Chapter 9
Penny
It was easy to forget the things that Rhys had done when he was being charming—or when he was whimpering in pain—but this morning had served as a sharp reminder for Penny.
“How are you so calm?” Her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible, even in a car with as much soundproofing as the Bentley. Ahead of them, the sunrise was a brilliant scarlet, bleeding into the sky around it.
They were heading east. The wrong way.
Rhys looked over at her, soft bruises of exhaustion hiding beneath his eyes. She hadn’t noticed them back at the shepherd’s hut, but as the sun rose higher and daylight lit the air, they were becoming increasingly obvious. “Hm?”
As though on cue, there was a thud and a muffled yell from the back of the car.
She winced, glancing round as though a police officer was about to jump out from behind one of the bushes on the little track they were on.
They should have been in Penzance by now, but they’d doubled back on themselves, all the way to Dartmoor National Park.
“There’s a man—an injured man—in the boot of the car.
I don’t know how you’re so calm about this. If the police stopped us now…”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, and how many times have you been randomly stopped by the police?
Ah—” Rhys sat up as they came to a dead-end, the hardened tyre tracks revealing where past drivers had turned around in this spot.
“Plus, we’re not going to have a man in the boot for much longer.
We’re about to release him back into the wild. ”
Penny jerked round to face him. “Release him?”
Rhys slid the gearstick in reverse, leaning an arm over the back of her seat in a thoroughly—infuriatingly—masculine movement as he turned the car around in the restricted space.
When they were pointing in the direction they’d just come, he tapped the touchscreen, hiding the navigation and instead pulling up the rear cameras. “Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, just wanting to get this morning over with.
Rhys pressed a button, and in her wing mirror she saw the boot lid ascend.
The rearview cameras on the screen gave them a better look, briefly blocked as Max climbed from the car.
Rhys had—apparently—cut his legs free of the zip tie just before locking him in the boot, but his hands remained bound behind his back.
The moment Max was free, Rhys hit the button to close the boot and put his foot down. The tyres kicked up dust as the car rocketed back down the track.
Not before Penny had seen what was written on Max’s bare back, though.
She squinted at the screen, seeing the same black scribble on his forehead. “Rhys,” she began, wondering how her life had descended into chaos so quickly. “Why has he got pony fucker written all over him?”
Looking like he was biting back a laugh, Rhys tapped his head with a finger.
“Think about it. It’s first thing in the morning.
There’s a man hitchhiking on the side of the road, but he’s half-naked.
Then you get closer, and you realise he’s got pony fucker written all over him. Would you give him a lift?”
“Well, no. But…why pony fucker specifically?”
Rhys gave her an exasperated look. “What’s the first thing you think of when you hear about Dartmoor?”
Hound of the Baskervilles, she thought immediately, but clearly that wasn’t the response he was after. She took a wild guess. “Ponies?”
“Exactly. There are hundreds of wild ponies roaming about, and people love them.” He turned off the track and back onto the main road, the ribbon of asphalt smooth beneath the tyres.
“Max is going to get back to London, to Chomsky. My main goal was to delay that happening as long as possible—by making him look like a raving fucking lunatic.”
Well, there was some logic there.
He slowed the car as a group of ponies appeared on the horizon, leisurely making their way across the road. The early morning wind ruffled their manes, the picturesque scene made gorgeous by the sun rising behind them, casting rays of golden light across the sky.
For the first time since she’d been dragged awake by the chaos, she had a chance to worry about her travelling companion. Inky shadows lurked beneath his eyes, and Penny found herself wanting to reach up to stroke his hair again.
She gave herself a mental slap. The shock of the morning had apparently shaken a few marbles loose, but Penny shoved them back into place with a stern warning not to fall out of line again.
Rhys Stone was not someone she would ever be attracted to. Ever. He was pretty to look at, but that was where she drew the line.
“What?” Rhys asked, catching her looking at him. He shifted to check his reflection in the rear-view mirror. “Is there something on my face?”
“I was just wondering how you are,” she invented. She’d gone from falling asleep with his head in her lap to waking up to find him battering someone in the face with a chopping board, of all things.
It had been…an unusual start to the day.
Rhys opened his mouth, but no sound came.
He swallowed, their eyes locking together as he took her hand.
“Thank you for looking after me, Penny.” On the road, the ponies were in no hurry to move.
He traced his thumb over the palm of her hand, making her breath hitch.
“I remember you running your hands through my hair for hours. Hours. When you could have just left me.”
Her entire being centred on his touch, stroking her palm. “No, I couldn’t.”
