by Incy Black
He left the front door open. Nick read it as an invitation, albeit a reluctant one—bordering on hostile.
The large square hallway was dim, lit only by a single inadequate lightbulb. Plaster naked, the stone wall spilled complicated twists of electrical cabling and half-finished tracks of copper piping.
It was also empty.
Two sets of footprints, wet and shiny against the gun-metal gray slate floor tiles led to the foot of a threadbare carpeted staircase told him Will had taken Anna upstairs. Pulling up his collar against the creeping chill in the air, Nick hoped to God the remodeling didn’t extend through the rest of the house.
Choosing a semi-ajar door on his right, he found a vast space in even worse condition than the hall way, floorboards gaping gaps, jumbles of building materials skirting each wall. Two ancient armchairs and a half-collapsed sofa, a tea chest for a table. Christ, they couldn’t take refuge here. If the damp didn’t kill them, the dust—layer upon layer of it—would.
He crossed to the huge fireplace and dropped to his haunches and stoked moodily at the dying embers of the fire. Spotting a basket of logs he did his best to encourage a flare of flames but the wet wood just hissed and belched smoke. Coughing, he drew back.
“I take it you’re not impressed.” Will’s voice, rich with amusement, practically bordering on laughter—pissed him off. Pushing upright, he turned and glared at his second-in-command. “You could have fucking warned me when I called. Christ, Anna—”
“Is fine,” Will cut in, passing him a glass, generously filled with amber liquid. “Just tired and copping a quick nap. In my bed.”
Nick sucked down a hefty slug of the whisky to stop from decking Will for that unnecessary taunt. And grimaced. Christ, Will’s liquor was as rough as his house.
“You better start talking, mate,” his friend continued, “because I’ve already had the Commander on the phone. You. Anna. A shooting, now a bomb. The both of you going AWOL. The boss is going ape-shit. I’ve covered for you—again—but I’ve got to tell you, I don’t much like being compromised. So what the hell is going on?”
The whisky might have been rough, but a warming glow was already spreading through his veins. He swirled the liquid in his glass a couple of times while he ordered his thoughts. “Someone wants Anna dead, and it’s not the father of her child. He’s desperate for her to go full term, because he wants his son. Only Anna’s carrying a girl—a fact I’ve buried until I can figure out a way to get to Antila before he kills her for that deception.
“You mentioned Antila. Where the hell does he fit into all this?”
“Sorry, I thought I made it clear. Niva Antila is the goddamn father of her baby.” He threw the hearty measure remaining in his glass down his throat. The fluid hit his gut. He couldn’t decide whether the resulting agonizing burn was the fault of the whisky or down to the fact he himself wasn’t the father of her kid. He wanted to be. Or a crazy, reckless part of him wanted to be. Fiercely.
Thank God his logical sense was stronger. With the telling character traits—the temper, the bent for violence—that he’d inherited from Mad Mickey, him fathering a child, hell, him even being around a child for longer than a couple of hours, was something he could not, and would not, ever allow.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You have to brief the Commander on this one, mate; it’s too big for you and I to handle off the books. Jesus, Niva-bloody-Antila. Trust Anna. She—”
“She didn’t exactly ask for this,” Nick interrupted. He alone knew the real Anna behind the wild, frivolous facade she pretended to the world, Will didn’t. He had earned the right to judge her; Will hadn’t. “And, despite the bravado she’s hiding behind, she’s bloody terrified.”
“So, get the Service involved. Make her protection official.”
Ah, what the hell. What didn’t kill you made you stronger. He waved his empty glass to signal he needed a refill. “Anna doesn’t trust the Service. She’s worried they’ll use the pregnancy against Antila, and she and the baby will be caught in the crossfire. And I don’t want them involved either. I can’t rule out the possibility of Antila having someone on the inside. You know the type of men the Service attracts. We screen rigorously, but we can never be certain some rotten bastard hasn’t got through.”
“Even on your watch?”
Nick nodded. He was an arrogant son of a bitch, but he’d accepted long ago that human nature being what it was, betrayal could never be fully eradicated. He was well aware policing every agent was damn near impossible. Some moral compasses just pointed straight to hell. Fact.
“Okay, it’s your decision, and I’ll do what I can to help,” Will conceded, his expression grim. “But this problem isn’t just going to go away, and you can’t run indefinitely. She’s pregnant, for Christ’s sake. You need to figure out something more permanent. And staying here for more than one night isn’t an option. This place, the condition it’s in, an assault with a peashooter would level it.”
“What’s his decision?”
Both men froze, like hares caught in too-fast approaching headlights, then turned to watch Anna pick a cautious path from one patch of floorboards to another as she made her way over to them.
“Where the hell we go next. We can’t stay here.” He saw little point in sugarcoating his aggravation that they were fast running out of bolt holes.
“Well, I’m going nowhere. Not tonight. And not in that bloody Land Rover.”
“We haven’t got a choice,” he insisted widening his stance and crossing his arms across his chest. “Will’s right. If Antila hits this place, we don’t stand a chance.”
“Good thing I’ve got him backed tight in a corner then.”
