the less time for awkward after-the-morning-after conversations. With luck, they’d get through the next few hours with no chance to even reference their...liaison. Just so long as he didn’t go kissing her again. Self-control wasn’t his strong point but he could at least manage that, dopamine or not.
Right?
“NO TEXTS OR EMAILS,” Samira said, swiping and tapping too fast for Jamie to get a fix on the screen. “No stored numbers. These guys are careful.”
A white bakery van stopped in front of them, and the driver climbed out and opened up the back. Jamie leaned on the horn. Samira jumped.
“Sorry,” he said. “This woman’s decided to use Grosvenor Road as a loading zone.” He veered around it. “Bloody London drivers.”
“Jamie, if we’re going to judge on stereotypes you’d be grumpy and pasty and miserly and I’d be a kid with a bloated stomach and flies in my eyes.”
“Too long in this country and I’ll be back to pasty and grumpy quick smart, don’t you worry. And on my income, I can’t be anything but miserly.” Humor. Yes. Humor was good. You couldn’t laugh and panic at the same time.
“I’ve forgotten what an income is.”
He peered out the windscreen. “How long until you’ve finished with that phone? I have an idea.”
“I’m done. I’ve uploaded the GPS data but I won’t be able to throw it into a mapping tool until I get to a computer.”
He lowered his window. “Give it here.”
She wiped her prints off it. As a double-decker sightseeing bus passed the other way, he tossed it onto the open top level. Rain had driven the tourists downstairs.
“That should have the mercenaries driving in loops around central London.”
“Nicely done,” she said, wonder in her voice. He liked hearing wonder in a woman’s voice. He’d missed hearing wonder in a woman’s voice. He’d missed her silky voice, best heard murmuring sweet groans into his—
“How long until Putney?” she said.
“Uh. Twenty minutes. We’ll park a few blocks from your friend’s apartment and walk. Just a precaution,” he added, as her shoulders tensed. “Ninety-nine percent of precautions are unnecessary. It’s the one in a hundred that turns out to be necessary that makes the other ninety-nine worth it. But you don’t need any lessons in caution now, do you?”
He resisted pointing out MI6 headquarters across the river, a cross between a Disney castle and a tiered wedding cake.
“So...you came here because there was no one else available...?”
Shite. “Uh, well, I know the territory, so I was the obvious choice.” And the fact that Samira was the one at risk? Well, Jamie hadn’t needed time to stop and weigh things up. Some would call that his downfall. That and dopamine. “And it sounded like a bit of fun.”
“Huh.”
What did she want to hear? That he hadn’t stopped thinking about her in thirteen long months? In France she’d made it excruciatingly clear she wanted him gone, stat. And his conscious brain had told him she was dead right, for both their sakes. Other parts of him, on the other hand...
He stole a sideways glance at her. Whatever her reason for pushing him away, he’d swear indifference wasn’t it.
“A bit of fun,” she echoed. “Kidnapping a woman from a train station, hijacking an ambulance, trespassing through a hospital, impersonating a doctor, lying to police, stealing a car, drugging a man.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting the time I saved a man’s life while under fire using a rare and controversial technique, outran a helicopter assault, engaged in hand-to-hand combat to rescue said woman, outwitted the entire Met Police force and escaped under the noses of MI5 and MI6.”
“MI6?” she said, looking around.
“Oh, we left them way behind.”
“I’m not sure if you’re brave or reckless.”
He smiled. “Definitely reckless. You, on the other hand, are brave.”
“Hardly. I’m only doing this because I have no choice.”
He shrugged. “So am I.”
“What do you mean you don’t have a choice?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to let you walk into the hands of those bastards, was I? And with guys like Flynn and Angelito—when they say they need you, you don’t say no, regardless of the cost.”
Samira was silent a minute. She pulled her glove back on. “You shouldn’t have come.”
And there it was. What had he expected? Jamie, you have to leave, she’d said that morning in France, pushing away the croissants he’d bought from the boulangerie while she’d slept in. This was a mistake.
“Samira, look, it’ll take—what?—half a day to get this evidence off to Tess? Then you’ll never have to see me again, if that’s what you want.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Well, that was something. “Then what did you mean?”
“I mean, it’s dangerous to be here with me.”
His eyes widened. Tell me about it.
“No, I don’t mean that, either.”
Shite, how did she follow that train of thought?
“I’m not very good at explaining myself. I mean, I’m relieved you’re here. But being around me makes you a target.”
“I know that. I’m good with that.” Her gaze practically itched the side of his face.
“Did I ever tell you how my fiancé died?”
Whoa. He hadn’t seen that coming. “I don’t believe so, no.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t mentioned the guy at all in France.
“He died in a US drone strike in Somalia after I called his cell phone,” she said, quiet and precise. “That’s how Hyland’s goons tracked him down—they’d been waiting for him to break cover.”
“A military strike? How’d Hyland get away with that?”
“Tess reckons he arranged for the US to get intel that a terrorist leader was hiding out where Latif was staying, and then pressured the president to deal with it. Latif was collateral damage, officially. Of course, by then Latif had given enough information to Tess to bring down Hyland’s former company and his cronies, but the senator slipped the noose. We think Latif had been hunting evidence that could bring Hyland down, too. And now Hyland wants me gone, thinking I know too much. Which, unfortunately, I don’t.”
“Oh Jesus. I knew some of that but not all. I’m sorry. And we think Charlotte now has this evidence? She works for GCHQ, right? Why wouldn’t she just tell her bosses?”
“Maybe she did. Or maybe she doesn’t know who to trust. Governments are loath to intrude on other governments’ dirty secrets. And everyone has secrets.” She sat straighter. “Anyway, my point is that if I’m a target, you’re a target. And I already lost one...”
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