“We’ve established the car doesn’t have GPS but you’re the technology expert. How would they be doing that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, neither will they. Anything else?”
He could almost hear her neurons connecting.
“Not yet,” she said, eventually.
“Keep me posted. In the meantime, let’s just enjoy the drive.”
She sighed but let the conversation slide. Ahead, a hazy gray glow in the dark sky pinpointed the city but traffic remained light as they approached. A sleepy Sunday night. Scrubby trees and neglected hedgerows, a whitewashed pub, a petrol station, power pylons... What the fuck was he doing back here? He grew up wanting nothing more than to get out of Scotland, work in the thick of things in a big city hospital, do something important. Now he was a nobodycaporalworking in places where flushing toilets were the exception, and was slinking into Edinburgh under cover of darkness.
Hard to believe that a week ago he was bedded down beside a dirt road in Mali, heating up a cassoulet on a butane stove. When they were told they were bugging out and heading back to Corsica for a debrief and a few days of leave, he’d got the usual hollow feeling in his stomach. While the younger guys were debating the best place around the Med to get shit-faced and screwed, he was picturing the stash of journals in his locker. Even Angelito wasn’t going to be around—and he could usually be relied on to have plans even duller than Jamie’s. But he’d retired from the Legion and set off for some shithole in Eastern Europe to look for the sister he’d lost in childhood. And Flynn, of course, had taken a leave of absence to protect Tess while she prepared her evidence against Hyland. Turned out absence made the heart grow fonder even of that Patty and Selma duo.
Flynn’s phone call couldn’t have come at a better time, just as Jamie had been yawning over “A Modern Case Series of Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta in an Out-of-Hospital, Combat Casualty Care Setting.” Could Jamie fly to London to rescue Samira from a squad of murderous mercenaries? Hell yeah, and thank you, God.
“It’s getting colder,” Samira said, twisting to get her extra coat from the back seat. As she dragged it over, she bumped his arm. He hissed until the pain passed. Something was still stuck in there.
“Jamie, why don’t you take some more painkillers? They’re right here.” She pulled his bag of tricks from the rucksack and held it up.
“I’ve taken the maximum dose. Any more and I’ll start vomiting, and we don’t want to have to pay a cleaning fee for soiling our hire car.”
“These packets of pills—they’re not even opened.”
Damn. “I was using another packet.”
“I didn’t see another packet.”
“I took some before you woke.”
She pulled the laptop up and opened it, the white light illuminating her face. “Oh okay.”
He let out a slow leak of a breath.Chill out, pal. Innocent question.And the lies had flowed like blood from a scalp wound, just as they always had.
She hooked into his phone Wi-Fi, tapped away a bit, then pressed her hand to her chest. “We’re in range. Let’s find a place to stop.”
“Oui, mademoiselle.”
They crossed over the city bypass and pulled up at a golf course where they could feasibly be stopping to admire the lights of the skyline, which, granted, were more sky than lights from there—the castle gleaming white atop its hill, the clock tower and a couple of sharp gothic steeples jutting up against the black slash of the Firth of Forth, a yellow glow rising from Princes Street and the Royal Mile, as if they were rivers of fire. Another spot his mother would like. If he brought her here today, would she know this view? Would she know him?
Not now, Mum.
Sorry.
He pointed out the Balfour, squat and grandiose, its facade washed in a golden light that had to make it hard for its guests to sleep.
“Wow,” said Samira, her arms tightly crossed, hands clutching opposite elbows. “He’s right over there.”
“And we’re not going any closer,” Jamie said. “We’ll blast him sky-high from here, like a remote control. Virtually speaking.” He lowered his window, admitting the city’s distant hum. The air was icy and still. This time he’d keep a closer watch for cops—and anybody else they didn’t want to meet.
After hooking the equipment back up and loading the cloud server site, Samira stretched her long fingers above the keyboard. She froze. A muffled throb of bass music started up, a block or two away.
“Something wrong?” he said.
“If this password’s incorrect, the system will flag a failed log-in. That could ruin our chances, too. And they might guess it’s us and track our location.”
“So if that happens we’ll get out of town and think of something else.”
