“Be quiet! Do as you are told for once.” Ben nodded, resigned. He couldn’t stand unaided so his protests sounded lame even to him.
With Nikolas’s assistance, he limped to the front door and saw a black Range Rover awaiting him. “And after they fix me up?”
“Then you rest until you are fit. It is stand down, even for me now.”
“Stand down?”
Nikolas gave him a look. “You are a heathen. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. It is a season of goodwill—apparently.”
“Will you be…?”
“Of course. As you so amusingly put it to me—my shadow dance must continue to play on. There will no doubt be charades and carols around the tree. Fortunately, I have my horse and an empty beach.”
“No one to ride with though.”
“No. No one to ride with.”
There seemed to be nothing more to say. Ben nodded in the direction of the yard. “My bike…?”
“I will have it taken to the hotel I have booked for your recuperation.”
Ben put his good hand on Nikolas’s arm. “I—”
“Don’t.” It was too dark in the hallway to see his expression, but Nikolas’s tone said it all. Ben pulled away and limped on his own to the vehicle waiting to drive him to the private clinic—only the best for the department’s personnel, after all.
CHAPTER TEN
Suicide rates double at Christmas. Alone in his gorgeous suite of rooms all through the holiday, knee elevated, finger aching, bruises healing, Ben understood why. He started to have unlikely memories of Christmas as a kid—snow and red train sets, special food, and aunties getting drunk. He couldn’t for the life of him say whether he was remembering his own life or a movie he’d once seen. The hotel had a pool and a gym, sauna and steam room; and he spent most days swimming endless laps, and then sweating out his misery with almost unbearable heat. In a few days, he was running again, only short distances on the flat London streets, but it was good to feel the pain of stiff muscles working once more. As his bad leg hit the pavement, he repeated the encouraging words written above the gym at Sandhurst: Pain Is Our Pleasure, Agony Our Dream. What a sad fuck, he mused, living his subsequent life to such a harsh truth.
On New Year’s Eve, his phone buzzed. He was tempted to answer it and say fuck off, but that meant he had to answer it first.
“Ben?”
Ben frowned, momentarily distracted, so instead of his planned greeting, he asked hesitantly, “Sir?”
“Yes, it’s me. How are you, Ben?”
“I’m good. What’s…? Are you…?”
“I’m inviting you down for the New Year, Ben. Philipa would love to see you. There will be quite a good shooting party tomorrow if you can make it by lunchtime, Ben.”
“Err…”
“Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Please come.”
The phone was clicked off.
In two minutes, Ben went from being self-indulgent and theatrically miserable to the hard professional he actually was—the man who had thrived in Special Forces and then been personally headhunted for the department. His guns and other equipment were in the armoury at work. It was two hours to Nikolas’s house, even on the bike. He could be there tonight.
Ben!
“You’d have to put a gun to my head, first, I abhor nicknames…”
Nikolas couldn’t have made it any clearer that something bad was happening—something he couldn’t call the department for. Ben felt a surge of emotion, primal and very, very good, wash through his body. He was back in the game.
