I was a soldier. A special forces commando. If I’d learned anything from that, it was how to shut down and rest. But for whatever reason, I didn’t reach for those tools. I thought about Decoy instead. About Rocco. About Embry still fighting the injuries the Sambini family had bankrolled.
Thoughts Alexei echoed somewhere around Berkshire, breaking the silence. “If the chaplain dies, that it was the Sambini family who killed him will become impossible to ignore.”
“The way I heard it, you’ve never been sure it was them.”
Alexei made a dark, violent sound. “Of course it was them. All of this”—he waved his hand—“has been them, no? One way or another. Things do not have to be literal to be true.”
Couldn’t argue with him there, but I did have some words of comfort. “If we get what we came for today, you’re closer than ever to solving that problem forever.”
Alexei had a moody Russian cigarette in his mouth. He lit it. Took a drag, then stubbed it out again. “This is true. And would be nice, da? To give Embry the closure I promised him a long time ago.”
Nice wasn’t a word I associated with what we were doing. My soul was twisted with something far darker, and my thoughts returned to Rocco.
Again, I didn’t fight them.
But I did sleep. And I woke sometime later with a jump.
The van was still moving, and there was a cool hand on my arm.
I snapped my head sideways.
Alexei’s flat gaze greeted me. “You are okay?”
My heart thumped a slow tattoo. Two heavy beats before I found an answer. “Where are we?”
“Not far from where we need to be.” Alexei reclaimed his hand. “Drink water.”
That was my line, but I retrieved the canister at my feet anyway, taking a second to put myself back together. I felt inside out. Like I’d had a dodgy dream. But I didn’t remember it, and that wasn’t my MO. My ghosts weren’t that kind.
Cheers, Rocco.
He’d done me a solid this time, though. Maybe he knew I didn’t have the bandwidth to be haunted right now.
Alexei drove the van to a private marina on the Suffolk coast. He engaged his best English accent and we boarded the boat that belonged to “Dr Smith”.
I kept my mouth shut until we were on our way to open seas. “You know you sound like a young Tory, right?”
“Politics, Folk? Really?”
“Just saying.”
“You are a green man. Like Saint.”
“I’m not anything.”
Alexei pulled out our dive gear and began to inspect it. “And yet this boat will be filled with renegade plastic by the time we are done. Because you are someone, no?”
Someone with a headache if I tried to keep up with Alexei when he was in this mood.
I went back to keeping quiet and steered the boat away from the coast, navigating the North Sea as the sun melted through the clouds.
Golden hour. Even at my lowest ebb, it had always been my favourite time of day. The only thing better was someone to share it with.
Even a sarky Russian hitman.
Though I’d have preferred a shy soldier.
I itched to tell him so. Decoy, not Alexei. But we’d left our phones with the van, only a burner for emergencies packed in our gear.
