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Skye Fall

By Paige Edwards

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Chapter 1

Secrets. Everyone had them. Isla, however, was heartily sick of hers.
She gripped the platter on the seat beside her as the London Uber swerved
out of its lane and skidded to a halt in front of a row of terraced houses, the
wet tarmac hissing beneath its tires.
“Here you are, miss,” the driver said.
Traffic had been uncommonly light from her house in Knightsbridge to
here in the suburbs, and she had arrived early—forty-five minutes early, to
be exact.
Isla’s stomach lurched as she glanced at the cars lining the street. Shay’s
car was missing. Sometimes her boyfriend took the tube home and left his
vehicle at work, but in all likelihood, his job as a police officer on the terrorist
command for the Metropolitan Police often required extra hours. She might
have a long wait before he came home.
Pulling out her mobile, she texted him: Arrived early. Traffic was light.
She and Shay had been dating for only six weeks, but when they’d grilled
dinner at his place over the weekend, they’d made plans to celebrate today.
Clutching his birthday cake covered with cling film, she climbed out of the
vehicle.
“You’ll be all right carrying that, miss?” The driver grinned so wide his
smile almost touched his bright-purple plugs.
“Quite.” She moved to close the door, but the driver hopped out and
shut it for her.
He couldn’t be too much older than her own twenty-one and obviously
needed a tip. She set the cake on the boot of his car and fished inside her coat
pocket for a ten-pound note, then reclaimed the cake.
“Thanks.” The driver gave her a cocky salute. A second later, he zipped
down the street.

2 Paige Edwards
She started up the pavement of identical attached houses. When she’d met
Shay during her first week on the job as a nurse in the hospital’s Accident and
Emergency room, she’d been completely gobsmacked by the tall policeman.
And Shay appeared to reciprocate those same emotions. So today, after the
festivities, she had determined to entrust him with her carefully guarded secret.
If she couldn’t trust a cop, who could she trust?
But her nerves jangled when she considered how he might react when he
found out she had kept her real identity under wraps. She wasn’t Isla Moore,
but Isla Montjoy, the daughter of Sir Timothy Montjoy, home secretary to
the British prime minister. Weary of peers claiming friendship because of her
famous father, she changed her surname just before she entered Scotland’s
University of Edinburgh to enjoy a more “normal” experience. Hopefully
Shay cared enough by now to overlook her duplicity.
The rain, which had been spitting off and on, decided in that moment to
pour like a free-flowing tap, the drops pelting her body. Drat. She’d forgotten
her umbrella.
Protecting the cake, she hurried up the steps to ring the bell, but the
plastic casing over the ringer had broken, so she rapped on the door instead.
Not a sound emanated from within.
The stoop had no overhead covering to protect her from the weather. She
drew up her hood and glanced in dismay at the cake she had spent all morning
decorating. Water had puddled on top of the plastic wrap. This would never
do.
Using her mobile app, she ordered an Uber to take her to the closest coffee
shop. Eleven minutes until pick up. She and the cake would be a sodden mess
by the time it arrived.
Setting her jaw, she faced the street, her backside pressed against the door
in the hope Shay’s eaves would partially shield her from the deluge. The door
gave behind her, and she staggered to maintain her balance. The black door did
not swing open fully; something appeared to be shoved up against it. Whatever
it was, it had kept her from tumbling into Shay’s entrance hall.
An open door was never a good sign, especially not for a policeman who
had a tendency toward paranoia where safety was concerned. Shay even kept
a security keypad outside his home office door. And though she had visited
his home several times, she had never once stepped inside that room.
Shay’s front door not latching brought to mind all the ride-alongs she
had taken with emergency responders for her clinicals. She grabbed her

SKYE FALL 3
mobile and texted Shay, then waited five beats before she pushed on the
door. It didn’t budge. Could Shay be physically hurt?
Alarm tumbled inside as her focus shifted fully to Shay and his safety.
She set the cake on the top of the stoop, all worries for its preservation taking
a backseat to the more immediate concern. Had someone broken into Shay’s
house? Was he lying on the opposite side of the door?
She pressed her shoulder to the steel panel and pushed with everything in
her, shoving the door just wide enough to squeeze through. One quick glance
about the small hall disclosed the hinderance. A tightly sealed wooden crate
had kept the door from opening. Another scan of the small foyer revealed
the empty peg where Shay usually hung his coat. She had indeed beat him
home. A sigh escaped her, and relief turned her limbs to jelly.
Thank you, Lord. She scooted the crate a few more inches, then retrieved
the cake from the porch. She’d leave it in the kitchen, then go outside to meet
the Uber.
“Hello,” she called, just in case Shay had taken the underground and
discarded his jacket upstairs.
Stepping through the sparsely furnished lounge, she entered the kitchen
via the dining room corridor. His flat had few creature comforts, save for
the coffee machine, large-screen telly, and plain blackout curtains at the
windows. With his odd hours, he often needed a lie-in during the day.
One glance at the kitchen turned her legs to ice and sent her heart into
a good imitation of a full-on, atrial fibrillation episode. Semi-automatics
lay on the kitchen island, clearly seized by Shay and his team. On the floor
beside the island stood a wooden box with a pried-off lid, just like the crate
in the entrance hall. More guns appeared inside.

