She laughed. They fell silent, Samira frowning at the long wash of the Thames. Battersea loomed from the gloom like a redbrick battleship.
“Jamie,” she began, after a time, “there’s something I don’t understand... Well, there are many things, but...all those people—the paramedic, the doctor, the nurse. They didn’t think much of you.”
Yikes.Everyone has secrets.
“I’m very widely misunderstood.” This was his invitation to come clean. But that’d mean seeing the respect die in her eyes. And he liked those eyes—the way her pupils flicked to one corner when she was thinking, the way they studied him from under thick jet-black lashes, the way the scarf made them sexy and smoky, somehow. Aye, he liked them a little too much. He could keep the disappointment from them for another few...what? Hours? Days? How long would it take to retrieve this evidence and figure out a way to deliver it to the United States? Then he would return to his futureless job and those eyes would once more be a pleasant memory to get him through deployments.
“The women,” she ventured, “they are ex-girlfriends?”
“Hell no.” If only hearts were all he’d messed with. “We were all young and wild together, that was all.”
“You were a doctor there, weren’t you? Not a paramedic.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“That nurse... Maria...”
“Mariya.”
“She called you ‘Doctor.’ And you knew your way around...”
Would it matter in the end how much she knew? “I was a paramedic first, while in med school. Doctor later.”
She turned in her seat. “Wow, really?”
Impressed. Ah, he missed that reaction. “Yeah, I pretty much didn’t sleep in my twenties.”
“Neither did I, but I wasn’t saving lives. You never mentioned that.”
“Didn’t I?” he said, lightly.
That awe in her voice... He might not technically be lying but he was still a fraud. The ego boost he’d once got from telling people he was a doctor had long ago been replaced by the weight of expectation of the obvious next question.Why did you leave?The best thing about the Legion? If you didn’t volunteer information, people knew better than to ask. He’d told only his immediate commanding officers the whole wretched story, including Angelito and Flynn. They had to know the risk he posed, his triggers, the warning signs.
The other good thing about the Legion was that you quickly learned to deflect flak.
“What were you doing instead of sleeping?” he said. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Spending more time on computers than was healthy.”
“Wild.”
“For a brief, beautiful period, I was the world champion of ‘Cosmos,’ back when it was at its height. And when I say brief, I mean it lasted about three minutes one night, around four a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I considered adding it to my résumé.” She leaned back in her seat, more relaxed than he’d seen her all day.
“‘Cosmos’? That’s old school.”
“It’s addictive, that’s what it is. Well, all games are, aren’t they? That’s the point. Gaming, social media, sugar... So much to get addicted to these days.”
Jesus, did she have to come straight back to that? “Indeed. We’re breeding a generation of addicts, all looking for a lazy buzz. Half the recruits to the Legion sign up because they think it’ll be all ‘Soldier of Fortune.’”
“With no consequences?”
“No consequences, no tics, no fucking tinea—and an undo button. Luckily they’re the ones who don’t get through selection.”
“So paramedic, doctor...soldier? That’s an unusual career path.”
“Oh, I don’t know. All fueled by adrenaline, all about reacting quickly to a bad situation before it gets worse. And I’m a medic, so...”
“Was it so bad, working at the hospital?”
