Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
How could I be so stupid? I’m thinking as I press my knife against Graham’s throat. He doesn’t flinch.
“Let me out,” I say, repositioning to dig my knee into the flesh of his thigh. That earns me a satisfying grimace. My frown deepens when I realize the rectangular lump in his pocket is gone. “Or you’re going to learn just how messy a sliced carotid artery is.”
He moves to grab my wrist, but I twist his hand away and pin it to the window.
“One might say this is a bit of an overreaction,” he says, voice strained from the various pressure points being targeted.
“Overreaction? You’re double-crossing me.”
The corner of Graham’s lips curls in amusement. “Double-crossing would require some level of partnership, don’t you think? Have I finally won you over?”
He’s officially lost his mind.
A grunt sounds from the driver’s seat. Through the windshield, the guard booth of what looks to be the service entrance has come into view. Graham’s smirk has wavered when our eyes meet again.
“If you don’t put the knife down,” he says, dropping to an urgent whisper, “we will all be dead before nightfall.”
“I can send you off early, then.”
Graham’s jaw ticks. “Think clearly, Sloane. The only reason Josef hasn’t killed us both is because of what I handed him before tea—before I met with Klaus.”
I consider slitting his throat for using my real name in front of a total stranger, but Josef’s still as stone, uninterested in the life-or-death scene unfolding behind him.
I’d thought it was strange for Graham to pat one of Klaus’s guards so casually.
A show of his astounding arrogance. But maybe it wasn’t an innocent gesture at all.
Maybe it was a slight of hand I was too shocked to notice.
The car’s beginning to slow to a stop for the guard checkpoint. Josef clears his throat.
Guards who must be paid off by Klaus.
I sit back and tuck the knife under my thigh. Pretending to play along for the moment will at least get me onto public streets. Handling Graham and Josef with nothing but a push knife isn’t ideal, but if I time it right, I can jump out and create a big enough spectacle to slip away.
“Listen to me,” Graham whispers while Josef is managing the guards. “You have yet to trust me, and I’m aware this looks like exactly what you’re thinking. But please, Sloane—you and I both know that I would’ve disappeared days ago if I wanted to. Haven’t you wondered why I’m still here?”
“No,” I lie, the question yet again doing somersaults through my brain. “And I’d rather get fired than protect you any longer. You can live or die for all I care.”
“It’s not my survival that’s hanging in the balance.”
Our eyes meet as the car rolls through the gates and onto a main road. Now’s the perfect time to make my escape. I might not get another chance. My muscles are tightening in preparation, the training ingrained in each fiber begging to take over.
“There’s a bounty on your head, Agent,” Graham explains, “and it’s not one you can outrun alone.”
Now. I need to jump now.
He leans closer, as if imploring me to hear him. “You should be dead right now.”
Go, Sloane. The door is unlocked.
That FBI agent’s warning swirls into my thoughts unwarranted and stains them all crimson. There’s blood in the water.
I force myself to blink, but it feels mechanical. If I’m meant to believe what he’s telling me, then he needs to start answering questions—and fast.
“Is Klaus the Consultant?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
Despite my hunch, my stomach twists in response to the confirmation.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Graham swallows. “I wasn’t sure who I could trust at the time.”
“And now you are?”
A heavy silence hangs between us.
“For some inexplicable reason, you’re the closest I’ve gotten to trust in years.” He clears his throat and loosens his tie, suddenly unwilling to hold my gaze. “I’m not interested in losing that quite yet.”
I slump against the seat, boneless, the blood rushing in my ears.
I can’t explain why, but of all the times I’ve had a bounty on my head, this feels the most like a certain death sentence.
Perhaps it's my own words coming back to haunt me—that this assignment was cursed from the start. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ll be buried with someone else’s name on my gravestone. And that unsettles me more than the assurance of my fate.
When I speak, my voice sounds hollow and thin, unrecognizable. “You’re going to tell me everything. No more secrets, no more holding anything back.”
Graham responds with a solemn nod.
The engine rumbles distantly as we pick up speed toward the ramp for the A1. He answers my question before I can ask it.
“Claudette will be sending our things to a neutral location far enough away from our destination.” His eyes dart to our driver, who is completely unbothered by his participation in an escape from his crime-lord boss.
