THERE ARE HARDLY ANY STARS IN the sky, and the moon is shielded by a thick fog that hovers close to the ground. Hopefully, the same fog that conceals the moon will conceal them on their mission tonight.
Harry didn't need much convincing to bring her along to break into Adeline's house. After all, she's the one who knows the layout of it better than he or any of his associates.
On her second weekly visit with her this morning, she followed his instructions to leave two windows unlocked—one of them being the one right beside the locked room on the second floor and the other in the kitchen. Just in case Adeline was to notice one of the unlocked windows and lock it, he wanted a back-up. Luckily, she went unnoticed when she asked where the bathroom was and unlocked them both on her trip upstairs.
They parked the car down two blocks again, just like Niall did when she visited last week and this week, and walk along the sidewalk with nothing but the late-night fog and darkness to keep them company.
Niall and Mitch, the latter of the two she has yet to meet, are stationed outside of the house in their designated hiding spots. They scoped out the house all week, watching for any comings and going's and searching for the best spots to hide for the very reason of why they're hiding tonight.
The surveying of the house proved Adeline's claims that no one lives with her to be true, but there's no telling what company she keeps because she is rarely home. It seemed to them that she was only home to sleep and meet up with Jo on Saturday, meaning that she could have another place or stay with Issac's friends all the time.
Their footfalls are nearly silent with every step they take in the direction of her house. With her dagger strapped to her thigh, she walks in step beside Harry and tries not to overthink the task ahead of them before she starts getting too nervous to see it through.
Even though Adeline cannot be trusted due to her affiliation with her husband's murderous friends, she couldn't help but feel bad for plotting to break in behind her back. It only took a few shy comments about feeling guilty before Harry grabbed her gently by the shoulders and told her to cut it out, to remember that the company this woman keeps are the same people that tried to kill her. When he put it like that, she couldn't see any reason to disagree with him.
"You remember the plan, right?" he whispers close to her ear as they approach the neighbor's house and come to a stop.
His face is hardly visible in the darkness. The streetlights aren't working properly, thanks to the handiwork of Harry's friends, so it's hard for her to see much of anything.
For him, it's a lot easier. His senses are much sharper and stronger than hers are as a vampire, so his sight is no exception to that rule. But for the same reason that he can see so well in the darkness, they had to cut the streetlights to make it the slightest bit harder for anyone to spot them should they get caught and have to make a run for it. The masks should help too.
His hand reaches around her body and dips into her back pocket to grab the ski mask she stowed there. Neither of them has the time to dwell on the touch like they would if it happened in the comfort of his home, but she does feel her breathing halt for a split second when he tucks the layers that poke out from her braid behind her ears and slips the mask over her head for her. His fingertips are freezing where they linger on her neck after fixing it for her, but the mask is warm enough to remedy it.
She nods, realizing how long of a pause she took to answer, and whispers back, "In and out as fast as we can, no talking unless we absolutely have to, take the path to leave through the garden in the back yard, and don't leave your side no matter what."
From what she can see, his lips are curved in a smirk, and he reaches up to pull his own mask over his head as he did with hers. Before setting off on their predetermined entry path, he takes her hand and gives it a firm squeeze.
"Good girl."
There's no chance for her to process what the ever-loving fuck hearing that did to her physically or mentally because he's dragging her off down the small alleyway between the tall iron-wrought fences that separate Adeline and her neighbors' houses before she can. It's actually infuriating when she spends a second thinking about it. Of course he said something like that and muddled her mind right before they set off on an important stealth-based mission to break into her new friend's house.
Nevertheless, she has to follow him and force her head to remain clear throughout the rest of the night, even if all she wants to think about is a combination of how anxious she is and how desperately she wants him to call her by that phrase again in a much filthier context.
The gravel crunches beneath their feel too loudly for either of their taste, but they won't remain on this alleyway much longer. They approach the backyard sooner than her anxious self is ready to. He turns to her and kneels on the ground, offering up his knee as a boost for her to jump up to the fence a little easier, but she has other plans.
Jo doesn't say a word as she steps around him as if he weren't there, gets her momentum going with a few quick strides, and jumps up to grab the bars on the fence with ease. All the while, he's sitting there on one knee with a dumbfounded expression beneath the ski mask that hides his beautiful features.
It makes her want to laugh. She may not exercise regularly, but she's not completely helpless.
