“Or tuna salad,” Chelsea allowed.
They looked at each other, grimaced, and said in unison, “Cereal.”
“Brilliant,” Christian declared. “And while you’re having a bowl, we’ll catch you up on what we know.”
Dagan ducked back into the pantry. He held out a box labeled “Shreddies.” One would naturally assume that meant shredded wheat. But no. The picture on the box looked more like Chex.
Chelsea shook her head.
His next offering was Frosties, which—hallelujah!—were apparently the UK version of Frosted Flakes. There was even good ol’ Tony the Tiger on the box. She nodded, and he got down two bowls from the cupboard. She did her bit by grabbing the milk from the fridge.
Christian, Ace, and Emily had taken seats around the small kitchen table. Chelsea joined them, but Dagan chose to stand. He leaned back against the countertop—theircountertop—cereal bowl in one hand, spoon in the other.
“All right.” He nodded, spooning Frosted Flakes—correction:Frosties—into his mouth. “Proceed.”
“I got a call from Ozzie on the way home,” Christian relayed. “He’s made some headway on the data, but it’s still slow going. Also, Angel has managed to locate his…uh…shall we call himfriend?…in Le Touquet. You know, the one with the submarine?” Chelsea was still trying to wrap her mind around that one. “He’s agreed to take you across the Channel, Chels. ETA is eighteen hundred.”
“So that means we have”—Emily consulted the glowing numbers on the microwave—“a little less than an hour to sit around twiddling our dicks.”
Ace leaned over the table as if to get a gander at Emily’s crotch. “Something you’d like to share with the rest of us, luv?”
Emily thumped him on the shoulder. “It’s an expression.”
A little less than an hour, Chelsea thought, her stomach dropping like she was riding one of the Khaleesi’s dragons in a steep dive. That was plenty of time to tell Dagan what she needed to tell him. Too much time, in fact. Because…then what? Sit there and look at him while the disillusionment on his face slowly turned to disgust that would eventually morph into hate?
The thought had her shoving her half-eaten bowl of Frosties away. She couldn’t take another bite.
Chapter 30
“Oy! What’re you doing there?”
Steven hung his head and muttered a curse before quickly gathering his wits and fiddling with the laces on his shoe. He had been sure he had seen…
But no. Christian Watson was dead, right? After he’d left the SAS, he’d vanished without a trace, which everyone assumed meant he’d met a bitter end. Andthatmeant the tall, dark-haired bloke who had sauntered into Rusty Parker’s house was nothing more than a look-alike. A phantom from Steven’s past come to bite him on the ass when he least expected it or, for that matter,neededit.
“Hey, you!” the young man in the baseball cap cocked at a rakish angle called again. Baggy jeans, bad skin, and patchy facial hair put him anywhere from sixteen to twenty. “I asked what you’re doing there!”
And bythere, the little shite meant crouched beside the Vauxhall Corsa parked across the street from Parker’s townhouse.
“New shoes.” Steven shrugged and offered the kid a wan smile. “The bloody laces won’t stay tied. Seems I’m kneeling to redo them every other block.”
The young man’s expression softened. “Try double knots,” he offered, fishing in his trousers for a set of keys. Once he found them, he pressed a button and the car chirped to life, its lights flashing.
After showily double knotting his laces, Steven stood and moved away from the car, careful to keep an eye on the house across the way. He could see nothing through the shuttered windows. The louvers were open, but it would take getting up close and personal with the property to see in.
“Sorry I yelled at you, mate,” the kid said. “But I’ve had my rims nicked once already. I’m not looking to replace them again. They cost a bloody fortune.”
Steven glanced at the rims under discussion. They sparkled in the light of the setting sun, looking like something a rapper would put on his tricked-out Cadillac, not something that belonged on a lime-green hatchback.
“Bad luck, that,” he commiserated, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and trying to look unthreatening.
“Mmm.” The kid nodded. “Well, I’m off to the market. Mum’s screaming mad that Dad didn’t replace the milk after he had the last of it this morning. She’s to bake fresh biscuits for some party at my baby sister’s school tomorrow.”
“Mums. What would we do without them, eh?”
His mother’s own sweet face flashed through his mind. Even after the stroke, she was still a beautiful woman. Her unlined face full of the grace and kindness she had shown him growing up. If she knew what he was doing, she would—
He ripped the thought out of his mind and tossed it away like a cancer.
