A Risk Worth Taking

by Brynn Kelly

  He swiveled, planted his feet on the cold floor and adjusted the blankets to cover Samira. His upper arm was hot and painful to the touch. Not a lot he could do about it now.

  His parents had been so happy at the loch. Everything was okay when his parents were happy. Every time he topped exam results, won academic prizes and sports trophies, landed scholarships, his first thought would be their faces, that happiness, that pride. Their shoulders would straighten, their eyes would gleam, his mother would clap her hands together, just once, they’d make inane jokes that failed to disguise their delight. Hope you left something for the other kids! Hope that trophy comes with a bigger house! In his recollection they were always pleasantly surprised—even though he always came top of his class, always won everything. They credited genes or sheer talent but in truth he’d worked his skinny arse off—through school, college, med school, the hospital—because he got off on seeing that light in their eyes, that skip in their voices.

  That was why he couldn’t see them face-to-face after he lost his job and his future, couldn’t even call on the phone. He’d posted a letter from Heathrow explaining the whole sorry story. By the time they’d received it, he was in France, incommunicado. No way could he have handled hearing the shock in their voices, seeing that light go out, seeing those shoulders slump. Better they got the news away from him, to save them trying to put up a brave front. For him, imagining their reaction was pain enough. Was still painful.

  He pulled on his boxers, awkwardly with his arm a dead weight, padded out to the living room and lit the candles on the plate. The sedative was still sitting on the counter, still loaded. He stared at it until it blurred. He should empty it down the sink, remove the temptation, discard the remaining doses. He would. The fire was down to glowing embers but he could work with that. He drew the bedroom door closed so Samira didn’t wake at the sound of ripping paper.

  He knelt before the hearth and rubbed his face. Shite, if there was any time he could use sleep, it was now. Or he could use another round with Samira, who was still deliciously naked under the covers. Jesus, don’t go there. She needed sleep, too. The sex had been almost too good an escape—it made the thumping return of reality harder to bear, like a hangover to make you regret a great night, a reminder of what life could have been.

  He dragged the wood basket closer and got started. God, he wanted her—for more than sex, for more than a day or two. But her limbo would end when this crisis passed. His would continue—no thought about the day before or the day beyond. Living for the moment—wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? He had nothing to return to the real world for. No possibility of a meaningful job, nowhere else he belonged. Samira—or any woman—would soon learn the meaning of dour if she took up with him. Not that she was asking.

  He watched over the fire until it was away again and opened the bedroom door. In the flickering light he could just make out the shape of her. He envied her oblivion.

  Oblivion. He looked at the syringe, looked back at her. Fuck it. Fuck it all. Just a moderate dose to take the edge off. It’d wear off by morning. If she woke first she’d just think he was a heavy sleeper—which was far from the truth but they wouldn’t be together long enough for her to discover that. The last time they’d shared a bed neither of them had thought of sleep. They were safe, for now. If Hyland knew where they’d gone, his goons would be here by now. She needed him rested, sharp. A temporary fix. He’d be back in Corsica soon enough, away from temptation—in all forms.

  A few minutes later he climbed into bed, gently pulled her into him so her back skimmed his chest, and wrapped his arms around her. She murmured. He kissed the smooth bump at the top of her spine—her C7 spinous process. He inhaled deeply, momentarily aware of his dimming thoughts, the receding pain.

  Oblivion, come and get me.

  * * *

  SAMIRA WOKE TO a buzzing, and a tightening in her heart. Her alarm. Just her alarm. She rolled and grabbed her phone, Jamie’s arm slumping off her waist. She swiped and the buzz silenced. She lay back down. Not the A-Team. Just time to check progress on the hack.

  She listened to the rhythm of Jamie’s breath, willing it to calm her. In the low glow from the fire in the living room she could just make out the contours of his face. Peaceful. The joker and flirt had slipped away and let the real Jamie through. As generous and caring in bed as he was out of it. Sex really was the ultimate expression of living for the moment. You couldn’t enjoy it if you were worried about the past or the future. You had to let go of fear and doubt.