Her job is very physical, plus she did sports religiously as a child, so that baseline strength and muscle memory don't go away, especially not for someone with decent genetics in their twenties like her. Eventually, she'll probably have to start working out more, but, for now, she's been coasting through on the steps she puts in at work and it hasn't failed her yet. At least she's been getting in better shape since Harry started taking her to the gym to practice self-defense and do conditioning exercises too.
She turns at the top of the fence and looks at him as if to say, "Are you coming?" and hikes her leg over to continue down the other side as fast as she can.
Another thing he stressed while explaining it to her in the kitchen before they left was that everything has to be done carefully, but as quickly as they can. The sooner they're out of the house with whatever they may find behind the locked door of that room, the less of a chance there is for nosy neighbors and pedestrians to spot them and report to local authorities about it, who, apparently, aren't as proficient at solving crimes as Harry's small organization of human vigilantes.
Blinking away his surprise, Harry jumps up onto the fence and hoists himself up like it's nothing. She's already on the other side by the time he's scaling over the top of it, minding the pointed iron posts, and hopping down to the ground with her noiselessly.
He doesn't say anything about the fence and sticks to his own silence rule on their trip past the garden and through the backyard. They stick to the patches of grass in the yard, stepping over the gravel pathways that lead through the garden to create less noise and attract less attention, and make their way side by side to the massive house.
It's hard for her to navigate in complete darkness as if the world has been eclipsed, but he keeps her going.
Whenever she almost steps on gravel or turns in a direction she shouldn't, his hand is on her back to guide her where she needs to go with his lips pressed against her ear to whisper as softly as he can if she needs to jump over another gravel pathway or move a little faster. It must be difficult to do a job he most often does with vampires who are as equally gifted as him in terms of strength, heightened senses, and magic, but he never complains or looks the slightest bit annoyed like he once did while bringing her along.
After a few short moments of stumbling in the dark with him, they are brought to a stop at the precise location he planned for them to. They're directly below the second-story window that sits beside the room they're breaking into tonight.
This is the first moment that it clicks with her what they're doing. Even though this woman is connected to the reason why everything in her life has been flipped on its head, why she can't close her eyes at night without having nightmares about what has happened to her, she's deceiving someone who sees her as a friend, or, at least, friendly to her. Is it wrong? Is it bad to betray someone you're friends with, even though they're not true friends and are only familiar with each other because of the investigation?
As if sensing her impending feeling of guilt and apprehension, he comes up behind her with a hand on her shoulder to break the silence rule and whisper in her ear. Some things are too impossible to communicate without words, and if they're to make it up to the room as a team, she has to be in the moment, not living her head.
"S'okay," he murmurs in her ear, "she'll never know."
If it were anyone else, her overwhelming compassion being enough to potentially disrupt a mission would infuriate him, but he's surprised to find himself worried about her instead. It shouldn't worry him. He should be treating her like he would any one of his associates and tell her to stop being weak, but he can't. The fact that she's so worried about someone she just met, someone who she should hate by association at that, warms his long-dead heart.
What the hell is wrong with him?
She nods, though, throwing them both back into the groove of what they're here to do, and remembers the plan. Since he knew that they wouldn't be able to speak to each other very much, he told her every single step they would take to get into the room and leave it ahead of time. Everything so far has gone according to plan. Hopefully, the rest of it will too.
He's right.
If she gets her shit together and keeps following his instructions from earlier, Adeline will never have to know about it. Plus, it isn't just her guilty conscience that makes her worried about her finding out, she also happens to be an intimidating vampire who was married to one who tried to kill her. It wouldn't be surprising if she thought nothing of murdering humans too, though she clearly wasn't in the loop on the more confidential activities of her husband's gang.
Without another word, she takes a deep breath and lifts herself onto the trellis that essentially acts as a slightly less sturdy ladder to the second floor. Right now, they might thank their lucky stars that Adeline is such an avid gardener because this would be a little more tricky without it. Tricky for her, that is. Knowing Harry and his climbing hobby, he could probably scale the wall without issue and leave her in the dust.
The wood is old, not rotten, but old, and she fears for it with every rung she climbs up. Not only does she have to remain quiet, but she has to go quickly and somehow not fall all at once. It sounded easier when he was explaining it to her earlier, but now that she's climbing up this old wooden trellis, she fears that it may break underneath her.
