Page 65 of Love Bomb

Dougal pursed his lips. “I’m not surprised, but hold onto the key. The room is there in case she needs it.”

“Thanks, Dougal,” Bain said and moved to close the door.

Dougal stopped him. “Here,” he said. “Take this.”

He held out a thumb drive and Bain took it with a questioning look.

“It’s the files you wanted,” Dougal said, his eyes blazing. “Blow the damn thing to smithereens.”

Then he turned on his heels and stomped away.

Smiling slowly, Bain closed the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Bain was worried about Rona. She was curled in the corner of one of his ratty old sofas, feet tucked beneath her, while she sipped a giant mug of hot chocolate. It was evident she’d withdrawn into herself, because she didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation raging around her.

“Benson Security is guarding the folly?” Darach clasped his hands on top of his head. “How are we supposed to get past them? I mean, we’re no’ talking a couple of teenagers who’d get distracted by a pretty girl. Those guys carry guns.”

“Not in Scotland, they don’t,” Bain said. “At least, not unless they’re on a job where they have permits to carry. They might have stun guns though.”

“Great,” Kade said. “We’re going to get electrocuted.”

“Nobody’s getting electrocuted.” Bain hoped. “We just need to figure out how to get them away from the folly for about an hour so we can blow it up.” He gave his brother an encouraging smile. “And it has to happen before Rona’s parents go to court on Thursday.”

“So we have three nights, including tonight, to get the job done. We should have blown the thing up last night,” Darach complained, “when all we were up against were two teenagers in a tent.”

“We couldn’t,” Bain said, trying not to lose patience, “because we didn’t have enough information to plant the right charges to bring it down. Now we do.” He gestured to the other sofa where Conall was busy going through the thumb drive Dougal had passed to Bain.

“There’s some good stuff on here,” their youngest brother said. “Between this and the information I dug up today in Fort William’s permit office, we should be good to go for tomorrow.” He looked at Bain. “Are you thinking of using Semtex?”

“Seems the easiest and fastest option,” Bain said. “Probably the safest too. At least with that, I can use directional charges and make the folly crumple in on itself.” Plus, he had some in a box in the storage magazine he kept out at their work site.

He glanced at Rona again, grateful she hadn’t found the secure container he used to store his explosives. Knowing her, she’d have spent the night trying to get into it instead of his lab. He shuddered to think what she might have done with a block of Semtex and some detonators.

As he watched her, she shivered.

“I’ll go over the folly specs tomorrow and prepare the charges,” he said while grabbing a knitted throw from the back of the sofa. “We should be ready to blow the folly tomorrow night.” He tucked the blanket around Rona. “You okay?” he asked her.

She nodded and went back to drinking her cocoa.

Bain swallowed down the need to pummel her parents, and returned to his spot at the other end of the sofa.

Darach was checking his phone. “We’ve got more snow forecast for tomorrow night. Don’t know whether that will help or hinder the plan.”

“According to the town’s social media page,” Kade said. “The protest roster is full tomorrow too. There will be people at the folly until dinner time, which will make it harder for you to check the interior again if you need to.”

“I don’t think so,” Bain said. “I had a good look yesterday and there isn’t a whole lot to the building. It won’t be a complicated job.”

“Then all we need is a plan to get rid of Benson Security,” Darach said. “Any suggestions?”

“I say we talk to Grunt,” Conall said. “He’s a decent guy. Why don’t we just explain everything to him and ask him to walk off the job for an hour or so around midnight.”

His brothers stared at Conall until he gave up talking and went back to fiddling with his laptop.

“I thought about calling Lake and asking him to back out of the job,” Bain said. “But I can’t get in touch with him. He’s down in London, in top-secret government meetings all week.”

“Really?” Conall looked up from his laptop. “About what?”