by Brynn Kelly
“Hello?” she said huskily.
“Ms. Desta, at last.” Hyland. She’d heard that voice a thousand times but never directed at her. “I’m sorry I’m not able to make your acquaintance in person but it’s wonderful to be able to speak on the phone, at last. You’ve proven quite as problematic as your friend Ms. Newell, but I’m glad we could find a solution to our disagreement. I do apologize that it won’t be advantageous to you but I’m sure we could make it work all the same.”
He fell silent.
“Ms. Desta, this is when you speak.” He overenunciated the Ms. like it was an insult.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your parents... I’m told they’re a lovely couple. We have a lot of friends in common, you know.”
Her cheeks froze.
“You’re not much of a talker, are you, Ms. Desta? But that’s okay. I am. I’ll talk. You’ll listen. How ’bout that?”
Her breath shortened. That familiar pinch in her chest. No.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he continued. “Now, I know and you know and they know that they haven’t been involved with your subterfuge—I’ve had them watched very closely. But once you’re revealed as the terrorist you are, it’ll be very easy to implicate them.”
“A terrorist?”
“Oh, we can label you anything we want—especially someone who looks like you and comes from your part of the world. And your name sounds foreign enough for people to believe it. A cyber terrorist who got in too deep and took her own life. Oh no, wait—that’s how Ms. Liu is going to die. We’ll think of something more imaginative for you. We can sort out that after the fact. But there is something we need to talk through now, and that’s your parents.”
Her nape crawled. Ms. Liu is going to die. That meant Charlotte was still alive—for now. But her parents...?
“It’s bad enough they’re about to lose their beloved only child—something I will make a point of publicly sympathizing with, seeing as I, too, have just one precious child—but we don’t want to see them also lose their freedom, do we? Well, to be honest, I don’t really care, but I’m sure you do.”
Her throat felt like it had closed to the thickness of a toothpick.
He sighed into the phone. “It’s not easy to carry on a phone conversation when the other person doesn’t say anything. But I’m going to assume you’re listening. Sheltering a terrorist—that’s a serious charge.”
“It’s a lie,” Samira squeaked.
“Truth and lies are whatever I say they are. I can have your parents picked up whenever I choose. Their government will not want to be seen to be protecting them with such damning evidence on the table. But here’s where your dying act of mercy comes in.”
Her breath wheezed, like an asthmatic.
“Again, I shall keep on talking. Perhaps you could do me the courtesy of an uh-huh every now and then so I know the connection hasn’t dropped out.” More silence. She couldn’t speak if she wanted to. He sighed again. “Maybe a video call would have been better. Then I’d be able to see you not talking. So here’s the deal I’m prepared to offer. I know about your late fiancé. I know about Ms. Newell and her boyfriend. I know about Ms. Liu. I want the name of the other person you’ve been communicating with over these leaks.”
Samira blinked, repeatedly. “Other person?” she gasped. Jamie? Did that mean he wasn’t dead?
“Your other source in Denniston.”
“Wh—what?” Her lungs deflated. Not Jamie.
“Don’t play a fool. I know how smart you are. I’m a man of my word. Give me the name and I’ll leave your parents to their grief.”
“Honestly, I don’t know who y—” She straightened. The other person in the game?
“A. Name.”
“I swear I don’t know who you’re talking about. You must understand—I was dragged into this. It wasn’t of my choosing. I’m not central to any of it.”
“You were preparing to testify against me. Yesterday, you hacked into my email. That doesn’t sound like someone who is not central.”
You hacked into my email. So he didn’t know about the files? Not that it mattered now.
A rustling came over the phone, as if he were changing ears. “Listen, I have a busy day tomorrow, I’m jet-lagged and I want to get back to sleep. You know what I do when I need an answer quickly?” Silence. “Well, let me tell you. It’s an old father trick. I simply count down from ten. If I get to zero and you haven’t given me a name, I’m hanging up. At that point, my good friend Fitz there will execute you, and your parents will find themselves in orange jumpsuits with hoods over their heads and shackles on their feet. Your choice. Ten, nine—”
“I’m not lying. I really have no—”
“Eight, seven, six...”
“I don’t know who you’re talking—”
“Five, four, three...”
“You have to believe me. I don’t—”
“Two, one... A name, now.”
“I can’t! I don’t know who—”
The phone beeped. She pulled it from her ear. Call ended, the screen read.
The blond guy—my friend Fitz—stepped forward. “Ooh, that didn’t sound like it went so well, Samira. Never mind, my dear. I’m about to liberate you from your many worries. Safe travels, now.”
He raised the gun.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SAMIRA PULLED HER hands from behind her back. She fumbled with the flare in her sweaty grip and yanked the toggle at the tail end, bracing. It cracked and whooshed off, the recoil slamming her spine into the trunk. Fitz stumbled sideways. It arced past him, whacked into a tree and spun, fizzing, into bushes. Damn.
He staggered forward, recovering the hold on his gun. A steely expression rolled down his face as he raised it once more. Samira dived to one side, just as something moved on a low ridge behind him—something flew. A man, leaping for Fitz with a guttural roar. As Fitz looked up, the guy smashed an elbow between his eyes. Fitz crumpled.
