He grinned and reached for me, looping his fingers with mine.
“Me too.”
EPILOGUE
Five months later...
Mateo
If you’d told me two years ago I’d be spending the witching hours of a Sunday morning horse rustling with a Russian hitman, I’d have asked you what the fuck you were smoking.
These days, tramping through mud for something you couldn’t make up on an acid trip was a regular day at the office.
“She does not know you have come to collect him?”
“Not yet.” I jogged ahead of Alexei and reached the rear fence of the old Esteban estate. It had been seized by the feds a month after Viktor had dropped Carlos’s body in the Atlantic, and poor Chapi too, but after weeks of hacking and forging documents, Alexei had set him free. “Em’s gonna take her to his cousin’s place. We’ll meet them there later.”
“This is good.” Alexei joined me at the fence. “She has missed him, no?”
Guilt clenched my heart. “Yeah. I know.”
“Do not blame yourself, enforcer. That is not what I meant. More that it is good for her to have some of her old life in the new. Is less... I do not know the word.”
“You know more words than me. Just make one up. I’ll believe you.”
The local woman who’d been caring for Chapi appeared on the other side of the field. She had him on a line and halter already, leading him to the gate.
We met her there. I knew fuck all about horses, but Alexei put on his fake British accent and charmed the shit out of her. She coaxed Chapi onto the borrowed horse box and we drove away with my kid’s one true love snorting and chomping behind us.
It was a long way to Newquay.
“You drive like a very old lady,” Alexei complained. “Like this horse is a live bomb in the back.”
“Fuck off. You love my company.”
“I like that you brought marijuana with you.”
“Only because you know I won’t smoke and drive and you like winding me up.”
Alexei plucked a short jazz blunt from the box. Not enough to get nicked on the off chance we got pulled over, but good for a little buzz if he really did find my driving boring.
He lit up and I watched him smoke with open curiosity. I’d seen him drink a bottle of voddie without so much as a fucking slur, but I’d never seen him stoned. He’d never struck me as the type.
But with Alexei, I was always learning.
I let him smoke in peace. Definitely not laughing when he tucked the butt back into the box as if Saint was standing over him.
Eventually, Alexei tipped his head back and closed his eyes like a viper bathing in the sun.
Except there was no sun. It was January and there was dirty grey snow on the ground until we reached the South West.
It was early afternoon when Newquay rolled up on us. We’d been on the road since yesterday, but I wasn’t remotely tired.
Joe waved me through the gate—I’d already left Alexei at his Ninja a mile back—and directed me to the same spot I’d borrowed the horse box from last night.
He regarded me the way only Embry’s grumpy cousin could.
Naturally suspicious.
