Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
CIARA
I loved my parents. Truly, I did. But after three days back home, Mum was resembling a smother rather than a mother, and Da was putting off work he needed to do, hanging around the house, staying underfoot, generally driving both of us mad. I couldn’t blame them. The police were no closer to answers about who’d run me off the road. They’d come to talk to me further, and I’d found out that my brake lines had been tampered with by someone other than Brodie. I hadn’t breathed a word of that to my parents. They were freaked out enough. But if I didn’t get out of this house, I was going to lose my bloody mind.
I needed to talk to Alex.
He’d been in contact every day but had otherwise kept his distance, allowing me to rest and recover. I missed him way more than I ought to. I wanted to lean on him. I wanted this thing we’d been doing to be real. Real hadn’t been on the table since he moved to Glenlaig. This favor to me was simply repaying a debt. Balancing the scales for him having treated me poorly after our last parting. For my own sake, I needed to break it off because I was losing all objectivity where he was concerned. If I’d ever really had any at all.
I finally texted him around two in the afternoon.
Me: I need a non-life-threatened rescue. My person is safe, but my sanity is iffy.
The dots indicating he was typing a reply began to bounce almost immediately.
Alex: Ready to go back home?
Me: So much.
Alex: Pack your bag. I’ll be by in an hour.
Me: You’re a godsend.
I took my time packing, mostly to give myself the privacy to psych myself up for the conversation I didn’t actually want to have. I was still stiff, and the bruises from the safety belt were a lovely array of deep purples all the way to yellow. But the headache had mostly faded, and the cut on my temple had begun to heal. Connor and Sophie had kept Havoc at Ardinmuir, as I hadn’t been in any shape to walk him the past few days. I missed the big furry lunk, but maybe I’d give it another day or two to see how I was feeling before I added him back to my schedule.
Good as his word, Alex showed up fifty-eight minutes later.
My mum was in the process of offering tea and biscuits when I came out with my bag. The sense of relief I felt at the sight of him almost made me weak.
“Hey.”
“Hey. How are you feeling?”
“Better.” Especially as I knew he was here to spring me.
“Are you ready to go home?”
“Oh, but—” Mum started to protest.
“Don’t worry. I promise to take her straight back to her flat and not allow her to overdo,” Alex assured her.
Da came into the kitchen. “What’s happening?”
Mum twisted a tea towel in her hands. “Ciara’s leaving.”
“Is that wise?” Da wanted to know.
“I have to get back to my life sometime. Thank you both for taking care of me.” I hugged them both to take the sting out of my departure.
It was obvious my parents had questions and concerns, but they kept them to themselves, probably because I was leaving with Alex.
Once we were in his 4x4, I dropped my head back against the seat and sighed. “Freedom.”
“It’s hard to go home again, aye?”
I looked toward him in the driver’s seat. “Did your mum fuss over you when you retired?”
“So much. For a little while, it was grand. All my favorite meals. Someone else to do my laundry. All of which I realize is sexist but was nice just the same. But it started to chafe pretty fast. I expect that’s even worse for you because you’re the baby of the family.”
“They’re mostly good about treating me as an adult, but after all this… I’m ready for my own space again.”
We lapsed into silence for the rest of the short drive. I was still working my way up to broaching the subject of our fake relationship when he carried my bag upstairs and unlocked the door. He set the bag aside and disabled the alarm he’d installed. Then he did a quick sweep of the whole place. Evidently satisfied there were no assailants hiding in the closet or under the bed, he pulled a small device out of his pocket and began running it over every surface in the flat.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for surveillance equipment.”
Because he’d said it with utter seriousness, I stared for several moments. “Why would my flat be bugged?”
He made a hand gesture for me to wait until he’d finished.
I wanted to believe that this was an overreaction. But someone had sabotaged the brakes on my car, so clearly, whatever was going on was more in his wheelhouse than mine.
To keep myself busy, I made a cuppa tea for us both. I’d learned how he took it over the past few weeks.
“No evidence of listening devices or cameras.”
He probably meant for that to be comforting, but the fact that he’d been looking at all had a fresh bout of anxiety brewing.
“I’ll ask again… why would my flat be bugged?”
He put the device away and sighed. “Sit. I need to talk to you.”
I’d been planning to say the same thing to him, but the words died in my throat at his serious expression. I took my tea and sat.
He grabbed his. “Thanks.” But he didn’t drink, instead sitting on the ottoman that served as my coffee table so he was directly across from me.
“I want to tell you the truth. The real truth about why I didn’t contact you three years ago. There are still specifics that I can’t share because you don’t have the security clearance. But you have a right to know, especially as what happened to you is directly my fault.”
My heart began to pound. I’d given up on the idea that he’d ever really tell me the why I’d so desperately wanted to know.
“Okay.”
Alex set his tea aside and braced his elbows on his knees, clearly trying to gather his thoughts. “I had a successful undercover career in the Royal Marines. I had absolutely no intention of retiring as soon as I did, but a group of anarchist hackers and activists began exposing classified details on undercover military operatives. Due to their leaks, some of my past aliases were compromised, which effectively ended my ability to safely work undercover, thus forcing my early retirement. That’s when I met you.”
Lacing his fingers, he began absently rubbing circles on his palm with his thumb. “You upended my world, made me question everything I thought I wanted. The morning I left you, I meant what I said with every fiber of my being. I wanted to explore what was between us. And then I got up here and had dinner at your parents’ house, saw all your photos, and I kind of freaked out. I needed a little bit of time to process that you were Ewan’s sister. I still wasn’t planning to ghost you at that point. I just needed to get my head screwed on straight before I contacted you again.”
“I can’t blame you for that.”
“But shortly after that, I was recruited by British intelligence to help dismantle the hacking collective that was behind the information leaks. I saw it as a chance to get payback against the group that cut my career short and a means of protecting others still out there. It was completely off-book, and it was inherently going to bring more turmoil and danger into my world. I didn’t want to risk you, so I didn’t contact you again. That wasn’t fair to you. I should, in retrospect, have come up with something to tell you to at least give you closure rather than let you think what you’ve thought all these years. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, during the middle of all of this, my father died under mysterious circumstances. A one-vehicle car accident.”
My head was spinning. If I were to believe what Alex was saying—and knowing him as I did, how could I not?—then his disappearing act really wasn’t about me or us. And I was feeling ill because, deep down, I knew where this was going.
“I’ve always suspected it was connected to the contract work I was doing, but I couldn’t prove it without compromising myself or my investigation.” He took a deep breath and let it out again, slowly. “The operation took two years. In the end, the parties responsible were caught, and I was finally free to get back to a life. But I didn’t want to get close to anybody lest I put them in danger. That was why I stayed away. The reason I never contacted you wasn’t about your brother, at least not mostly. It was about your safety.”
I sat in stunned silence for a long time. I did not have Involved in dangerous clandestine government operation on my bingo card of reasons why he’d disappeared so thoroughly from my life. This was everything I’d wanted to know. This was the piece he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me. But obviously something had changed.
“Why are you telling me all of this now?”
“Because your brake lines were tampered with in a way that suggests a professional. We already know that Brodie has an alibi, and I think it’s highly unlikely he’d hire someone to do that. Much of a shite as he is, he’s no murderer. I believe that you’re being targeted because of me. Because we’re involved. At least, everyone thinks we are. Because the mission I thought was over still has someone out there who wants to hurt me. And they’re trying to do it through you.”