Fuel for Fire

by Julie Ann Walker

  She chuckled, but he noticed her smile didn’t reach her eyes either. “You’re a hard man to—”

  That’s all she managed before the sound of feet pounding down the metal steps interrupted her. “You two better come back topside,” Emily said, standing on the second-to-last tread. “Looks like we could have trouble.”

  Chapter 14

  London, England

  “Don’t worry,” Benton said. “We aren’t snookered yet. I’ve written an algorithm that slaps the wanker in the face every time he tries to find a back door. But between you and me, he’s good. Maybe the best I’ve seen.”

  Steven Surry wasn’t keen on all the tech talk. He wouldn’t know an algorithm from an apple, a back door from a badminton racket. But he knew he could rely on Benton to delay whoever was trying to hack into Morrison’s system. Hadn’t it been Benton’s personal software, installed on all of Morrison’s computers, that had alerted them to the breach in the first place?

  That chap knows his onions, Steven thought. Aloud he said, “Good. That’s good. But the question now becomes, who is trying to infiltrate Morrison’s systems? And why? My first guess would be that someone is trying to bring him down for his…you know what.” He glanced over at the old man. After Morrison had come to, he had cursed roundly and then demanded to know what Steven had accomplished while he was out.

  Luckily, Steven’s plan of attack had pleased Morrison. Now the skinny old wank was reclined on the red sofa, talking in hushed tones on one of the mobiles he had fished from a drawer in his desk where Steven was currently balancing a hip.

  “But my worry is that those blasted Panama Papers tipped someone off that not everything in Morrison’s organization is precisely as one would expect,” he added. He and his security team had been in the process of going through all twelve million leaked documents, hunting for clues that might link Morrison to the mysterious underworld crime boss known only as Spider, but so far, they’d come up clean. Still, that didn’t mean someone else hadn’t found some sort of connection.

  “I suppose it’s possible. I wouldn’t put it past—Stupid knob! Sodding gobshite!” Steven knew Benton wasn’t speaking to him, especially since the sound of Benton’s fingers clickety-clacking over the keyboard increased their speed. After about ten seconds, Benton added, “That’s right, you bloody wankstain. Eat my digital dust.” Then, more calmly, he said, “Now what were we talking about?”

  “Chelsea Duvall…who sent her and why.”

  “Oh right.” Benton’s voice seemed to shrug. “You know, it doesn’t really matter why. The fact remains that she was bloody well sent. What does Spider want you to do?”

  Again, Steven snuck a peek at Morrison. “Find her. Find the thumb drive. Whatever it takes.”

  Benton snorted. “Sounds about right.” Then he added, “But have you considered what will happen if the authorities catch up to her before you do? If she is working for the Americans in some way, she could come clean. Where would that leave us?”

  “Spider assures me he has contacts inside who will all-too-happily hand her over to us, should she be apprehended. But of course he prefers that we use the information the authorities share with us and then take care of the nasty business ourselves.”

  “And can you take of it yourself? Do you have any idea where to begin looking for her?” The sound of Benton’s rattling keyboard was almost hypnotic.

  “It took some work and more time than I would have liked, but Scotland Yard forwarded CCTV footage that shows five figures on Ducatis racing out of the city a little over an hour ago.”

  “Five? I thought you said there were four of them in total. Chelsea and the three masked men.”

  “There were five on the motorbikes. Three men, Chelsea, and what looked to be another woman. They were all helmeted, so I couldn’t see their faces on the film. But Chelsea was easily recognizable. That derriere alone…”

  “Right-oh!” Benton chuckled. “I’ve seen photos of her. She is one well-padded woman.”

  Ignoring that, Steven continued, “They were heading south on the A2. I’m thinking Folkestone or Dover. They’ll likely try for a Channel crossing by ferry or via the Chunnel.”

  At least he hoped that’s what they were doing. He was betting that’s what they were doing. Betting everything, in fact. Not just his own life, but his mother’s as well.

