Read Chapter 14: The Traitor's List

The address from the note led him to a basement flat in Paddington, down a set of iron steps that smelled of cat piss and boiled cabbage. Arthur paused at the bottom, listening. No sound. No light behind the grimy curtains. He pressed his palm flat against the door—unlocked.

That was wrong.

Lila was a lookout, not a fool. She would lock her door at night. He pushed it open with his elbow, keeping his body low and to the side, the way he’d seen scarred men do in the pub back in Newcastle before a fight.

The smell hit him first. Copper and something else, something sweet that turned his stomach. He stepped inside and clicked the light switch. Nothing.

A lamp lay smashed on the floor by an overturned armchair. The bulb had shattered, but a small banker’s lamp on a side table still burned, casting a low amber pool across the room. In that light, Arthur saw her.

Lila was on the floor between the bed and the wardrobe, half-curled into a ball as if she were still trying to hide. She wore a thin nightgown, and her dark hair fanned out over a scatter of magazine pages. The blood was a deep shocking black in the lamp glow, pooled beneath her ribcage and running down her hip to soak into the floorboards. Her eyes were open. Not afraid, not angry—just gone.

Arthur’s knees buckled for a second. He grabbed the doorframe to steady himself, forcing air into his lungs. He’d seen death before, plenty of it. War, accidents on the line, a man who fell asleep across the tracks and was cut in two. But this was different. This was a girl—barely twenty-two, pretty, terrified out of her wits at that safe house meeting, so nervous that her hands rattled against the teacup she clutched.

And Victor had sent someone to her flat to put her down.

*Or had done it himself.*

Arthur’s heart beat hard and fast, a drumroll under his ribs. His shoulder wound had opened again, and he felt warmth trickling down his arm beneath his coat. He shut the door behind him, moved past Lila’s body—*don’t look, don’t look*—and began a quick, frantic search. Who knew how long he had? Whoever’d done this might still be nearby. Might be watching.

He started in the kitchenette, careful to touch nothing. The kettle was cold. A cup beside the sink held half-drunk tea, the surface scummed over. On the small table, an open newspaper from three days ago. No note, no envelope. He lifted a look under the mattress, then under the bed itself. A suitcase of clothes, a stack of romance novels, a photograph of a woman who looked like an older version of Lila—mother? Sister?

Nothing about the job.

He checked the bathroom next. A towel on the floor, a toothbrush, a cracked mirror. No ledger. No scrap of paper with names.

But in the bedroom, beneath the wreckage of her nightstand—the drawer had been pulled clean out and thrown onto the floor—he found it. A corner of singed paper sticking out from under the overturned drawer. Ash blackened the edges, and the fire had caught half the note before dying out, leaving the rest in a ragged diagonal.

Arthur picked it up between two fingers, as delicate as a moth he didn’t want to hurt. The paper was from a notepad, feint-ruled, and the writing was a tight, clerk-like cursive he didn’t recognize. He angled it toward the lamp. The names were still legible.

*Victor Flynn — lead. Scar — security. Tommy Cross — driver. Eddie Marsh — ballast.*

Underneath, a space, and then in different handwriting—a pencil, hurried, different from the pen of the first list—were four more lines. Two of them crossed through in thick strokes. The third shone in the lamplight.

*Danny Oakes — done. Frank Riggs — done. Lila Vance —*

The pencil had stopped before the final word. Below her name, a fresh line was scrawled, darker, almost gouging the paper.

*Eddie Marsh — disappeared.*

Arthur stared at it, heat and cold at war in his chest. A list of names. A checklist. He knew enough of that world to know exactly what it was: Victor drawing a line through every loose end before the night was through. Danny Oakes. Frank Riggs. Lila.

And one more name—his own. Crossed out at the safe house meeting in pencil. They hadn’t put him on this list yet because they’d thought he’d died in the treeline. Victor thought he was done.

But Eddie Marsh—

*Disappeared.*

The word wasn’t crossed through. It wasn’t marked as done or pending. It sat there on the paper, an open question. Arthur turned the name over in his head, and fragments tumbled loose. He’d heard that name at the planning session, a man who was supposed to handle the “ballast”—a tool he’d never once seen. Scar had cursed him that first night. *“Marsh should’ve been here. Half our crew’s missing.”*

Victor had answered, quiet and calm. *“Marsh will be where he needs to be, or he won’t be at all.”*

At the time, Arthur had taken it as bluster. Now, crouched over a dead girl’s floor with a half-burned list of murders in his hands, he understood what Victor had meant. Eddie Marsh had *disappeared*—from the job, from the list, from Victor’s reach. That made him either a threat or an asset.

Arthur shoved the note inside his shirt, next to his skin, covering it with the waistband of his trousers. He couldn’t leave it here. The police would find it, and those names would burn—not just Victor’s men, but *him*. His name, scratched out in pencil. An accomplice who’d lived.

He was halfway to the door when he heard it.

Footsteps. Sharp, deliberate. A man’s steps coming down the iron stairwell outside, the drumming of shoes on metal. And then a knock rattled the door—not a tentative tap, but an official pound, the knock of someone who had a warrant and no patience.

“Police! Open up.”

Arthur’s blood went to ice. Three options snapped into view. Run out the front door—impossible, they’d be standing right there. Climb through the window—the ground floor, he might make it, but the sash was painted shut and he’d have to smash glass. Hide in the bedroom. Weak. The flat was a box, no attic, no cellar, nothing but a linen cupboard that was barely wide enough for his shoulders.

But his eyes landed on the back of the bedroom door—the one Lila had left ajar. Behind it, the wall recessed just enough for a man to flatten himself, coat tight, breath held. He dove for it as the second knock came, harder, the wood rattling in its frame.

“Open up! Met Police!” A pause. Then a different voice, lower: “Smell that? She’s already gone. Force it.”

The lock cracked. The door slammed inward.

Arthur pressed his back against the cold brick of the recess, holding his breaths shallow, holding his screaming ribs with one hand pressed tight against the wound in his shoulder. He heard them enter—two or three of them, by the sound of the boots—and stop short when they reached the body.

A long silence. Then the lower voice, flat, professional. “Stabbed. Multiple. Some time in the last six hours. Whoever did this walked out the front door.”

“You seeing this? The paper on the floor—look, it’s our luck. Half-burned list. These are names. Crew names.”

Arthur closed his eyes. His chest burned. The note was a physical weight against his skin, and he couldn’t help but feel as though it glowed through his shirt, lighting him up like a target in the dark of that recess.

“Bag it,” the lower voice said. “And check the rest of the flat. If there’s one note, there’s more.”

Arthur heard their footsteps head for the kitchen, then stop.

“Boss.” A third voice. Young, tense. “The door to the street was closed when we came down. But it ain’t locked. And the latch—look. Fresh scratches. Someone came through here with force.”

A pause, and Arthur could almost hear the man’s head turning.

“Search the bedroom.”

He had nowhere left to hide. In two heartbeats, they would push that ajar door all the way open and find him.