7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Finn
T his visitation is vastly different from maximum security. Gone are the glass barriers and phones. The guard who escorted me down here said I’m allowed a brief hug to begin the visitation and another to say goodbye. Holding hands is restricted to one finger. No joke. One finger. He recommended the index. Made me laugh. Guess they’re not a fan of her pushing drugs into my palm. Not that she would. Tripping in here would help pass the time. But I’m not keen to start a drug habit now.
The familiar wash of warmth envelops me the minute I catch sight of her at a small table in a corner. She’s dressed for winter, with a heavy coat and long pants. Has she acclimatized to the warmer Cape Verde climate that quickly? It’s summer here, and the yard was hot as fuck this morning.
When she rises to greet me, I zero in on the stiffness of her movements. Instead of hugging her when I get close, I cock my head and take her in from head to toe. Something’s not right. I search her face.
“No hug?” she whispers. The unease in her voice is obvious.
I loop my arms around her waist and slide my fingers under the edge of her coat, then up her sweater so we’re skin to skin. She vibrates under my touch and releases a contented sigh.
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
I dip my head into her neck then kiss her under her ear and squeeze her tight. When I increase the pressure, she lets out a tiny noise of discomfort. Something is wrong. She asked for the hug, but she’s only wrapped one arm around me.
“That’s enough, Donaghey,” the guard calls.
I ease away and trail my hands along her back before emerging again. Before she can move out of reach, I grab the hand that was dangling at her side. A thick white cast rests against her palm, and I jerk her jacket sleeve up. “What the hell?” How high does her injury go?
“Donaghey!” The guard moves from his post.
I drop her arm and step back. He’s not removing me before I get answers. “What the hell happened?”
Carys’s hand shakes when she tucks a loose strand of hair into her braid. Her hair should have been my first clue something isn’t right. She hasn’t had it up in months. “There was an accident.”
“Sit at the table.” The guard looms over the spot we’ve claimed.
I slide into the chair across from her and watch as she maneuvers herself into a seated position. My gut clenches, and violent emotions threaten to spiral out of control. Calm down. This might be nothing . Did she fall? Slip on Lucas’s toy?
“What kind of accident?” My thoughts want to jump to worst-case scenarios, but I’m working hard to ignore those demons. She’s safe now. I’m in here, and she’s safe. Jay promised me she’d be safe.
Zahir’s threat echoes in my memory. My conversation with the kid in the shower about the people we love on the outside of this building rises to the surface.
Panic twists my insides. God, I hate being in here. I don’t sit around worrying; that’s not my style. Action. Chaos. Throw me into the middle of a fight, but don’t make me idle on the sidelines.
She swallows and takes my hand on the top of the table. I shift her grip, so our index fingers are latched. I’m already on the guard’s radar, and I’m not leaving here without answers. The quizzical look on her face makes me realize she thinks I’m rejecting her gesture.
“Guard said one finger handholds only.” I give her a hard stare. “Take off your coat and show me what I’m not supposed to see.” As if she tried to hide her injury from me. Like I wouldn’t notice. Maybe if we were still behind that partition, but now? There’s no hiding from me.
Her jaw clenches, and she shakes her head. “You don’t need to see it. I broke my wrist in an accident.”
“Like you tripped and fell on a toy? Or stumbled down the stairs—oh, wait—there are no stairs in your bungalow. You’re trying to hide something from me, so you already know I’m not going to like it. If it was simple, you’d have led with that.” Anger bubbles to the surface. Fuck keeping my emotions under control. Jay let her get hurt. Five months in here, and she’s sporting a cast. “You need to fire Jay.”
“He’s not in charge of my security anymore. We hired island staff.”
“Fire them all.”
“I haven’t told you what transpired yet.” She gives an exasperated huff.
“Could this”—I grab her injured hand—“have been avoided?” I assess the way she’s sitting at the table. She’s moving like an old woman, but I know better than to say that. Whatever happened, it jolted more than her wrist.
She yanks her hands away from mine to lean back in the chair and cross her arms. Other than the initial tug out of my grip, her movements are languid rather than sharp. Her body must be sore. “There was a gas explosion at the new build.”
“What?” My voice is louder than I expected. “You can smell gas, Carys,” I hiss. “You can smell it. Did you hire a security company with no ability to smell? ’Cause I gotta tell you, that’s a pretty significant weakness.”
She purses her lips, and when she rolls her shoulders, she grimaces in pain. “My security guy was at the car.”
“And you were…?”
“At the entrance of the building.”
“And the distance between those two points?” I use my hands on the table to demonstrate small versus big space.
“Further than you’d be comfortable with.”
I run my fingertips along the edge of the table in quick movements, trying to quell the desire to explode. The table heats under my palms.
“Everything okay over here?” the guard asks.
“Peachy,” I grit out, never taking my eyes off Carys.
“We’ve already hired more security, put additional measures in place. You don’t have to worry,” she says in a rush.
“I don’t have to worry?” I shoot across the table. “I turned myself in to keep you safe, and now I hear you and Jay aren’t taking that seriously. My one stipulation when I agreed to the exchange was that he needed to protect you like he would his own wife.” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. Frustration is eating me up.