  In Spider’s organization, there was no such thing as getting sacked. Failure equaled death. Pure and simple. And if Steven died, his mother would be transferred out of that posh facility Spider’s paychecks allowed him to keep her in and sent to one of those dodgy government-run places where the patients were allowed to sit around in shat-filled trousers half the day. He suffered no illusions that she would last long in a place like that.

  The surgery to remove her brain tumor had been a success. She was now cancer-free. But while recovering, she had suffered a debilitating stroke that had left her mostly paralyzed and completely unable to speak.

  She was still alive and kicking inside the shell of her wrecked body, however. Her eyes lit up—the same dark eyes she had passed to him—whenever he went for a visit. And the little computer he had purchased for her, the one she could type on with the pointer finger of her left hand—which, miraculously, she had retained the use of—allowed her some rudimentary communication. She always asked how he was and then listened avidly before typing out the words: I love you. I’m proud of you.

  If she only knew, Steven thought now.

  He would do this thing for Spider, just as he had done a hundred other distasteful things for the man. Things that went against his morals and his training. Things that would make his loving mum weep if she ever found out.

  “Our friend in Scotland Yard has teams waiting at the Chunnel and ferry terminals,” he told Benton. “I’m headed there as soon as I get off with you.”

  “Well, good luck to you, mate.” Benton signed off.

  At the same time Morrison ended his call and turned to Steven. “It’s confirmed. Cameras in Dover picked them up traveling through the center of town.”

  “Mother England’s overabundance of surveillance equipment comes to the rescue once again,” Steven mumbled.

  It was said there was one CCTV camera for every eleven English citizens. That usually made the work he did a bit tricky. But in this case, those nasty little fish-eyed fucks—as well as the vast network of sources his boss had inside the British government—were coming in rather handy.

  “Seems you were right about them trying for a Channel crossing,” Morrison mused, fiddling with the ridiculous bun at the back of his head. “The noose is closing. Shall you and I head south?”

  “You want to come with me?” Steven couldn’t hide his surprise.

  Red mottled Morrison’s cheeks, and his bloodshot eyes glowed fiercely in the light from the office chandelier. “She came into my house with that sad sap story about her mum and the childhood home she was desperately trying to save, pulling at my heartstrings.” Steven knew it hadn’t been a story. The background check he had run on Chelsea was in depth. She had been trying for years to pay down the mortgages on her family’s home, the house her parents had built themselves. Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t also working for the American government.

  “Then the duplicitous bitch turned around and poisoned my property and is poised to bring down my empire along with…” The old man didn’t finished the sentence. Instead he swallowed and breathed heavily. “I want to be there when she’s captured. I want to be there when she’s turned over to you. I want to be there when you question her, and…whatever else might need to happen. In fact, I might fancy helping you with whatever else might need to happen. As my doddering old parish priest used to say, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord!’”

  Bile climbed into the back of Steven’s throat.

  Chapter 15

  The English Cha
nnel

  “Son of a shit-speckled Fraggle fart!” Ace bellowed when the catamaran tacked quickly to starboard, causing Emily to lose her balance and stomp all over his feet. Her arms pinwheeled, and the entire ship tilted.

  Or is that just me?

  She prepared her ass for a personal introduction to the deck, but she was suddenly pulled forward and into Christian’s lap. Blinking and feeling a little dizzy, she glanced at Ace. He was bent down, rubbing his ill-treated feet.

  “Sorry,” she said. Then she turned to thank Christian for coming to her rescue, but the words stuck in her throat.

  She’d never been this close to him.

  Holy duck balls! To say he was smokin’ was an understatement. He had a quintessentially English appearance. Handsome in a way that American men were not. His face was all sharp angles and hard planes. And his jaw? Well, his jaw appeared to have been hewn from granite, resulting in a stubborn, resolute slab of flesh and bone.