Alarm bells went off in his head at the way she was grinning. “Oh, Christ, Anna. What have you done?”
She lost her grin and shot a help-me look at Will. Who, he was relieved to see, looked about as conciliatory as he felt.
“Um…I made a call from the rest stop. To Antila. But,” she hurried on with a wild flapping of her hands, “I didn’t tell him where we were or where we were heading. I just made it clear what would happen if he didn’t neutralize whoever is trying to kill me. I also demanded that he leave me alone for the next few weeks. I figured that should buy me enough time to work on the ‘what next.’”
Incendiaries went off in his head. “You threatened him?”
Will put a cool-it hand on his shoulder.
“Yes, I did. And what’s he going to do about it? Kill me? I don’t think so. Not while he believes I’m carrying his precious heir.”
Her bullet-straight stare was certain enough. The fact she held one fluttering hand protectively across her abdomen told him she was scared. But somehow he didn’t think it was of Antila. Something else was going on.
“What exactly did you threaten him with, Anna?” Will asked quietly.
“I told him that unless he backed off, I’d announce—or rather denounce—him as the father of my baby. A son for who he’ll do anything. Online. To every one of the millions of subscribers to my Hinterland Heroes game. That I’d make sure the news went viral, and that if he was finding it difficult to protect me against one threat, how he’d cope if every one of his rivals and enemies—and I bet he’s got a lot—came after me at the same time.”
Well, didn’t that just suck the oxygen from the room? He was certainly having difficulty breathing. “How did Antila react?” he asked, his chest performing mini-push-ups.
Anna shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I left a voice mail.”
Will released a string of profanities that had even the back of his neck blistering.
…
Even after six hours of deep sleep—he knew because he’d kept checking on her—it was obvious Anna was still smarting from being sent back upstairs rather than be included in the discussions that had kept him and Will up half the night. Will had mooted the possibility of the Service organizing witness protection. He’d kicked that idea into a cell and slammed the door
on it. At least, for now. Yes, he wanted Anna safe. But he also wanted her with him. And didn’t that admission make his balls retract—every goddamn time it slapped him in the face. Which was every second or so.
“There had better be a railway station around here somewhere, Marshall, because I have no intention of hiking my way back to London,” she said.
Without missing a step, he hitched the weighty backpack to his other shoulder, keeping his arm nearest to her free should she try and make a run for it. “If we were returning to London, I’d have taken the Land Rover. We’re heading north. And, if it makes you feel better to ditch calling me ‘Nick,’ good. Because I don’t think you’re going to much like, let alone want to know, the type of person I’ll become if you’re obstinate about this.”
She stopped.
He did the same, tipping the backpack from his shoulder. Damn, he was going to need two hands.
“You promised.”
“No, I said I’d think about returning,” he countered evenly. “Which I did, before tossing the idea. I want as much distance between you and Antila as possible. You are better off out of London for the time being.”
“Jesus, Nick. When are you going to learn you need to speak with me first?”
He wanted to grin at her slipup with his name, but one look at the heat in her eyes was warning enough. “It’s not about controlling you, Anna, or cutting you out of any decisions. I’m just trying to keep you and the baby safe.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” she said spreading frost, “except that you should have consulted me first. You see, I need to be in London. This baby needs to be in London.”
The emphatic urgency in her tone stilled the blood in his veins. He looked down at the small elegant hand trying to wrap itself round his forearm, the knuckles whiter than white. “Why?”
“In case it happens again.”
From her expression, she’d retreated into a world of solitary mental pain. Reaching forward, he smoothed her long, uneven fringe to the side and then slid his hand to the nape of her neck. His stomach constricted at the tightly knotted muscles lying beneath her skin. She still didn’t trust him to keep her safe. He pushed passed the sudden urge to shake her.
“You’re going to have to help me out a little here, Anna. To stop what happening again?”
Her eyes finally lifted to his, and in that instant, he wished they hadn’t. He hadn’t been there for her when she’d been in pain and needed him most. Guilt—Christ, just how much heavier could it get?
“Too early, spontaneous labor. That’s what happened last time. I’m a few days short of twenty-three weeks, Nick, and that’s when it happened last time.”
Her repetition of “last time” tore his gut in two. Christ, she’d been roughly five months pregnant, over halfway, when she’d lost his child. How could he not have known? His glanced down at her midriff and frowned. Shouldn’t she be showing more than the small curve to her belly? “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Because…because I was scared that if I said it out loud, I’d tempt fate and make another miscarriage come true. Silly but—”
“And if you’re in London, they can stop it. Stop you losing the baby?” he asked carefully.
“The hospital promised to try. No guarantees. But by God, I going to hold them to their word if need be.”
He recalled the fluttering of her hand against her belly the night before. Christ, why hadn’t he called her out then? He’d known something was scaring her, something she’d been holding back, and he’d have driven her back to London there and then if he’d known. He noticed his own hands were shaking. “Okay. If we take it slow, real slow, are you all right to walk back to Will’s? I can carry you if you’re not.”