Plastic bags containing a white powdery substance lay stacked pyramid-
style two meters away on the island worktop. Those definitely did not look

like flour and sugar. As a nurse at St. Thomas’s Accident and Emergency, Isla
knew more than her fair share about street drugs.
During one of their conversations over the last six weeks, Shay told her
that confiscated property went directly to the MET’s evidence lockup. So
what was it doing in his flat? Had Shay’s team stopped here to drop their
goods on their way to another call?
Men’s voices reached her from the office just off the dining room corridor.
Shay was home?
“You lot need to take our haul and clear out. I don’t want my girlfriend
seeing this.”

4 Paige Edwards
Prickles crawled up the back of her neck. Shay didn’t want her to see
what? The weapons? Or drugs? Why didn’t he want her to see this? Were they
up to something nefarious?
If she left before they exited the office, no one would be the wiser for
her visit.
“How soon before this shipment leaves?” a man with a raspy voice asked.
Step by step, Isla tiptoed her way to freedom. One meter across the kitchen
floor and a floorboard creaked. Isla stopped abruptly. The cake lurched, and
she righted it with shaky fingers.
“Tomorrow. My contact will fly them out of the Norwich airfield. He
owes me a favor,” Shay responded, his words distinct.
No. Not Shay. But the evidence lay strewn about her, leaving no doubt
as to his corruption. A sob bubbled inside her and threatened to burst. Isla
shifted, and the board groaned again. She shut her eyes and held her breath,
her heart banging so loud it threatened to cut off her hearing.
Silence.
“Did you hear something?” a fellow drawled.
“No. Quit being so jumpy.”
“Where’s the shipment going?” the raspy-voiced man asked.
“The States—Virginia to be specific,” Shay said. “To a paramilitary group
called the Southern Nationalists.”
“As long as it leaves the UK, I don’t much care where it goes,” said a
different man, his tone well-modulated. “No chance of them tracing the sale
to us?”
They were bent—every last one of them.
Isla’s stomach cramped. She had to get out of here before they found
her. Pivoting, she navigated the room but misjudged the crate’s proportions
beside the island and rammed it with her hip. The cake jolted from her arms

and skimmed across the counter’s surface. Its momentum knocked a semi-
automatic to the floor with a clatter before it stopped, teetering on the edge.

Footsteps pounded in the corridor, coming fast.
Isla barely made it to the far side of the island before Shay and Joseph
Bartoli, a gray-haired man with youthful features Shay had introduced her
to last week, and Judge Higgs she identified from a case that had made BBC
News, charged into the kitchen.
“Isla,” Shay exclaimed, consternation coloring his voice. “What are you
doing here?” His face mottled with red and white splotches against his fair
skin.

SKYE FALL 5
Inhaling sharply, she pointed a trembling finger toward the cake. “Traffic
was light. It was raining, and your front door was open.” Her voice quivered,
but she forged on, pretending she had not overheard their conversation.
“Happy birthday.”
Ignoring her entirely, Shay snapped his head in the judge’s direction. “You
said you secured the door.”
“That’s irrelevant.” Judge Higgs glared at Shay. “I hate to state the obvious,
O’Sullivan, but she’s got to go. She’s a loose end.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t be hearing him right.
Bartoli blocked one exit, and the judge stepped back to fill the other.
Her mouth went dry. Cornered three to one, she hadn’t the slightest chance
of escape. Lifting her chin, she pointed to the weapons, her chest heaving with
suppressed emotion. “I trusted you! People trust you as a police officer . . .
What have you done?”
“The system lets criminals walk free. We mete out justice to those the
system has failed,” Shay said as though explaining something elementary to
a child.
“By selling confiscated weapons? And drugs? You lot are no better than
the criminals you arrest.” The words came out barely more than a whisper,
but Isla refused to cow.
“The Justice Seekers need funds to operate. What we do makes a difference,”
Shay said, his eyes pleading. “Join us. You can help put real criminals behind
bars.”
“You’re delusional. All of you are bent,” she spat, her gaze darting from
man to man.
“There are more Justice Seekers than you know, and we are making a
difference.” Shay rose to his full height, his face implacable. “I gave you a
chance, Isla. You refused. We can’t have a witness betraying our work.”
“We haven’t got all day.” Bartoli jerked his chin toward Isla.
Shay advanced on her, his steps slow and measured.
Isla backed up and rammed into a cupboard. She snatched the first thing
at hand, a knife from its holder beside the cooker. “Please. Don’t.” She held
the blade in front of her toward him, to hold Shay off.
Shay’s eyes glittered with sudden menace, his features barely recognizable.
Moving so swiftly she hardly saw him coming, he chopped down on her
forearm and twisted her wrist with the opposite hand.
Isla sucked in through her teeth, and her grip loosened on the blade.
Gaining control of the instrument, Shay struck just as Isla rotated to get away.

6 Paige Edwards
The knife entered her flesh just below her navel and continued around her side
as she spun.
Nothing happened for a moment. She stood teetering as something warm
saturated her clothes. Then, like a tsunami, it hit—pain engulfed her in a
vortex of agony. She crumpled to the floor, the air whooshing from her lungs.
Shay’s image floated above her, then blurred and faded into oblivion.

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