Chapter 3
1084 Words
Larry lowered the camera, his hands still shaking, and forced his breathing steady.
Assault wont be the answer.
Not tonight and not with someone else already moving inside those walls for reasons he didn't understand yet.
He needed eyes inside, time inside, not a rushed strike that could get Lira killed before he even reached her.
He would go in as a servant.
Work the grounds, learn the house from the inside, wait for the right moment.
It would take time and patience he wasn't sure he had left, but patience was the only thing standing between Lira staying alive and Lira becoming collateral in a war he wasn't ready to fight yet.
He climbed back down from the ridge and found his two guards, Renner and Cole, waiting by the parked truck.
"We're changing the plan," Larry said.
Renner frowned. "Changing it how?"
"I'm going in as a servant and I need someone on the inside, and it's not going to be either of you."
"That's insane," Cole said flatly.
"You walk in there, you're one mistake away from a bullet in the skull. We should be storming that place, not sending you in to scrub floors."
"If we storm it, Lira dies before we reach her. You know that." Larry's voice hardened.
"I've watched that house for three weeks. I know the guard rotations, I know the family, I know their habits. What I don't know is what's happening inside those walls day to day. I need that and I'm the only one who can get close enough to get it."
"And if they recognize you?"
"They won't, Damon's men have never seen my face up close, they just heard the name."
Renner exchanged a look with Cole, neither of them liked it, both of them knowing better than to argue with him once his mind was made.
"Fine," Renner said finally. "But we do this properly and we bring you in like a catch, not a volunteer, that makes it believable."
They worked through the night, dressing Larry down, roughening his hands, cutting his hair short and uneven, dirtying his clothes until he looked like exactly what they needed him to look like.
A drifter and someone worth suspicion, worth bringing in, worth using.
By morning they approached the estate gates, Renner and Cole in forest guard uniforms borrowed from a contact Larry kept for exactly this kind of work.
They gripped Larry's arms like he was a prisoner caught mid-escape.
The gate guard stepped forward, rifle slung casual across his chest.
"State your business."
"We're from the forest patrol," Renner said.
"We found this one wandering past the tree line, acting suspicious. We figured your people would want to question him before we hand him to the district police."
The gate guard studied Larry, taking in the dirt, the bruised look Cole had carefully worked into his face with a few practiced strikes the night before.
"Wait here."
He radioed inside.
A minute passed, long enough that Larry's pulse climbed despite himself, and then the gate guard nodded and waved them through.
"Take him to the side entrance. Joshua wants eyes on him first."
They marched Larry across the gravel drive, past the same garden path he had watched from the ridge for three weeks, past windows he had only ever seen through a lens, and the strangeness of finally standing inside the place that had swallowed his sister whole nearly broke his concentration.
Joshua came out onto the side steps, arms crossed, studying Larry the way Damon had studied Lira the day before, like appraising livestock.
"Forest patrol found him," Renner repeated. "Suspicious behavior near the property line."
Joshua walked a slow circle around Larry, taking in the dirt, the bruises, the deliberate roughness of his clothes.
"What were you doing out there?"
"Passing through," Larry muttered, keeping his voice low and rough, nothing like the voice Damon might have heard rumors about.
"I needed work and I heard there were big estates out this way."
"Heard from who?"
"Just talk from the town folks."
Joshua's eyes narrowed.
"You know, a man like you, wandering around estates looking for work, asking around about big houses. That's exactly the profile of a spy. Somebody sent to scout a place before a robbery. Or worse."
"I'm not a spy," Larry said. "I swear it, I just need work."
Joshua nodded once to the guard beside him, and a blow came fast, a fist into Larry's ribs that dropped him to one knee, air punched clean out of his lungs.
"I'm not…" Larry gasped out, "....a spy."
Another strike caught him across the jaw, and he tasted blood, forced himself not to fight back.
And not to let ten years of training show through the disguise of a beaten drifter.
"Doesn't matter what you are," Joshua said, crouching down to Larry's level, his voice almost pleasant now.
"You're going to work for us. My father's garden needs a new hand and you're surely going to fit in."
He straightened, gestured to the guards.
"Take him to the holding cell for tonight. We'll sort him out properly in the morning."
The guards rough hands dragged Larry across the gravel and through a side door, down a narrow stairwell into a windowless cell that smelled of damp stone and old rust.
They shoved him inside and the door slammed shut, bolt sliding home with a heavy metallic finality.
Above him, through the small gated vent near the ceiling, faint light and distant voices drifted down from the courtyard.
Renner and Cole left without protest, without another word to the guards, exactly as planned, melting back through the gates and disappearing down the road like they'd never been part of this at all.
No one questioned it and no one looked twice.
It had gone exactly as Larry needed it to go.
He sat in the dark, his ribs were aching, jaw throbbing, and pressed himself up toward the small vent to catch a better angle of the courtyard above.
What he saw through that narrow gap stopped his breath completely.
Lira knelt on the stone courtyard floor, her hands were pressed flat against the ground, her head bowed low, while Damon stood over her with one leg raised.
His boot rested across her back like she was nothing more than a footstool for him to lean against while he laughed at something Joshua said beside him.
Larry's hands curled into fists in the dark.
- Writer