“I know.” Her voice is quiet. “It was a gas leak. An accident.”
I stare at her. She and Jay must think I’m stupid. “Gas, even a gas leak, doesn’t explode without an ignition source.”
Her jaw tightens.
“You realize what that means, right? Your old job was in ammunitions, so you get where I’m going with this, don’t you?”
“Don’t patronize me. You don’t get to be an asshole to me because you’re scared and angry, okay?” She leans across the table, and we’re so close we could kiss if we weren’t both so fired up.
Our gazes are locked. Flint and steel spark off each other. Screw it. I’d rather kiss her than yell. We haven’t been this close in so long. I cup her face and drag her onto the surface. She meets my lips in a fusion of anger and frustration mixed with passion that makes my bones ache with longing. As though we’ve been apart minutes instead of months. She sinks into me.
I’m not so unaware I can’t hear the guard stomping over. I lessen the kiss before it can get any more heated or risk my next visitation. A slipup is fine in low security, right?
Her breathing is heavy when we break away and sink back into our chairs across the table. The guard is trying to stare me down, but I’m going to ignore him. I like the view in front of me much better.
“Was that kiss an apology?”
Mostly that kiss prevented me from saying something I’d regret. “Sure.” I smirk. “Even though I’m not really sorry.”
Her gaze softens. “We are taking security more seriously now. Okay? I promise. We’ve set more people in place, good-quality people.”
When she arrived, I planned on trying to tell her about the FBI, that they’re aware of what she’s up to. Put a stop to her escape plans. But the truth is I can never protect her from in here. She’s in danger from something or someone whether I’m in here or I’m out there. I might have thought I had a choice, but I don’t. I’m always going to choose her and her safety above anything else.
I take her in, cataloging everything about her I love, and the ache across my chest flares. I’m no good to her in here. Doesn’t matter how much security she’s got out there—no one is ever going to protect her like I will.
“Okay,” I agree. She smiles, and my heart squeezes at the way she perks up at the agreement. She doesn’t understand I’m not giving into her but to something else.
While she tells me about Jay’s girls and Lucas, I appear engaged, but inside for the first time ever, I’m counting the minutes until visitation is done. When the bell rings to signal the end of our visit, I hug her longer than I should, my fingers grazing her spine under her layers of clothing.
“I love you, Carys.” My voice is gruff in her ear. “You understand I’ll do anything to keep you safe?”
“I know,” she whispers back. “I love you too. It’ll be okay.”
It’s not right now, but it will be.
On the way to my cell, I tell the guard I want a meeting with the warden.
In less than twenty-four hours, I’m sitting across the warden’s desk again, Zahir rocking in Jeffrey’s chair while the warden stands uneasily behind him by the large windows. We’re in a standoff, but I’m not dropping my figurative weapon first.
“It’s a good deal, Finn.” Zahir tents his fingers and leans back farther.
“The only arrangement I’m accepting is one that lets me live in Cape Verde without spending even a single day in lockup when this job is done.”
“You’re serving twelve consecutive life terms. Reducing your sentence to three years in total is more than fair. I’ve also agreed to minimum security.”
“Not where I’m sitting. You want me to ingratiate myself to the organization that at least had a hand in framing Carys, put my life on the line, and snitch on whatever dealings they have going on. My skin is in the game, so I’m telling you what it’ll take to make it happen.”
“Look.” He sighs. “There’s only so much I can do. Do we want you? Yeah, we do. We’ve got intel indicating you’re our best bet for an in, and if our crew intercepts the jailbreak, it’s a huge bump to their street cred for the PLA. Saying that, I cannot pretend you didn’t commit a shit ton of heinous crimes.”
“Those days are over.” I wave a dismissive hand. “I’m a family man now.”
“Not too much of a family man, I hope,” Zahir scoffs. “Otherwise, you’re no good to us.”
“I’ll get the job done, but my price is my price.” I rise and nod to the warden to call the guard. He holds his radio to his lips.
“I didn’t want to do this, but you’re not leaving me a choice.” Zahir sits forward and braces his elbows on the wooden desk. “I’ve been ignoring the elephant in the room because I believed you called me here to fall in line.”
I smirk. Shows what he knows. I don’t fall in line, and when I have to, I don’t go down quietly. “You thought I was going to make it easy on you?”
“No, but I didn’t think you’d dig in this hard. We’ve been in here for nearly two hours trying to hash out a compensation plan that works for both of us. I’ve gone down as far as I’m authorized to go.”
“So, call your boss and get approved for the right deal.”
“I only got a deal this good because we’d been advised you’d be an ‘absolute dickhead’ to negotiate with.”
“I do enjoy it when my reputation precedes me. Makes things easier.”
“Usually, probably.” He eyes me. “I didn’t want to go here because it sets a poor tone for our working relationship, but you’ve left me no option.”
The guard radios to ask for permission to enter. I wave to the warden to get on with it.
“There was an explosion in Cape Verde last week.” Zahir meets my gaze.