It feels like it took forever by the time she reaches the window and carefully pushes up on it with one of her hands to see if it's still unlocked. Her other hand clings to the rung on the trellis hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
The window opens—unlocked.
The inside of the house is exactly how it was this afternoon. Cleaned spotless and decorated with curtains that flutter in the wind that floats in through the wide window, the hallway is a picture of perfection when she steps inside of it.
By the time she's standing in the hallway in front of the door, glancing back in the direction of the staircase that leads downstairs to where Adeline's bedroom is, Harry is already at the top of the trellis.
Sometimes she forgets that him being a vampire also means he's much faster and stronger than her. Ever since he was turned at twenty-three years old, he was made to be a predator, and, technically, even though he doesn't believe in killing humans, she's supposed to be prey. Of course, it is easily possible to feed from humans without killing them, but those with lesser morals than him don't see the point in feeding without the excitement of the kill.
He does everything so gracefully, it's hard to keep her eyes off of him. Every movement is swift and smooth in a preternatural way that can only come from three hundred years of life and the gifts he retains within his immortality. It makes her wonder what he was like as a human. Before any of this. Before the vicious group of vampires they're hunting. Before her.
Was he more wide-eyed and smiley in the way that young people often are? It's not that he doesn't smile and or isn't ever happy in his old age, but it's a different type of smiling and happiness. It's the kind that she saw last night when he gave her teddy bear, Rodger, to her. He felt so shy and young. Even though he will only appear as twenty-three for the rest of his life, that was one of the only times where he felt like it too. He looked so human.
He does not look human now, however, as he shuts the window halfway and turns to the locked door with a glance down the hallway where she's looking. The tension wrench and pick jingle softly in his pocket while his hand reached inside for them. Men's pockets are enviously larger than women's, so he was the one that had to carry the lock picking tools he brought up from the basement.
It's interesting to watch, off to the side and led up against the wall as if they aren't breaking into her friend's house. Kneeled on the ground in front of the door, his eyes narrow at the lock, his hands remain steady, and he lifts the tension wrench into place beside the pick as if he's done this a million times before this. And, it occurs to her, he has.
This is his life. Breaking into houses, killing douchebags like Isaac, defending humans who are nothing to some of these vampires, living in constant chaos and defense mode—that's his life, and she isn't as scared of that as she should be. It makes her feel insane, but it doesn't make her run away and escape him like it did before...it makes her feel safe. Does that make her crazy?
What the hell is wrong with her?
It feels like everything is going too well when the door unlocks with a soft click that makes them both flinch. So entrenched in silence from the start of their trip from the front yard, through the garden, up the trellis, and here, neither of them were prepared for the sound of it. For a split second, she felt her stomach fall into the pit of her abdomen. She thought that they were caught before her common sense kicked in and reminded her that she's been watching him pick the lock for a few minutes, so of course, it was going to unlock soon.
Her feet follow him blindly inside of the room, closing the door and locking it again as softly as she can behind her until they find themselves standing in the middle of the most unassuming, normal bedroom either of them has ever stepped foot in.
For being hidden behind a door with both a deadbolt lock, there isn't anything remotely remarkable about it at a first glance. A four-poster bed pressed up against the wall opposite to the door is what they first come in contact with, followed by the desk to their right and the bookshelves lining the wall to the left.
They split off in different directions.
Nothing is hidden beneath the mattress when she lifts it, nor is anything in the drawers of the dresser. Or the bedside table. Or any loose floorboard that she makes sure to check to see if they lift. None of them do, leaving her with nothing left to look through except what she has already done. Over and over again, lifting the mattress and picking through the dresser, she keeps looking in the same places as if that would change the outcome.
It reminds her of being a teenager, coming home from school, and immediately opening the fridge to look for food, but finding none. Then, ten minutes later, she'd come back and open the fridge again like it would magically produce more food. Only this time, what they're seeking is a little more important than that. With this being the only looked room in the house, they were sure that there had to be something of value inside, yet nothing appears beneath floorboards or in the empty dresser drawers.
She's on her hands and knees, checking the floorboards on his side of the room now, when something peculiar piques her interest. It isn't a loose board that could be hiding something underneath, but something far more intriguing.
Splayed fingers hover over the hardwood floor and move in line with curved scuff marks that are grooved into the floor in front of the bookshelf as if—
Her head turns to Harry.