Rhys let out a soft chuckle. “Because I’m your escape plan?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.” She exhaled, feeling like she was drowning in those vivid amber eyes. She hated seeing people in pain, but it was more than that. “And because you’re…my friend.”
It was a hard realisation to come to. She didn’t want to like Rhys. She didn’t want to like any man like her father—a criminal. Criminals were cruel for the sake of cruelty because they enjoyed seeing the suffering of others.
Although there had to be certain exceptions to that, surely. Rhys hadn’t been acting out of cruelty this morning, despite the sheer violence he’d wrought. What would Max have done if Rhys hadn’t been there to stop him? What would have happened to her back in Canary Wharf?
Rhys’s actions were at odds with his criminal record. He didn’t seem to enjoy cruelty; in fact, he’d been nothing but kind to her. But then what had happened on the night he’d murdered a man?
There was nothing that could justify that.
…right?
But the more time she spent with him, the less certain she became.
At every opportunity, Rhys had been kind to her. Something her father had never been. The only violence she’d seen Rhys enact had been when he was protecting her. Because it was the right thing to do. At every stage, she’d judged him for it, thinking he was no better than her bastard of a father.
His smile was tender. “Something I never thought I’d hear you say.”
“It’s something I never thought I would say.” Penny lifted her shoulders in a shy shrug. “Thank you for…everything, Rhys. For protecting me when Max broke in. For bringing me along. For not abandoning me in Canary Wharf in the first place.”
His eyes almost glowed golden in the light. “I don’t have it in me to abandon someone.”
“Even someone you hate?” she asked, with a self-deprecating grin.
Rhys lowered his eyes, intertwining their fingers over the gearstick. “I never hated you, Penny.”
They made it to the ferry with seconds to spare.
Penny’s heart pounded as the two of them sat down in the little onboard café, the rich scent of coffee lingering in the air. A few days ago, she would have luxuriated in it, but after her encounter with Bielak?
“Here’s your Coke,” Rhys interrupted her thoughts as he placed their drinks on the table before sinking into the chair opposite her, the ice cubes clinking with the subtle, almost unnoticeable movement of the ferry.
He nodded towards the windows. “It’s a good day for a crossing.
Blue skies, sun’s out. The last time I was here, it was chucking it down. ”
He wasn’t wrong. The view out of the windows was as picturesque as it was on the postcards being sold at the ticket office. The south-western coast of England sailed past in a rugged sweep of dramatic coastline, rising up to lush green hills. “How long until we get to the Scilly Isles?”
“Three hours, roughly.”
She hesitated. Geography hadn’t been her best subject at school. “It’s part of England, right?”
To her surprise, Rhys didn’t take the opportunity to tease her. “They’re part of England,” he confirmed. “They’re a little chain of islands about thirty miles off the west coast. Very picturesque. The spa has its own private beach and everything.”
That part was a little less clear to her. She’d been drunk when he’d explained where they were going, and Rhys had been incapacitated by the time she’d fully sobered up. “So you came all this way…for, what, a massage?”
Rhys shook his head, dark bruises of exhaustion lurking beneath his eyes. “Villa Scilly is halfway between a spa and a top-of-the-range private hospital. They offer pioneering treatments that aren’t available elsewhere. I come here every few months to get an infusion to control my migraines.”
She sat in quiet contemplation, looking at the rise and fall of the coastline through the window.
“My mum had migraines before she passed. I remember her lying in bed for days on end, all the curtains pulled shut. I didn’t fully understand what was wrong with her then—I was only six—but I knew she was in pain. ”
“I’m sorry.” Rhys reached across the table, brushing his knuckles against her arm. “How did she die?”
“She had a brain tumour.” She let her gaze disappear into the blue waters surrounding the ferry.
More than twenty years had passed since Mum had died, but it was something Penny often wondered.
Cancer treatments had made huge advancements in that time.
Would her mother have survived if she’d had access to modern treatments?
Or even the pioneering treatments Rhys spoke of?
What about her father? His liver had been failing for the last few years. Would these fancy treatments help him? The last Penny had heard, he’d been trying—and failing—to get on the list for a transplant, given the doctors’ first requirement had been that he needed to be sober.
“Oh Pen.” His voice was a low rumble. He ghosted his hand over hers. It was the slightest touch, but yet more kindness from a man capable of such violence had her chest fluttering. “I’m so sorry.”
But he wasn’t just capable of violence, was he? Those hands had taken someone’s life. They’d tortured someone for hours on end, and here he was being the comfort she needed like it was second nature to him.
Maybe it was second nature, she thought.
Was he a violent man capable of kindness, or a kind man capable of violence?
Feeling like the earth had shifted beneath her, Penny opened her hand, letting their fingers weave together like it was the most natural thing in the world.