She cocked her head a little to the side, as if not quite trusting his about turn. From fiercely adamant that they would be doing things his way, to damn near knee-shaking agreement that she only had to ask, and he would comply. “I can make it on my own, Nick.”
Yeah, and wasn’t that a bitch? Because he wasn’t sure how he was going to cope. Not without her. But those three little words—witness protection program—wouldn’t leave him alone.
“And I am not going back in that Land Rover. It made me sick.”
“There’s been a change of plans. London it is,” he told Will who greeted them at the door, wary surprise written all over his face. “And we’re taking your car. Please tell me it’s not a Land Rover.”
“It isn’t. I borrowed a Jag from the fleet. Will that do?”
He nodded, hoping it would. Anna looked hellishly pale. She also felt horribly fragile beneath the curve of his arm. Something he wasn’t used to. Not from her. “Call ahead for me, would you? We’re going to need a safe house. But hand pick the security detail yourself.”
Releasing Anna, he pulled Will to one side, making sure to keep his voice low. “And, the witness protection we talked about last night. Get me everything you can on it, would you?”
“Is that wise? If you had concerns about the Service temporarily separating the pair of you, how are you going to cope with WP? It’s permanent, mate. You’ll never see her again. Can you live with that?”
He wouldn’t have to live with it. If the initial wrench away didn’t kill him, the torturous loneliness he knew lay ahead without her would.
But keeping Anna and her daughter safe took priority. And not just from Antila and the second unknown threat. From him. Him and the nasty little legacy Mad Mickey had bequeathed him.
“It’s complicated.” That was all the explanation he was prepared to offer. Anna and her daughter would need lifelong protection. He had to accept he couldn’t be the man to provide it, not with his issues. But speaking the words out loud? Never going to happen. Like Anna, he wasn’t about to risk having Fate listen in and put him to the test. Letting her go, having her hate him, was going to be hard enough as it was without Fate having a right old laugh at his expense.
“It always is, where Anna’s involved,” muttered his friend, pulling him into a rough man-hug. “I’ll speak to the Commander. Ask him to keep you on the case until witness protection kicks in. But don’t screw this up, Nick. Just don’t screw this up.”
The journey back to London was predictably tense. Nick remembered when Anna would chatter away endlessly, getting on his nerves more often than not. Now, he missed it. Her silence was like a barricade keeping him out, and he didn’t like it. He felt like a stranger despite being in the company of the woman who’d shared his bed and set the sheets alight from the hour she’d hit her eighteenth birthday. That’s when he finally accepted it was pointless fighting Anna. No matter what resistance she met, she forged on through until she got her own way.
And she’d wanted him, and for a long while he’d felt like a giant among men. Until his temper had gotten the better of him and proved the taint in his blood.
He moistened his suddenly too-dry lips, hoping to dislodge the sour taste of shame and regret. He shot her another cautious glance, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Shouldn’t you be bigger?” He hadn’t meant to blurt out the question that had been nagging at him quite so abruptly, but diplomacy had never been one of his smoother skills.
“Isn’t that kind of an intimate question, Nick?”
A truck cut in front, and he swore—both at the truck and her innuendo—and hit the brakes.
He knew she’d turned to study his profile and shot her another quick glance before returning his concentration back to the traffic. “I bought you your first box of tampons because you were too embarrassed to buy them yourself. Gave you back rubs when the cramps got too much. I was also there when at sixteen you insisted on being prescribed the Pill as a just-in-case. That bloody doctor couldn’t stop looking at me as if I were scum intent on one thing only, getting into the pants of a sweet, innocent girl. He wasn’t to know how many times I refused your hot little advances and that I’d keep doing so until you were old enough. That was intimate, An
na, not to mention humiliating. What I’m expressing now is simple curiosity.”
Anna snorted. “Liar. You’re concerned. I can tell because your knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel too tight. And those little crease marks you get in your brow when you go into overprotective mode are also a dead giveaway…and did you really find my attempts at seduction hot? You never said. I thought I was doing something wrong. Or that you might be gay.”
He regretted her lack of self-confidence more than the fact she’d thought him gay. He should have realized that behind that flippant, rebellious exterior of hers, she was as fragile as spun glass. “Anna, I wanted you so badly, I wore those baggy trousers low down on my hips, not because they were fashionable or because I liked them—in fact I hated them—but because I had a permanent hard-on around you and needed a little breathing space. And, yes, to get back on topic, I’m a little concerned about you and the baby. Do I get an answer?”
His knuckles nearly burst through his skin when she huffed before responding. “Some women show early, but I’m not one of them. If there was a problem, it likely would have shown up on the scan.”
“You sure?”
“Nick, do me a favor. Don’t start getting all stressy. It’s not fair. It’s taken me a long time to find and stand on my own feet without any expectation of support. I never want to go back to being that weak again.”
Is that what she thought? That belonging to him was a weakness? He hit the blinker; the fast lane wasn’t the best place to be having this conversation. He needed steady, not speed. “Sharing your fears and leaning on someone now and again isn’t weak.”
“You should try listening to your own lectures, Nick. You might learn something. Know what being with you taught me? That sharing makes you vulnerable, and I’m never doing that again. It hurt too much.”