  And yes, her fear and doubt were back but she seemed distanced from them, like they were less an all-consuming fire and more background noise.

  It’s okay to listen to your fear—just don’t let it make all your decisions for you.

  She levered herself up and pulled on her clothes. Somehow she’d also managed to let go of any self-consciousness about her body or whether she was doing the right things. Just like last time. But even better.

  She leaned over and stroked his cheek. He didn’t flinch. “Thank you,” she mouthed, dipping to kiss his soft lips. They wouldn’t have more than this, but that was okay.

  I wish I could, Samira. I really do.

  She pushed up from the bed and walked into the living room. She’d been about to ask why he couldn’t when he’d kissed her. He might have let down his guard but he was still a multilayered game where you had to work at unlocking the levels to earn new insights.

  As she sat down at the table, she touched the computer’s mouse pad. The script terminal came up. The screen had stilled. Successful password detected.

  Holy shit. She pressed her hands over her nose and mouth and sucked in a series of quick breaths. Using as few fingers on the keyboard as possible, she loaded Hyland’s Gold Linings server and scrolled to the Trésor folder. She extended her right pointer finger, fisted the rest, paused a few seconds, then entered the letters and digits as deliberately and haltingly as a Ouija board. She squeezed her eyes shut a second, opened them and pressed Enter.

  The loading screen came up. She was in.

  She bounced on the chair and let out a suffocated squeal. Her belly twisted like a pit of snakes. The bedroom remained still and dark. She would let Jamie sleep a little longer. Maybe she’d wake him once she’d transferred the files to Tess, announce that it was all over and slide back into bed for a little...celebration.

  A gold screen came up. Progressing to authentication step two.

  No.

  Please input or scan your authentication code.

  She smacked her palms on the table, either side of the keyboard. He used two-factor ID for a subfolder? Most people would use two-factor ID for a site log-in, not a single folder. What was important enough to have security within security within security? Which at least backed up the theory that whatever was in the treasure chest was not for public consumption.

  She pushed the chair away from the table and pressed her knuckles over her mouth. This wasn’t close to being over. “Dammit.”

  Two-factor ID. Something you know, and something you have.

  She chewed on a knuckle. Think. If his first factor was the password—something you know—the second—something you have—had to be a gadget he carried with him. Gold Linings issued their clients 2FA fobs that created new authentication codes every minute. Whenever the clients logged in, the site would ask for the current code. Hyland could be carrying it on his key ring or belt or watch or some other accessory. A private detective she’d once consulted for had one clipped into her bra.

  Samira typed Hyland’s name into an image search. And there it was, in photo after photo, clipped to his belt loop—a tiny white rectangular case. She enlarged a high-res photo and zoomed in. The Gold Linings logo.

  Nausea pulsed in her stomach. She swallowed. Sixteen hours before the password changed and they lost their one window of opportunity. And the only pat
h into the folder was attached to the waist of her number one enemy. She opened his itinerary. An enemy who was currently sleeping in the Balfour Hotel, surrounded by diplomatic service agents, as well as the personal bodyguards he took everywhere, and hotel security staff, and no doubt a floor full of lackeys and advisers, with maybe a dozen police keeping watch outside.

  She flicked back to the image results and scrolled. Was it ever not on his belt? Yes, there—the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A reunion of his Special Forces team. Several inauguration balls.

  She blew out her cheeks. What did they have in common?

  A tuxedo. He was wearing a tuxedo.

  She narrowed the search parameters. Photo after photo of him standing with one or both hands in his pockets and the tuxedo jacket artfully splayed open, like he was an Armani model. No fob. She returned to his Edinburgh itinerary. Meeting, meeting, meeting, photo, working lunch, press conference, meeting, meeting...cocktail reception. Dress code: black tie.

