I point my chopstick at him. “I will ram this through your eye socket.”
Roman smirks at me. “Still as savage as you always were then.”
“Fuck off.”
“How much time do I have?” Roman asks Henry, who shrugs.
“Hard to say. I’ve wiped the cameras, but they’ve reported you as missing. You aren’t at the top of the list, surprisingly.”
He snorts. “I guess being broken out with a load of rapists and murderers will bump me down the list. I’m onlymaybea murderer.”
“Yeah, well. If we’d had an alternate option, I think I’d rather have not let out a load of criminals,” Owen pipes up, having been quiet until now.
As a matter of fact, he’s been quiet since I’ve been back. Something’s playing on his mind. And something tells me it’s more than the hard drive.
“Can’t you make some calls?” Henry asks Owen.
“Not a chance,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough that she’s linked with this. I do not need this coming back to me.” He rubs at the stubble on his cheeks. “Can you check the hard drive, Henry?”
“Sure.”
He passes it over to Henry, who reaches behind him to a small set of tables to where his laptop is sitting. He pulls out a cable, plugs it in, and we wait in silence as Henry does his thing.
“It’s all here,” he says after a minute. “I’d love to properly go through all of this.”
“No need to. I know what’s on it,” Owen replies, tapping his head. “But I do need to get it to my contact. Can you arrange for more copies? I want you to send it to the main news outlets, but have it as a delayed send. I want it to hit all of them whilst I’m giving the interview live on TV tomorrow.”
“They will want to verify it.”
“Obviously.”
“What will happen when this hits?” Roman asks. “You’ve thought all this through?”
“As opposed to what?” Owen asks. “You’ve seen what is on this, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken a copy. You know the importance, you’ve seen what they have done. How many people they have killed to hide this? How far this goes. And what, you think we should just let them get away with it?”
“This will bring the country to its knees.”
“Wake up, Roman.” I pitch in. “This country has been on its knees for fucking years.”
“It’s time for a change,” Owen agrees.
“What makes you think this will make a difference in the long run? Where one corrupted arsehole falls and another replaces them?” Roman challenges.
“I have to believe that it’s worth it, that there’s hope,” Owen says resolutely, his chin lifted. “That people, that my friends haven’t been killed for nothing.”
“I hope so, too. I really do, but I guess I’m all out of hope right now,” Roman replies, looking blankly into his Chinese box.
But Owen’s right. Without hope, there’s nothing but fear and failure.
53
Lucy - Present
I’mlyingonOwen’schest, his fingers dancing up and down my back, following the broken but now healed skin of my burn scars. The motion is soothing. Every now and then, he catches a ticklish spot which makes me squirm against him.
“You’re hard again,” I mutter lazily.
“You keep rubbing yourself against me, can you blame me?”
