“Very good.” Angel nodded. “Shall we go?”
“Uh, Angel?” Chelsea didn’t like the hesitation in her voice. But, lovesick puppy that she was, shereallyliked the way Dagan gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. How was it possible he could be so attuned to her and not know she was hiding something huge and life-changing from him?Please don’t let it belove-changing too!“How, um, how long will it take?”
She didn’t need to clarify. Along with being spooky, Angel was sharp as a tack. “Gautier’s vessel is small, but it is fast. He can have you to Calais in ninety minutes. Barring any course corrections he might need to make to avoid the tanker and cargo ships that pile through the Channel, of course.”
Gulp.She hadn’t consideredthat.
A series of images bloomed to life inside her head. A propeller striking the submarine. A loss of pressure. Her, Dagan, and Gautier—that sounded like a drug smuggler’s name if ever she’d heard one—sinking to their watery deaths.
“Right-oh.” Christian nodded. “It’s a piece of cake.”
“You’ll be in and out before you know it,” Ace added.
Rusty winked. “Easy breezy.”
“Says everyone who isn’t about to be squeezed into the vessel of a criminal named Gautier,” Chelsea groused, giving them all dirty looks. “And how will the rest of you be crossing?”
“It is my hope that Mr. Parker will be good enough to take his truck with us through the Eurotunnel,” Angel said. The train that ran beneath the English Channel was equipped to carry both passengers and vehicles. “Once we are on the other side, he can give us all a lift to Paris.”
“No problem,” Rusty assured him. “Done and done.”
“Thank you.” Angel nodded. Then he added, “If the online schedule is correct, Chelsea, you and Zoelner will beat us across by approximately thirty minutes. You will wait near the beach until we can come and get you. It is all very simple.”
Simple? That’s not a word she would have used. Not with a French drug runner and a submarine involved.
“You will want to wear coats,” Angel advised in that raspy, scoured-vocal-cord voice of his when she and Dagan had moved to don their backpacks. “The Channel…she is very cold.”
“Tell me about it,” Chelsea grumbled. The memory of that afternoon’s swim was all too clear in her mind’s eye. Then a terrible thought occurred. “We don’t have toswimout to the sub, do we? Where is it?”
“It is beneath the end of the pier.” Right. The pier. Good. Great. Her wounded shoulder chose that moment to throb dully. “I swam to shore,” Angel continued, and she noticed his jet-black hair was wet. His clothes on the other hand? Bone dry.
Huh.She wondered how he had managedthat. Something similar to what they had done with the waterproof float bags, she hoped. Though she had the sneaking suspicion that he might have swum to shore—either clothed or naked—and then stolen dry threads off someone’s clothesline or out of someone’s dryer.
Stories of Angel’s deft hand when it came to five-fingered discounts abounded back at BKI. And if she needed further proof that those stories were true, Angel finished with, “But not to worry. I appropriated a dinghy for you.”Appropriated. Right.“It is tied on the beach beneath the pier. All you need to do is boat to the end of the harbor arm. Gautier is there waiting.”
Okay. So…she was about to hop into a stolen dinghy to row out to a drug-smuggling submarine, which she would then take across the busy English Channel, all while telling the man she loved that once upon a time, when she had been scared and dumb and faced with an impossible decision, she had chosen her mother’s happiness and memories of her father over him.
You know, just your ordinary, average day.
Chapter 36
Steven sat forward in the backseat of Morrison’s SUV when Rusty Parker’s front door opened. A whole horde of people piled down the front steps. Seven, to be precise. He couldn’t help but notice they were all dressed for traveling. Parkas, rucksacks, an air of furtiveness and impatience hanging around them.
Bloody hell.He glanced at the glowing green clock numbers on the console and grimaced. His backup wasn’t due to arrive for another twenty minutes.
“Who is the new bloke, do you suppose?” Morrison frowned as the group gathered on the sidewalk beside Rusty’s monstrous, king-cab pickup truck.
The streetlight cast the crew in an odd glow. It created sinister shadows and made them look more menacing than they really were. Then again, perhaps they lookedexactlyas menacing as they really were. Christian Watson numbered among them, after all.
“Another operative, if the economical way he moves and the covert way he catalogs his surroundings is any indication,” Steven answered, eyeing the dark-haired gent who had entered the house not five minutes prior. Then Steven’s attention returned to Watson. He had not told Morrison about the famous SAS officer. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because to admit that the great Christian Watson was on the premises would highlight just how far Steven himself had fallen.
“Economical way he moves. Catalogs his surroundings.” Morrison parroted Steven’s words, flashing his shark teeth. “Oh, how very droll. I do so love the way you clandestine types speak. It’s all so…shaken, not stirred.”
Steven was glad one of them was having a good time.
On second thought, no, he wasn’t. He was annoyed that Morrison wasn’t taking this more seriously. After all, weren’tboththeir arses on the buggering line?
“Oh, sodding hell,” he hissed when five of the seven piled into the pickup truck. The other two, Chelsea Duvall and the big bearded bloke, set off down the lane.