  She rubbed her clammy face. The fire was dying down. She walked over and started poking at the embers, grabbing a piece of wood. Of course, it was all theoretical information. It wasn’t like she could march into Hyland’s hotel room and steal the thing while he was out, any more than she could walk up and rip it from his waist.

  Her big heroic quest was over. There’d be no celebratory sex. Tess would remain in trouble. Charlotte would remain in danger. And Samira was stuck in the shadows permanently—well, until her “wanted” status changed to “arrested.”

  Her phone lit up and began a tinny tune. She stared at it, her brain taking a second to compute. The A-Team. She pushed out a breath. Probably just someone going to the country house.

  At this hour?

  She pulled up her monitoring site. Her hand shook so much it took two attempts to access the camera feed. A white Peugeot.

  “Jamie!” she yelled. “Get up! They’re coming! We need to leave.”

  She grabbed the backpack and started shoving things in, her breath short. Their stuff was spread everywhere. What was important? Laptop. Phone. Chargers. Car key—where was the car key?

  And what use was it? One road in, one road out. No movement in the bedroom. She yelled again. Warm clothes—they’d have to get out on foot, hide somewhere. Shit. This was why she always kept her belongings packed. She couldn’t think and move at the same time.

  She shut the laptop. On the kitchen counter, the low-battery light was blinking on Jamie’s cell phone. Weird—she’d just charged it. She picked it up. The back of it was hot—the battery had been working overtime. Shit. And the GPS was on. She tried to switch it off but it was stuck. She checked the settings, wincing. It was uploading GPS data to a server in the United States. Hyland’s people had to have launched a virus onto the phone, a reverse hack after she’d infiltrated his email using Jamie’s Wi-Fi hot spot. Shit.

  She opened the fridge door and laid it on a shelf at the back, as carefully as if it were a bomb. If Hyland’s goons had control of the phone they could have an audio feed up. Since when? It’d been fine when she’d put it on charge—and the conversation had quickly turned personal after that. They hadn’t discussed the hack. And the bandwidth was too low for video, thank God. She closed the door. The damage was already well done but no point in giving their pursuers further clues.

  “Jamie!”

  What the hell was he doing? She ran into the room, tripped and flew onto the bed, smacking onto some bony body part. Shock rattled through her. He murmured.

  “Jamie, wake up!”

  She jumped astride him and shook his shoulders. “Come on, Jamie. Please, we have to go.”

  She grabbed her cell phone, switched on the flashlight app and shone it on his face. His eyelids flickered but stayed shut. Would she have to slap hi—?

  The syringe. It was on the bedside table. She grabbed it. Half-empty. It’d been full when he’d left it on the kitchen counter. She reared up and yanked the covers off. He wasn’t sleeping; he was sedated. He’d drugged himself.

  “Jamie, please, I need you.” Her voice shook. “They’re coming. We have to get out. I can’t do this without you.” She was sobbing, panic clutching her chest.

  She leaped off the bed, grabbing at chunks of her hair, looking left and right. She couldn’t carry him. She’d have to drag him. He was wearing only boxer shorts but frostbite was not the immediate threat. She ran into the living room, pulled her coat and boots on, shoved anything in the backpack she could get her hands on, unlocked the door and dumped it on the grass beyond the steps. Now for Jamie.

  Inside, she pulled him into a sitting position, flopped his arms over her back and tried to heave him off the bed. He was too heavy. He skidded onto the floor, his head whacking the bedside table.

  “Sorry,” she squeaked. She straightened. “No, I’m not sorry. I’m not at all sorry.” At this rate, he wouldn’t be able to walk after she was finished with him.

  The wheelchair. Oh God, the wheelchair in the trunk of the car.

  A few minutes later she was bumping the chair down the stone steps onto the grass, Jamie slumped in it. He groaned.

  “Oh, I’m not taking complaints from you.”

  The wheelchair was a bitch to pull over the long, damp grass. Not designed for off-roading. She had to get him to the car, tip him into the back seat. She couldn’t drive out the way they came but she might be able to drive it a few hundred meters, hide it between a clump of trees. It was small enough. She sure wouldn’t get far heaving the wheelchair.