  For the first time, Emily could make out the brown flecks in the centers of his light-green eyes and measure the bump on the bridge of his straight English nose. And then there was his body…his hard thighs beneath her ass. His chest like a steel wall along her side. She imagined she had jumped astride a machine made of pure muscle, something built solely for tensile strength.

  Or, she thought, in layman’s terms, he’s all that, a bag of chips, and a twenty-four-ounce soda.

  And here she was, on a boat with five other people and no place to give her kitty a quick spanking.

  My kingdom for a little privacy! she silently railed.

  “You all right?” Christian asked, his accent making the last two words sound more like awl roight.

  For the love of Paulie Konerko, his warm breath smelled good, like teacakes and toothpaste. It brushed over her cheeks in a teasing caress, and she considered leaning in to take a quick taste. Of course, right after that wholly inappropriate thought rolled a tide of common sense.

  No. No way. So much nope. Best that she keep on doing what she had been doing since she walked through the big doors of the warehouse back in Chi-Town. Namely, ignoring the fact that Christian should go by the name of Smokin’ McHolyhot and that he made her pulse stutter any time he opened his mouth and out came that delicious English drawl.

  Emily had never thought of herself as an anglophile before Christian. Now? Well, as they say, God save the Queen!

  But she’d learned her lesson about fraternizing with coworkers. The last time she’d done so, her entire life had been turned upside down. And considering she quite liked the new life she’d built for herself, the one that included a move back to her hometown—Go Sox!—and a job with the Black Knights, she was determined not to make the same mistake she’d made before.

  Therefore Christian Watson, with his hella hot bod and even hella hotter accent, was strictly off-limits for anything more than a little flirtation via a few well-placed verbal barbs.

  Was that immature? Like the boys who had sat in the pew behind her at St. Mary’s and pulled her ponytail when she was a little girl? Sure. But it was still damn good fun. And it helped soothe the ache she sometimes felt, knowing that she could never have a happily ever after, that she would never—

  “Emily?”

  She blinked and realized she’d been sitting there staring up at Christian like a slack-jawed idiot. If she’d thought riding behind him on that Ducati was heaven, it was nothing compared to sitting on his lap. The smell of his expensive cologne tunneled up her nose. It was both zesty and sweet and brought to mind two sweating bodies rolling around on cool silk sheets.

  “Sorry!” She scrambled off Christian and plopped onto the bench beside him. “Thanks for the catch. I’d be flat on my ass if it weren’t for your quick reflexes.” When he lifted a brow, she frowned and demanded, “What?”

  “Just…that may well be the first time you’ve ever thanked me for anything. Are you feeling a touch lurgy?” He pressed a hand to her forehead, feigning a look of concern.

  Before she could answer, or ask what the hell lurgy meant, Zoelner demanded from the top of the steps, “What’s all the ruckus up here?”

  “I’ll give you two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count.” Ace shot a quick, meaningful glance back and forth between Emily and Christian.

  “I’m not talking about those two.” Zoelner made a face, then seemed to get distracted by Chelsea who had come to take a seat on Christian’s opposite side.

  If Emily wasn’t mistaken, that was beard burn around Chelsea’s mouth. She looked over at Zoelner and noticed that his hair stuck up every which way, like he’d plugged his finger into an electrical socket.

  Well, it’s about damn time, she thought with a smile.

  “Hello?” Zoelner snapped his fingers. “Emily, mind filling me in on why you came down the stairs like your hair was on fire and declared we might be in trouble?”

  How had she forgotten about the cutter that was three nautical miles off their port side? Oh, of course. Finding myself sitting on Christian Watson’s lap, that’s how.

  “It’s the HMC Valiant,” Rusty answered for her, pointing at the tiny gray speck on the horizon. The sky was overcast, and the Channel was the color of wet cement on a Chicago sidewalk, so the cutter was only visible when one of its windows caught a stray ray of light. Rusty kept one hand on the wheel and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. “She’s a Border Agency vessel. Think something along the lines of our Coast Guard back home. I’ve seen her patrolling these waters plenty of times before.”

