Before I lost them both.
“They are back.”
Jake pointed to the door.
A moment later, it opened, revealing Ranger and Saint, both damp from the rain, eyes vibrant with life. They moved into the house, Saint drawn to Alexei.
Ranger to me.
He pressed a box of tea into my hands. “Nicked it from a caravan.”
Grief and love fought a bloody battle in my heart. “That was kind of you.”
“Was it?”
Jake rose before I could respond. To take his turn to rest. It was a moment that in the past I would not have let him spend alone, even if I just lay next to him as he slept, but he did not look at me as he left the room. He did not need me, and perhaps he never had.
It was you—you needed him.
He disappeared, leaving me with Ranger, Saint, and Alexei. I had slept through the morning and into the afternoon. But by now, it was summer, even in rainy northern England. Nightfall was a long way off, and we had hours to kill before we could move out.
Alexei took over Jake’s master spy operation. Ranger reclaimed the box of tea and messed around with the kettle.
I returned to the blueprints, studying the routes Jake had marked and remarked when planning for this operation had started weeks ago, when he could not have been sure he’d have the manpower to execute it. That he ever would, unless his faith in Ranger’s ability to save me had been as bulletproof as this mission needed to be if we were not all to die in a hail of bullets.
Symbols on the plans represented the men on the ground. I did not know who had chosen them, but that Ranger was a spiked star amused me more than it should have as I stared at an operation I was beginning to realise had little chance of sparing all six of us.
“What are you fucking laughing at?”
Ranger’s rough voice lifted my gaze. He held a tea mug out like a dare.
Under the weight of Alexei’s dry observation, I took it—the mug. The challenge, not so much.
I missed being alone with him. His arms around me. His laugh echoing in my head. To touch him now... I could not. To think clearly, I needed distance—loving him would not save him.
You need to be stronger than this.
I turned back to the plans, fixating on the gap between the first pair in and the second—Ranger and Saint.
Two minutes.
It was not enough, and as time ticked by, draining the life out of me, I made sure Ivanov knew it.
[ 26 ]
RANGER
They hadn’t told anyone.
Cam.
Saint and Alexei.
No one knew they were here. Not even Nash, and it blew my mind a bit. Almost as much as watching Viktor and Alexei buddy up in the kitchen, tapping their fingers on those stupid fucking blueprints and talking Russian shit at each other.
They hadn’t looked up in hours. I’d become way too acquainted with the side of Vik’s head, and it was pissing me off. “They’re up to something.”
Saint peered around me into the kitchen. Said nothing. Went back to cleaning the weapons spread out on the coffee table.