Samira scrambled back. Jamie landed on the earth in front of her, one side of him lit orange by the flare’s pulsing glow. She pressed her hand to her chest. It thumped like a drum. Jamie. She knew it. She knew he wasn’t dead.
“Nice move, Samira. Of course, I was a second from taking him out all by myself, but I’ll let you share the glory.”
“Oh my God, is he dead?”
Jamie nudged Fitz’s arm with his shoe. “Just out cold. I did once take a Hippocratic oath in his country, you know. And here’s me thinking you’d ask how I’m doing rather than the guy who just tried to kill you.”
“You knocked him out. I thought that just happened in the movies.”
“It’s not as easy to do as in the movies. But like I say, I had extensive training.”
“I thought you were referring to the military.”
“It’s handy to have more than one skill set. What’s really hard is that Spock Vulcan thing.” He pulled a sealed packet from a coat pocket and ripped it open. A syringe. “We spent many a quiet shift at the hospital working on that.” He opened another packet—a vial—loaded it into the syringe and strode back to Fitz.
She looked away as he knelt by the prone man. “Is that covered by your oath?”
“The oath’s really only symbolic. This’ll buy us a few hours. The other three have also decided to have a wee nap.”
“You took out three men with your bare hands?”
“Don’t be sexist. One was a woman.” She sensed him standing, and warily looked up. “You see, Samira,” he said, scuffling through the undergrowth and stomping on the remains of the flare, “the thing with a narrow path through a forest—it forces a team into single file. And the thing with walking single file along an unfamiliar steep, narrow path at night, without flashlights, while searching for an enemy—it doesn�
��t take much for the last man—or woman—to fall behind. Like, say, getting distracted by a snapping twig. And once the guy at the back disappears, the others come after him, and it rapidly goes downhill in a Blair Witch kind of way.”
Wow, he’d sure fired up. Natural adrenaline, she hoped. “I heard a gunshot.”
“It missed.”
“I knew you couldn’t be dead.”
He strode back, pulling two handguns from his coat and examining them. “Listening to your instinct, are you?”
“It wasn’t instinct. It was hope.” She nodded at the weapons. “Did you take those from the goons? Why didn’t you use one on Fitz?”
“Fitz?”
“We had a little time to get acquainted.”
“When did you get so bloodthirsty? That was plan B. I didn’t want to attract more attention than we already have. They have others out there.” He held out a hand and pulled her up. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
He held her hand a second longer than necessary. She waited for him to pull her in and kiss her, but he let go, his expression dark.
“It’s good being fine all the time, isn’t it?” he said.
She dusted her coat as he emptied his pockets into the backpack. She really wasn’t dressed for trekking through the forest. “I heard other cars,” she said.
“Going by the chatter of those three before I sprang them, we can count on another two carloads. Between the gunshot and the flare, we’d better get going. Shall we take his sat phone? I couldn’t find any phones on those other goons.”
“Too easily tracked. We’ll disable it and toss it. Jamie... I spoke to Hyland on that phone.”
“Just now? Bloody hell.”
“He’s going after my parents.” She related the details as she stripped the phone.
“Well, then,” Jamie said, pulling on the backpack. “We’d better go and get this thingamajig from him before that happens.” He started walking, then stopped and turned. “You coming?”
She set her jaw. Tess, Charlotte and now her parents...
What choice did she have?
* * *
THEY CLIMBED THE hill behind the loch, emerging from the misty basin onto bare rocky terrain under stars and a fat moon. Jamie breathed in cool, dry air. Of all the corners of the world he’d traveled to, that smell—mossy, woody, herby—belonged only here. Ahead, just above the summit’s smooth lip, jutted the crumbling battlements and keep of the old castle.
He checked his wrist for the time, but of course, his watch was back at the cottage, destroyed along with any remaining self-respect—and Samira’s respect. Any questions he might’ve had about his ability to withstand temptation had been emphatically answered. He fisted and stretched the fingers of his injured arm. Pain pulsed down to his nail beds.
“Are you okay to jog?” he said to Samira, beside him. “I’ll feel a lot better when we’re in the next valley, back under tree cover.”
“Is that where your friend lives?”
“No, we’ve got to walk a little further, to the next loch. That okay?”
“Eshi.”
He set a steady pace, the rucksack bouncing on his back. She’d fallen quiet once they’d set out. What was there to say? Was she so disgusted that she regretted sleeping with him? But, hey, it was probably healthy that she saw him for what he was, however much it hurt his pride.
Of course, now he owed her his life, and was very nearly responsible for ending hers. Not how this arrangement was meant to work. So much for being addicted to her approval—she sure as shit wouldn’t be looking at him in the way she had before. Aye, like all addictions, it eventually spun round and kicked him in the balls.
A distant thudding rose up. He swore.
“Helicopter?” Samira said, looking around.
“Aye. Run faster. Can you see those ruins up ahead?”
“I see a pile of rocks...?”