  “So where’s the trouble then?” Zoelner asked.

  “The trouble is I’ve made two course corrections that the Valiant has mirrored. Unless I’m mistaken, she’s following us.”

  “Oh. Well…fuck.” Zoelner raked a hand over his beard.

  “You said it,” Rusty concurred.

  “Why would she be following us?”

  “Talk over the marine channels makes it seem like they’re checking all the ships in the Channel that are coming from England.” Rusty lowered the binoculars and glanced at the group sitting behind him. “Just who did you guys piss off anyway?”

  “You haven’t turned on your television or radio today, have you?” Zoelner asked.

  “No.” Rusty’s eyes narrowed. “Should I have?”

  “Probably best you don’t,” Zoelner assured him. Some men would pace back and forth, given the situation. Zoelner just got ghostly still and asked, “So what now?”

  “Well”—Rusty shook his head—“as always happens when you’re dancing with the devil, there is an alternative. But none of you are going to like it.”

  Chapter 16

  “Please tell me that what we’re about to do will be the mint on the pillow at the end of this day,” Emily muttered.

  Chelsea glanced over at her with a sympathetic expression. They were hunkered down outside the wheelhouse, watching the shoreline race by them. The low-hanging clouds overhead seemed almost close enough to touch.

  Rusty had been right. The cutter had been shadowing them. The minute he turned the catamaran back toward England, the Border Agency ship pursued, slowly closing the distance between the two vessels. Rusty was convinced they would be boarded the instant they put in to port. Which was why Chelsea was in the process of donning her courage like a suit of armor made by the Dwarves of Middle-earth. Or, in short, she was going to need every ounce of chutzpah she possessed for what came next.

  “Because I have to admit,” Emily continued, “I’ve had about all the excitement I can stand for one day.”

  “It’s not just me, right?” Chelsea asked. “This harebrained scheme feels like seven kinds of wrong to you too?”

  The wind and sea spray coming over the side of the boat raised gooseflesh on her arms. The salty smell of the Channel reminded her of the Atlantic back home—and the endless winter storms that had
fascinated her as a child.

  She recalled the time she and her father stood on their back porch, and her father pointed at the heaving waves tipped in white and hurling themselves against the coastline of Port Royal Sound.

  Look at that, sweet girl, he had said. See how mouthy Mother Nature can be when she has something to say?

  Chelsea hoped Mother Nature went against type now, took pity on her, and had only nice things to say.

  “More like seventeen kinds of wrong,” Emily agreed, her long hair flying wild. “So help me take my mind off what we’re about to do and tell me what happened between you and Zoelner when you two disappeared belowdecks.”

  Chelsea opened her mouth to deny that anything had happened, but before she could, Emily interrupted with “And don’t try to say it was nothing. Because Zoelner’s hair looked like it’d gone through hurricane-force winds, and judging by the rash around your mouth, you either gave him a good tongue tango, or else you spent the day lip-locking a porcupine.”

  Gritting her teeth, Chelsea wondered what would happen if she told Emily to mind her own damned business. On second thought, she knew what would happen. Emily would scoff and brush her off, and then wheedle until Chelsea eventually gave in. It was a well-known fact within the hallowed halls of Black Knights Inc. that Emily Scott had only a passing familiarity with the word privacy. Nosiness was just her nature.

  Having no energy to withstand any wheedling—and still feeling drained and strangely disappointed by the way things had ended belowdecks—Chelsea admitted, “Yup. We did some…”

  She racked her brain for the right words to describe the wonder of being in Dagan’s arms. “Adult things,” she finally finished, wrinkling her nose because lame-oh!

  Turning back toward the railing, Chelsea concentrated on watching the coastline whiz by. Brick houses with white dormers came into view to the south. A gray stone building clung to the side of a hill, its tall, pitched corners giving it a vague castle-like feel.