Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 03] by If You Deceive Page A

hateful to her, chasing her away with a broom on more than one occasion. She gave him a lewd gesture, turning on her heel and continuing on her way.
    A single woman in La Marais dreaming about a stable home life with a passel of children and a decent husband to safeguard them all was beyond ridiculous. She might as well yearn for a tree that bloomed gold.
    But even worse, Maddy still believed in…love.
    Even after her parents’ ill-fated May-December union, and even after seeing the twisted relationships in the garret, Maddy still longed for a man to love her.
    In a ruthless world, dreams like hers were liabilities….
    In lieu of them, she’d take Le Daex and the luxury of not having her arms broken.
     
    Ethan peered down at the informant whose throat he clenched, regarding him pitilessly. He released his grip enough for the man to gasp a breath, and then he squeezed harder. “Still saying that’s all you know about Grey?”
    The bug-eyed man nodded as best as he could, and Ethan finally released him, leaving him in a collapsed heap in an alleyway.
    He strode back inside the Lake District tavern from which he’d plucked that man earlier. But this time he took a seat at a back table, sinking into the shadows to contemplate all he’d learned in the last week.
    In his inexhaustible hunt, Ethan had ridden hundreds of miles and had thrashed so many informants that his knuckles stung. He’d discovered that Grey might indeed be afflicted with a hunger for opium, but he was far from being out of his mind—Grey had secretly reached England, surprising them all.
    Yet then the man had made the critical mistake of viciously knifing a woman in the Network. Grey’s preferred weapon was his blade, and the brutality of the killing had alerted Ethan to his whereabouts….
    Grey was already on Hugh’s trail.
    Ethan had to be faster than Grey, better. He’d always managed to be in the past, though they’d been closely matched adversaries, each with his own talents.
    Grey relied on technique; Ethan on brute strength. Grey spoke four languages with flawless native fluency and was eerily brilliant with strategic matters, but there was a reason he’d become so lethal with a blade—with a gun, he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
    Ethan would take his humble street smarts and his aim any day.
    Weyland considered Grey the most talented natural killer he’d ever encountered; Ethan was deemed the most doggedly brutal and relentless in pursuit….
    Ethan knew he was closing in on the man now, but he hadn’t been able to force Grey into the open. So he’d decided to anticipate Grey’s moves.
    Hugh had taken Jane to Ethan’s remote lake house just a few miles north of this tavern, to stay for a few days before traveling to Scotland. Grey would likely have uncovered information about the residence by now and would pursue her there, but the place was most readily accessible from the ferry that ran from this very tavern. Otherwise, it would take days to go north and circle back south to get to the estate. This tavern was the portal, and Ethan would act as sentinel here, waiting for Grey to come to him.
    The trap had been baited; Ethan felt he was close.
    As if there wasn’t enough pressure to kill Grey, Edward Weyland had demanded that Hugh and Jane enter into a hasty marriage of convenience before they’d departed together. Hugh hadn’t reacted particularly well to denying himself Jane ten years ago. Now, after being near her constantly, bloody married to her…Hugh was going to lose his mind.
    After the lake house, Hugh planned to go to the Highlands to hide out at their brother Courtland’s ramshackle estate. If Ethan couldn’t catch or kill Grey, then he at least wanted to buy time for Hugh to escape with Jane. Hugh would travel by horse into the Scottish forests. He was an expert rifleman and hunter, the wilderness his element….
    Ethan’s thoughts were interrupted when he spied Arthur MacReedy and his barely