“That’s them—we’ll shelter there and check what it’s up to. From there we can sprint up and over the hill and back into the forest.” If it was the same high-spec bird that’d chased them through London, he could assume it had thermal.
Its silhouette rose over the hills on the far side of the loch. Yep, the MH-6, a good five miles away, so out of thermal range for now. He grabbed Samira’s hand and upped the pace. The crew would be wondering how they’d lost communication with their advance ground team. With the fog, the chopper wouldn’t mess around searching the loch and forest. They’d sweep across exposed higher ground.
“They’ll have the last GPS coordinates from the sat phone,” Samira hissed.
“Aye, that’ll be their starting point. An hour or so old but it gives them parameters.”
The terrain steepened on approach of the castle. Jamie’s eyes and feet worked hard to sidestep strewn rocks. A twisted ankle could prove fatal.
“I can’t see much cover in those ruins,” Samira said, panting.
“The keep is mostly intact. It’s a little obvious but there’s enough of a roof to hide us, so long as they don’t winch anybody down.”
“Or just open fire and bring it down on our heads.”
“Well, aye, but let’s be optimistic.”
They were properly climbing now. They passed a square of foundation stones for a long-extinct outbuilding and clambered over a stone wall. The chopper would be on them in minutes.
He ushered her inside the keep, watching out the archway as the chopper neared. He’d once snogged a girl in here, an English bridesmaid he’d enticed away from a wedding at the country house on the promise of showing her the castle. A different life.
“Is this the keep?”
“Aye,” he said, his gaze on the chopper. No searchlight.
“There’s no roof.”
“What?”
She was right. The damn roof had caved. Not a stone of cover left.
“We could duck down in the corner,” she said. “There’s a lot of rubble. If we stay still they might not see us.”
“They’ve got thermal.”
“Thermal imaging?”
“Without cover, we’re pretty much glow-in-the-dark.”
“Could we hide under something? Our coats?”
“Fabric will warm up with our body heat.” He spun the rucksack off and pulled out the dinghy’s emergency kit. Two survival blankets.
“Please tell me they’re magic carpets.”
He dumped the rucksack in a corner and covered it with flagstones. “Next best thing.”
“Invisibility cloaks?”
“Pretty much just two big sheets of tinfoil. But I’ve heard that these things can hide a heat signature—as long as our bodies aren’t warming them up.”
“I don’t think I have much of a heat signature right now.”
“Help me stack these fallen stones. Make a ranger grave. We’ll cover it with the blankets. As long as they’re not touching us we might be okay.”
The chopper’s blades thudded, its engine straining. They piled rocks into two parallel rows, leaving a trench just wide enough for two people, just high enough to leave a decent gap between them and the blankets.
“Get in,” he shouted over the roaring chopper.
She lay down and he made a roof with the blankets, weighing them with rocks on either side. He slid in next to her, on his side. His shoulder screamed. He was leaning on it but was wedged too tightly to move. He shifted closer to her—if that were possible—but it didn’t help. She was also on her side, not a millimeter between them from top to toe. It was smaller than he’d thought. The stone against his back and side was so cold it felt wet, but her warm breath teased his neck. If this was his last moment, he should be kissing her, at the very least. The air shook with the disturbance from the machine. Its thud turned to a whine as it swept overhead. The downdraft lifted a co
rner of the blanket. Jamie grabbed it. A risk, but better that than the whole thing flying off. His hand was so cold he could hardly feel it.
And he’d thought it risky to lure a bridesmaid from a wedding before the toasts.
The chopper swept away, then back, and hovered right above, pinging pebbles against the walls. Jamie closed his eyes and hoped. Samira’s hand rested on his hip. It felt like forgiveness. Or absolution before death.
Would the crew bother identifying their target before they opened fire? What kind of hikers would spend a night up here this time of year, when they could be at the pub at the next loch?
The chopper moved off, its thuds bouncing off the ancient stone walls.
“Do you think it worked?” she whispered, as the sound receded.
“Are you still alive?”
“I think so.”
“I think that’s an ‘awo’ then,” he said, mimicking her breathy inhalation.
She laughed, her chest vibrating against his. God, he liked that feeling, that sound. He released the blanket and lowered his hand. For want of options, he rested it on her arm.
“I think we just put the word ‘survival’ into ‘survival blanket,’” he whispered, since that was all the volume that was needed. “But we should stay put a minute in case they come back.”
“Sure.”
“Talking about survival tools, that was quick thinking back there with the flare. Did you know how to use one?”
“My parents took me sailing around the Greek islands one spring. Using the flares was part of the safety demonstration.”
“Trust you to pay attention to the safety demonstration. The Greek islands, huh? We had quite a different upbringing, you and I.”
“That cottage must have been special, too.”
“I guess.”
“Are there bad memories. Is that why you...?”
“The memories are good. It’s just...being there drove home the things that have happened since.” He screwed up his face. “Samira, I’ve not thanked you. For getting us out of there, when I...let you down. And I’m sorry.”
Silence.
“I’m going to destroy the rest of the drugs.”