  She got to the car and flung open the back door. The interior light flicked on. The key—where had he put the key? She patted her own pocket, reflexively.

  The windowsill. He’d put it on the windowsill. And the gun—was it still on the kitchen counter?

  A noise. She stilled. Not a car engine. It was in the sky, getting closer. A helicopter?

  Not a helicopter. It was a gnawing buzz, like a whiny lawn-mower engine. A...droning noise.

  A drone? In Scotland?

  She wasn’t imagining it. It couldn’t be anything else. The fog still hung thickly, so it couldn’t be merely a surveillance drone. It had to be operating on GPS, going after the phone coordinates.

  Forget the car—too obvious a target. Ditto the shed. Her gaze rested on the overturned dinghy, gleaming like it was trying to tell her something. The car light timed off, leaving the outline of the hull imprinted in her blown vision. She spun the wheelchair and shoved it toward the boat. The buzzing grew louder. Did drones have thermal imaging? It’d have to have something, if it was flying at night. She never did Google them. It whined closer. Shit. She should have thrown Jamie’s phone into the loch, as far as she could. Too late now.

  She tipped Jamie onto the grass beside the dinghy and dragged it over them, hauling him and curling up to fit between its plank seats. He moaned again.

  “Jamie, wake up.” How long would he be out for?

  The cold from the ground washed through her like she’d dived into a fridge. And she was dressed warmly. He was nearly naked. She grappled for him in the pitch blackness, pulled him on top of her as best she could and wrapped her arms around him. His back was goose pimpled. She clung on as the drone noise became louder, more like a generator. How long until the Peugeot got here? And what would they find—two charred bodies?

  All the thought and care she’d put into choosing and securing her safe houses for an entire year, and she’d let Jamie bring her here—a dead-end road. If she’d been thinking straight, thinking about safety rather than screwing him, she’d never have chosen it. She’d put too much trust in him, believed that he could look after her better than she could. What a fool.

  Regret, like a tail, comes at the end. Her grandmother’s words. A picture came to mind of her grandmother’s guest house in Harar, Ethiopia, where Samira and Latif had hidden. It was so remote it’d felt untouchab
le—until Hyland’s goons had killed Latif and flushed her out and forced her on a journey that was likely to end here, now.

  The buzz crescendoed. Then, a whooshing sound. Her face prickled. The sound Latif had heard before he’d died?

  And here she was, waiting for the end with her arms around another man. A man who had no idea he was about to die.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A BOOM STRUCK the ground, bucking it like an earthquake. White light flashed through the gap between the grass and the lip of the boat. Samira held her breath. Thuds, cracks, glass smashing, wood groaning. Something clanged against the hull and the air rang. Jamie flinched and tensed, muttering into her chest like he was fighting to wake. She held tight while debris hammered—clonks of giant hail, then sleet, pattering off to drizzle. The light flared and subsided, leaving a dusty glow. Silence, bar a crackling. A fire? She dared to inhale.

  She tipped Jamie to one side, lifted the dinghy and peered out. The skeletal tree burned, flames and smoke swirling with the fog to create an eerie light. The cottage looked like a medieval ruin, the roof and walls caved in on one side, the bedroom flattened. Dust and smoke coated the roof of her mouth.

  Jamie groaned. He needed warm clothes—but first she had to get them somewhere safe. Safer. The Peugeot was still coming, and God knew what else. More drones? She hoisted the dinghy aside, crouched over Jamie, threaded her arms under his shoulders and heaved. If she could get him to the car, maybe they’d have time to—

  The car. A massive stone had smashed through the back window and the tires were shredded. Her left boot slipped and she crashed butt-first onto the grass, Jamie sprawling on top. He rolled off—by design or gravity, she couldn’t tell.

  She found the wheelchair embedded in a wild hedge and dragged it out, bringing half the foliage with it. Flattened. Jamie pushed up to hands and knees.