“You always have a choice,” I reply.
“Not when someone you love is at risk. Not when someone who you love more than anything in the whole fucking world, who you mourned, whose death almost destroyed you and your family. Not when you find out they are still alive and are being treated like a fucking dog. Locked up in a cage, and being held over you. When that happens to you, please Kara, please come back and sit there and tell me you would have done anything differently than what I have. What if it was Owen? What if someone took him, beat him, locked him up, and used that love against you.”
I go to reply, but what can I say? Because what if something happened to Owen? Who am I to judge his actions?
“See, you can’t. So don’t come here and fucking judge me.” He points his finger at each of us. “Either of you. Because Henry, I know you’d have done the same fucking thing.”
“We haven’t got time for this,” I say, interrupting Henry before he can reply. “We haven’t come here to talk about Saskia; we’ve come here because we’re fucked.”
Roman laughs once, humourless. “You’re fucked?” he asks, shaking his head. “I’m remanded in custody until my trial inseven months. Where I will probably be sentenced to life in prison. Please, tell me how you’re more fucked?”
“You’re right. The hard drive’s fucked.”
Roman leans back and folds his arms over his huge chest. The tips of tattoos peek out from under the sleeve of his hoodie and neck.
“So, why are you here?”
“Because,” Henry says, leaning forward, “I know you. And if you were going behind all our backs, you will have safeguarded things along the way. Things that you could use as leverage at a later date against John and the rest of the Covenant members. How you managed to even get a copy of the thing as quickly as you did intrigues me—”
“Always be prepared,” I say.
Roman looks between us and smirks. “I can tell you exactly where the copy of the hard drive is, just as soon as you get me out of here.”
“How’d it go?” Owen asks as we both slide back into the black SUV that Owen has been sitting in for the last thirty minutes.
“Like a shart,” Henry replies, turning the ignition before smacking the steering wheel in annoyance.
I lean forward between the seats, Owen in the passenger seat, Henry driving.
Owen glances at Henry and catches my eye.
“He has a copy. That reaction is to do with something entirely different,” I say, explaining Henry’s outburst.
“But—”
I hide my smirk, always a but. He’s learning.
“But he wants to get out of prison first.”
Owen blows out a breath and leans back in the chair, as Henry pulls his shit together and drives out the prison car park on a wheel spin.
“I can’t help with that,” Owen says, looking out the window as the car picks up speed on a dual carriage way taking us back to central London.
“You don’t need to,” Henry says, glancing across at us as our eyes meet in the rear-view mirror. I know what he’s saying.We’ll work together on this.
I nod at the unspoken agreement.
“Why help us, though?” I ask the question I already know the answer to.Saskia.
“Because sometimes doing the right thing means doing the wrong thing,” Henry answers.
The car falls silent, all of us working through the problem. Owen thinking about what to do after we get hold of the hard drive. Henry thinking about Saskia and finding her. I’m not naïve to think that this is aboutbeing part of the greater good. Henry Bishop is very much Luca Knight’s man. He’ll be working his angle, just like Luca would have taught him to do.
Saskia is Henry’s end game. And Roman’s.
The hard drive is just part of the problem they are currently working on, and the thing that will help them get to their end game.
Roman can’t do anything from a prison cell, and Henry needs Roman to tell him everything he knows.