For the first time since we started speaking, my heart thumps with dread. I hold up a hand to the warden to stall the guard. “If you had anything to do with that”—I lean across the desk, getting in his face—“I’ll fucking kill you right now.”
To his credit, he doesn’t flinch at my threat. “We didn’t.” He settles into his chair and examines me. “We both know it wasn’t a gas leak.”
“What’s your point?”
“You’re in here. She’s out there. That little boy is out there.” He gives me a meaningful look but doesn’t continue his line of logic.
“If I’m out there working for you, I’m not protecting her anyway.” My one hesitation in calling Zahir was the realization I might be putting her in more danger out there than I am in here. If I can get out of my sentence, when this trade-off is complete, I’ll be able to protect her from whatever is inching closer.
“Here’s the information we have—and I’m giving you this as a show of good faith. Carys started receiving packages at her various houses close to a year ago. Inside each package was an alarm clock, and each had a reference to time running out. Then, the day the FBI raided her Chicago office, a confetti bomb was delivered to her. It had already exploded when we entered.”
I stiffen at the new information. She didn’t tell me about any fake device in her office. Granted we were busy trying to get her out of jail, but if there was a looming threat, I should have been told. Maybe we wouldn’t be in this position now.
“The bomb at her hotel was set off on a holiday when there would be a minimal number of staff. It wasn’t strong enough to kill anyone or even to do significant damage to the building. An inconvenience.” He pauses and meets my gaze. “A warning.”
Carys’s broken wrist was more than an inconvenience. My nostrils flare.
“Whoever is after her, they’re escalating. Not quickly, but it’s happening.”
He doesn’t mention the shootout at Ricardo’s flophouse in Russia or the warehouse theft or how someone either in the PLA or associated with them framed Carys for crimes she didn’t commit. The threat isn’t just intensifying, it’s persistent and pervasive.
“So, somebody has put you over a barrel, but it’s not us. Doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage of it.” He presses on the desk with his index finger. “While you’re out there, you’ll be free to pursue whoever is coming for her. Obviously, not so much that you put your mission with us at risk, but you can help her. We won’t stop you.”
I sink into my chair across from him and cross my arms. Three years in here afterward is better than never being with Carys again, not being there to raise Lucas. The deal isn’t what I want, but I recognize I’ve got no more room to bargain.
“If you’re in here, you’re on the sidelines, watching her life potentially collapse around her. Out there, you can prop her up.”
He must not think he’s won me over, but he has. “Neither you nor the CIA has had anything to do with what’s happened to her so far?”
“No.” Zahir’s voice is firm. “We’re aware of everything because that’s our job, but we haven’t been party to any of it.”
I run a hand across the top of my shorn head and stare out the window. There’s no question I’m taking the deal, but I need a moment to reconcile the choice. “Will she know the escape will be hijacked?”
“No.” His voice is sharp. “She can’t be told. We must have every aspect of this appear as authentic as possible, or it’ll put our PLA agents in jeopardy.”
“She’ll track me down.” I’m not asking if I can tell her anything because I don’t care what they want. Once I’m out, I’m playing by my own rules.
“We’re anticipating that.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’re okay with her showing up, that’s all.”
I narrow my eyes, my mind ticking through his phrasing. There’s something they’re not telling me. What aren’t they telling me? “That doesn’t add up to me.”
“I’m sorry your math sucks, but that’s not my problem.” Zahir rises and extends his hand. “Have we got a deal?”
“I want it in writing, and I want my lawyer to read it.” There’re not offering me three years in minimum and snatching it away once the job is done. I’m making sure no matter what I do out there, I’m not going to be on the hook for any more crimes.
He nods to the guy by the bookcase, who takes an envelope out of his pocket, reads the front, and tosses it onto the desk. Three years, minimum is scrawled across the middle.
“I hate being a foregone conclusion,” I mutter.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Zahir says, “I didn’t even bother drawing up paperwork for the other deals we’ve discussed the last two hours.”
After they leave, I finger the envelope, thinking about what I’ve agreed to.
“They’re desperate,” the warden comments. “That’s a huge reduction in your sentence.”
I purse my lips and glance at him. “It’s not me they got over a barrel, it’s her. And I’d never let her fall.”
“An honorable trait, to love someone that much.”
I shrug. “Trust me, if I had a choice, I’d cut the honor out of me.” Not entirely true. For a brief moment, my life with Carys had been damn near perfect, as close to true happiness as I’ve ever felt. The other side of that bliss is what I’ve been living with the last few months—barely concealed despair. “You’ll get my lawyer for me?”
“I will.” He heads to the phone on his desk. “I’ll call you back to my office when they’re here.”
“Did they tell you when this is going down?”
He chuckles. “I’m as in the dark as you. Could be tomorrow for all I know, so I’ll get that lawyer here today. The FBI and CIA are playing chess—the rest of us are playing checkers.”
As soon as I’m out and can see where the pieces are on the board, I won’t be playing checkers anymore. No matter what it takes, I’ll be capturing the PLA’s king and taking down the person threatening Carys and Lucas.