He's shuffling through the books on the shelves, looking for something that resembles incriminating information, yet only finding her collection of books that is much more sophisticated than his. His features are set harshly with annoyance until he feels her hand reach out and tap his ankle frantically.
He raises his brows, not understanding what she's trying to say or do, and puts the book in his hands back onto the shelf. No matter what she does, he doesn't seem to get it. When she points at the marks on the floor, it's too dark even for him to see the marks from farther away, so it appears as though she's freaking out of nothing and not showing him why.
She stands up from the floor with a silent exhale, steps up to the bookshelf that sits in line with the scuff marks on the floor, and pulls...
Much to his shock, it swings open halfway with a horrifically loud creak that he hopes Adeline will assume as the noises of an incredibly old home. In his defense, it is an old home. When she first walked up the stairs on her first visit here, she could tell in the noises they made and how they felt beneath her feet, but considering the location of the noise, they better pray that didn't draw her attention.
The downside of vampires never needing sleep or food or any form of sustenance shines through in situations like these. They wait for the inevitable end of the mission, for her to come rushing upstairs to catch them, yet she never does.
They wait one minute. Then another. Then another. Nothing happens.
Before he can whisper anything to her, she's squeezing into the space behind the bookshelf as quickly as she can. At the moment that they both thought they were getting caught, she remembered the urgency of the situation. It was starting to feel like they were alone in the house when the sound of the bookshelf opening filled the room, and she knows that they need to either find whatever it is that may be here or get the hell out before they're found.
If they get caught, this means war between Harry and his people and Adeline and hers. It wouldn't be easy for the vampires, much less for someone like her. That's why they must get through this not only with the secrets she's so clearly keeping behind this hidden door but also without being identified. Her husband may have been a prominent force in that group, but he didn't keep her filled in on much. As far as Adeline went, she was a wife that was seen and not heard, and, for Jo and Harry, that means that they can get away with more lying than they would have otherwise.
All she knows him as is a mysterious businessman who lives in Westbrook. She often forgets that most people do not know about his second residence that has become a home to her. To all of the people at the dinner party, he's one of them, shady, but still one of them, and Adeline has never been an exception.
He rushes after her through the small gap between the open bookshelf and the entrance that gapes behind it with no forethought of whether or not this hidden room could be a trap or a setup. It doesn't even occur to him that he could be walking into something terrible because she's in there. For the second time tonight, he is left wondering what is wrong with him because of the stupidity that being near her causes him.
Why is he so thoughtless?
With anyone else, he can see past his own feelings for long enough to think critically. With anyone else, he wouldn't have risked speaking to comfort them. With anyone else, he wouldn't have let them get this close to him in the first place. Yet, there was something about her that disarmed him from the very second they met. Maybe it was how she threatened to shiv him with his own toothbrush, who knows, but all he knew was that he couldn't help himself. He still can't.
The room is dark and dimly lit with a lamp that she turns on, as if on cue, the second he steps into the room with wide eyes searching for her. This wasn't part of the plan. None of this could've been accounted for before leaving the house, so they're officially off script, and it's making him feel sick. The sole reason he wasn't losing his shit about her being here for this was that the entire night up until now was so planned, it was choreographed like a stage show.
But, with one look at the room, he can see that he must take his own advice to her earlier and put his emotions past him, cause there is a treasure trove's equivalent of stuff here. It may not all be related to Issac's gang, but some of it is.
It all clicks in her head now. This is where she put all of her late husband's belongings after he died. It seemed odd that the house was his as well with nothing to show for it. It looked bland, empty of life, and even the study, where all of the books, documents, and letters that Harry is now inspecting with laser-like focus should be, was empty. When she first saw it, it appeared like no one has lived in the house. Now she knows why.
They move as efficiently as they can through the room together. She can't do much, since they aren't stealing anything, but rather taking pictures of what they deem important on his phone to later print out, yet she finds important-looking documents and passes them off to him for photographs. As long as it once belonged to Issac, it gets photographed.
It's clear that there isn't enough time in the world to go through every single paper and object in the room with time to escape as their plan demands.
He flips through everything he can find, hoping that it'll be what they need, and wishes he could turn around and thank Jo for befriending Adeline at the dinner party. Even though he was mad at her in the moment for putting herself at risk, he cannot deny that what they've found here is better than anything Adeline could've said in an interrogation.
He isn't wishing he could thank her for long, however, since the sound of the secret bookshelf door slamming shut behind them reverberates through the room like the drum of a death march.