve seen the guys leave and Emmie is already inside. We’ve watched me invite her in, but it seems like forever before something catches Theo’s eye.
“There,” he says, pointing to the bottom right screen.
I squint, staring into the darkness, but after a couple of seconds, I discover that he’s right.
A dark figure cuts through the night from around the back of the coach house.
“How’d he get there?” Seb muses. The wall behind the coach house is at least ten feet high, with barbed wire on the top and an alarm, I’ve discovered.
“No idea,” Damien mutters, his eyes laser-focused on the screen.
The black-hooded figure walks around the building, but he keeps his head down the whole time.
“Motherfucker,” Nico grunts, noticing just like I am that he turns his back on every camera.
“He knows our security system. How?”
“The Italians were right,” Dad says quietly, making a ripple of unease flow through the air.
“What’s he doing?” I ask, not really able to take in what I’m watching.
“Planting explosives,” Evan answers for me.
We keep watching long after the figure vanishes, and eventually the front door opens and Emmie and I appear before I shoot back inside for my cell.
“Where did Emmie go?” Theo asks.
“She… uh… she shouted that she was going to wait by the gate,” I confess quietly.
“Why?”
“To… uh…”
“Stop herself getting blown up?” Alex suggests, saying aloud exactly what everyone is thinking.
“She wouldn’t have done this,” I say, but my voice doesn’t come out sounding as confident as I’d hoped it would.
Theo scoffs, clearly disagreeing with me.
“She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t hurt me, or try to, like this.”
On the screen, I appear back at the front door and pull it closed behind me.
I barely make it ten steps before the building lights up behind me and I’m thrown forward, thankfully landing on the Cirillos’ front lawn to save me from the damage the gravel of the driveway would have caused.
The screens before us become nothing but the glow of the flames as the coach house is engulfed.
Theo lets the recording run until the fire trucks pull up, and then he turns it off.
“She wouldn’t do this,” I say again in the hope that someone will believe me.