He was about to demand she knock it off when he realized she was reaching into her jacket pocket to extract her mobile. He didn’t have a chance to ask who she was ringing before her call connected and he had his answer.
“Hey, Boss,” she said. “I need you to put in a call to thatpilot friend of yours and tell him we’re going to be thirty minutes late to the airport.”
Christian couldn’t hear their estimable leader’s reply, but it must have been a question about what had caused the delay because Emily quickly explained. Christian squeezed his eyes shut when she got to the part about the press and his role in the Kirkuk Police Station Incident. Not that he didn’t thinkabout what had happened in Iraq—and the beastly consequences of that rescue—because he did. Far too often for peace of mind. But he wasn’t used to talking about it, or hearing someone else talk about it.
I want to get home, he thought, realizing with a start that Chicagowashome. The best home he’d ever known, filled with the bestpeoplehe’d ever known. He hated that he’d put Emily, Ace,and Angel’s covers in jeopardy, and he hadknownthere were reasons beyond his past in Her Majesty’s Special Air Service and his toxic familial ties that had kept him from returning to English soil. Now he was living those reasons—and dragging his coworkers with him.
“So now the question is,” Emily continued, “can we use any of this to find out who Spider is? Is it possible to figure out whogave Christian’s name to the press?”
Emily was quiet as Boss responded, the air whining from the vents too loud for Christian to hear anything more than the rumble of Boss’s bass voice.
“Right.” Emily nodded. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Start making some calls. Shake some trees. See what rotten fruit falls out.”
Indeed. Because if anyone could figure out how this cockup gotstarted, it was the Black Knights. After years of doing the jobs too dirty or too diplomatically challenging for regular special forces or intelligence groups to take on, they had built a range of contacts the world over.
It was going to be a great tragedy when BKI finally shut its clandestine doors. Bringing down Spider was their final mission. As soon as the underworld crime lord and hisvast network of criminal activity were put to bed, the Black Knights, Christian included, would all go back to being civilians.
Some of the guys at BKI were looking forward to the time when they could set aside their assault weapons and pick up their wrenches, trade in their percussion grenades for grease guns. Christian, on the other hand…not so much. Like he’d told everyone back at the cottage,he’d tried his hand at the Joe Bloggs gig. It hadn’t worked for him before. He was fairly certain it wouldn’t work for him now.
He’d heard a saying once that had struck a chord. It was something like, “if you keep your eyes on the battle ahead, you won’t have to fight the battle behind.”
Thathad definitely been his problem after the SAS let him go. He’d been sucked back into the lifehe’d had before. Fighting the battles he’d thought he’d left behind when he’d joined the army and—
His thoughts cut off when Emily ended her call and settled more comfortably against him. For a moment there, when his mind had been elsewhere, his flag had withered to half-staff. But now, with her back snuggled against his chest, her sweet-smelling hair in his face, and her ass…yeah, you guessedit, bouncing atop his cods, he was back to being locked, stocked, and fully cocked.
He let his head fall against the back window, squeezed his eyes shut, and once again began quietly reciting his primes.
