Chapter Thirty-two
Baxter
“Shit!” Lake accompanied his epithet by undoing his seat belt—a seat belt he’d only fastened seconds earlier. “I left my laptop charging cable in the room.”
I grabbed his arm before he could open the door. “We’ll buy another. Or I bet you anything Asher has a secret stash of them.”
Lake frowned. “Really? I thought he was a personal assistant, not IT.”
“You underestimate his organizational capabilities and his ability to be prepared for any eventuality. Of course, he can see glimpses of the future, so it’s kind of cheating.”
Lake shook his head. I’d filled him in on everyone’s skills and how they worked, and he seemed to struggle with Asher’s precognitive abilities more than anything else.
I planned to take him on a tour of the PPB one day and really blow his mind.
That was assuming I got my job back and was allowed in the building, which was hardly a foregone conclusion.
“I’ll be two minutes,” he said, offering me a smile.
“Two minutes,” I agreed, watching him jog back into the hotel.
Without Lake to distract me, I slipped into what was rapidly becoming second nature: scanning the nearby streets for anyone suspicious.
For all I knew, my twin brother was a master of disguise.
That meant everybody warranted scrutiny, from the man in his eighties walking with a cane to the council worker in a high-visibility jacket.
Though someone would need to be truly unhinged to disguise themselves in fluorescent yellow.
Once I’d concluded there were zero imminent threats on the horizon, the old man genuinely old, and the council worker far too busy doing actual council work, I called Calisto. “We’re just on our way now,” I said when he answered. “We’ll be there in less than half an hour.”
We chatted for a bit, Calisto enthusing about how much fun we’d have and pointedly ignoring the reality of the situation that, eventually, we’d get on each other’s nerves. “Does Asher still do strip Tai Chi every morning?”
“It’s not strip Tai Chi, as you very well know.”
“Barely clothed Tai Chi then, if you want to be pedantic.” I kept talking before Calisto could argue. “I’m not mad. I’m just working out whether it’s worth getting up early to see the… er… sights?”
“Don’t let Lake hear you say you’re planning to ogle another man. I know you’re joking, but he might not.”
“Yeah…” I let my head fall back against the seat. “It’s kind of weird having to watch what I say so he doesn’t get the wrong impression. That’ll take some getting used to.”
“But in a good way, right?”
“In a very good way,” I confirmed. Mention of Lake made me check the time. “How long have we been talking?”
“Erm… not sure. Ten minutes. Maybe longer.”
It didn’t take ten minutes to get from the car to the room and back again.
You could manage that twice over in that time, even with waiting for the lift instead of taking the stairs.
A sudden jolt ran through me, my breath hitching and my shoulders stiffening.
Fear was a monster devouring me from the inside.
“Baxter? What’s wrong?”
I could barely hear Calisto over the ringing in my ears. “I have to go.”
“Don’t go. Tell me what’s—”
I hung up and leaped out of the car. Why had I let Lake go in on his own?
I should have stopped him. Gone with him.
Owen liked games; we’d already established that.
Assuming he wouldn’t use Lake against me was unforgivably na?ve.
Only luck had stopped him killing Jamie—and Jamie was barely a blip in my present-day life. Whereas Lake was far more important.
I took the stairs two at a time. The room door stood open, the trolley stacked with soap, toilet rolls, and towels parked outside advertising that it was already being cleaned.
I burst inside, startling the tiny uniformed chambermaid so badly that she clutched her chest and stared at me like I’d taken years off her life.
“Man?” I asked. “Tall, dark, serious? Was he here?”
She shook her head. “No English. Sorry.”
I rushed across the room and yanked open the bathroom door, checking that it was empty. Once I’d established that, I backed out again. There was no charging cable to be seen anywhere. What did that mean? That Lake had already been and gone? Or that it had never been there at all?
What would Owen do with him?
The possibilities screamed at me. Bait. Blackmail. Or worse, he might kill him, just like he’d tried to kill Jamie.
I took the stairs back down even faster, only slowing to avoid taking a tumble. I opened my mind, sifting through people’s thoughts like they were grains of rice and discarding each one that didn’t matter.
There.
Lake.
Not afraid. Not in danger. Normal.
I spotted him moments later, lounging against the reception desk as if he had all the time in the world, the offending charging cable dangling loosely from his hand.
Any annoyance I might have felt dissolved completely beneath relief.
I charged across the lobby and wrapped my arms around him, dimly aware he’d been mid-conversation with someone, but unable to find it within myself to care. For five minutes, he’d been gone. Out of my life. Reduced to a pawn in my brother’s game.
And now he was here. Warm. Breathing. Safe.
“Hey,” Lake said, returning the embrace when I didn’t immediately let go. “What’s wrong?”
With my throat too tight for words, I shook my head.
I’d mostly regained my composure by the time we made it back to the car. Despite leaving the door wide open and the keys in the ignition, it hadn’t been stolen. A minor miracle, if ever there was one. Nor was anyone hiding in the back seat. I checked. I even checked the boot.
Then, I sat staring at the road ahead, my mind working furiously.
“I’m really sorry,” Lake said. It wasn’t the first apology he’d made. “It was thoughtless of me to take so long. I should’ve considered how it might look from your point of view. Or better yet, I should have left the damn cable behind and used one of Asher’s, like you suggested.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” My voice sounded brittle, as if it might fracture completely if I kept talking.
“Obviously I do,” he said gently. “You’re pissed, and you have every right to be. Just because someone was telling me about their history degree doesn’t mean I had to stand there listening. I knew you were waiting. And I should’ve known what you’d think if I took too long.”
“He has us on the ropes,” I said quietly.
“Ready to hide and never come out again.” Lake’s slight frown said he didn’t know what I was getting at.
“Calisto did that when O’Reilly was after him.
It got him nowhere. The only reason that situation ended was that he faced it head-on.
Granted, his hand was forced, because it was that or let Ben die.
But that doesn’t change the truth of it. ”
“What are you saying?”
I started the car and eased into traffic. “I’m not hiding from him. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of going to ground. Ask me why.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll still be there waiting.”
“The police will catch him.”
“Will they? They didn’t exactly do a great job last time. They even pinned my murder on the wrong man.”
“It’s different now,” Lake insisted. “They know who they’re looking for. He can’t hide forever.”
“Can’t he? How many people live in London?” I laughed softly. “I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be able to answer that, but I bet you can.”
“Around nine million.”
“Around nine million,” I echoed. “That’s an awful lot of people to blend in with, don’t you think? Like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“It also has close to a million CCTV cameras,” Lake countered. “It’s one of the most surveilled cities in the world. The average person’s image appears on camera hundreds of times a day.”
When I didn’t respond, Lake stared out of the window. “Where will you go?”
“Home. Where he knows exactly where I am. Now that I know about him, he’ll come out of hiding.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. He’s my twin.” I forced myself to take emotion out of the equation and think logically. “I’ll drop you at Calisto’s.”
“No!”
The single word carried enough force that I studied him. He had an obstinate set to his jaw that I’d never seen before. “Wherever you go, I go. If you’re not hiding, neither am I.”
“If you think that’ll change my mind—”
“I don’t.”
I nodded. It was good to have backup. I just hoped I wasn’t dragging Lake straight into hell with me.