“Josef will pick them up for us, but after that we’ll be on our own,” Graham finishes.
My hands clamp together to keep from fidgeting. “I need a payphone.”
“Out of the question,” Josef grunts.
I ignore him and raise an eyebrow at Graham. “Sure would be a shame to have gone to all that trouble… only for me to leave you hanging out to dry as soon as I get the chance.”
“Josef,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Pull over at the first payphone you find.”
There’s a few grumbled Czech words I don’t catch—Petyr is the only one of us fluent in it—and in a handful of minutes, we’re coming to a stop at a petrol station beside the highway.
I don’t give either of them an opportunity to change their minds, hopping from the car and fastwalking, as casually as possible, to the payphone outside the shop.
My heart’s in my throat as I blindly dial the number I know by heart.
I’m moving on reflex, making decisions purely on muscle memory and instinct. My brain is firmly out-of-commission for the time being. I wouldn’t be so readily willing to go along with Graham’s plan if it wasn’t.
Deep down, I need someone to tell me what to do. Point me in the direction to go and I’ll go. I’m the broken limb of a tree swaying in the wind, a dull sword with no one to sharpen it.
This mission is rapidly disintegrating and taking me down with it like a patch of quicksand. I’m untethered again, but this time I’m reaching, jumping, willing to do anything to get it back. The shame of feeling so desperate, so pathetic, heats my face and punches bile up my throat.
The phone rings once. Twice. Three times. The line goes dead.
I stare at the receiver, thinking maybe it’s broken, then I re-dial. After two rings, there’s a click followed by silence.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep,” I bite out in a rush. My eyes dart over my shoulder, at an elderly woman puttering into the convenience store and a silver sedan that’s pulling up to a pump.
There’s a pause on the other end. I wonder if I dialed the wrong number.
“Hello?” Ximena’s voice comes through, thick with confusion.
I frown to myself. “Yes, it’s me. Listen, I?—”
“Hello?” she repeats. Muffled murmurs sound on the other end. She starts speaking again, but it’s far away. “No, sir, no one on the other line.” More conversation. “Yes, it has to be a mistake,” Ximena finishes, voice loud and clear this time.
Behind me, Graham’s footsteps begin to approach.
Before I can get anything else out, the call ends, and I’m left staring again at the phone in my hand. My fingers coiled around the handle go numb and clammy.
“We must get going,” Graham says. “This short of a stop was dangerous enough.”
I nod dazedly and follow him to the car. Josef wastes no time, peeling out of the lot and back onto the highway. The roaring engine fills the quiet while I attempt to gather my wits.
“Care to tell me where we’re going?” I prod.
I’ve nothing in my arsenal. I’m on the backfoot, forced into a corner with no one to watch my six. On the off-chance he’s unaware of his advantage, I can’t reveal my weak spot now that I’m completely alone.
Everything will be fine once I can get to my burner phone and explain it all to Ximena.
Protocol dictates a check-in with my handler, which would most likely result in a return to HQ and a new operation to handle the Consultant.
I’ve never actually seen anyone be demoted before.
I’m not sure what it entails. All the teams are kept so separate, that even if there has been a demotion, I probably wouldn’t know.
But there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.
“étretat,” he answers. “We’ll be able to lie low while we untangle this… predicament we find ourselves in.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” I reply with a thin, joyless laugh.
Graham gives me the same gentle smile from the alley outside the Galeries Lafayette Champs-Elysées, when we ran into Manon and the entire assignment was blown to smithereens before I even knew it.
“It’s a three-hour journey, you should try to rest.” Catching my skeptical glance at the back of Josef’s head, he quietly adds, “He is now wealthy enough to retire and buy his family an ocean-front home in Vietnam—but if that doesn’t put your mind at ease, I’ll keep watch.”
I attempt to lift the corners of my mouth, but it’s futile. Instead, I angle my body toward the window and make like I’m about to sleep, though I might not be able to for the foreseeable future.
The large gem on my finger winks in the sunlight. I yank it off and place it on the seat between us without another look.
Graham’s unwarranted kindness should spark suspicion.
I can’t recall the last time someone’s tried to protect me when they could just as easily leave.
ISA agents keep each other alive because it betters our own chances of making it back to HQ in one piece.
On assignments together, we’re a single organism.
There’s no feeling of tenderness or comradery in the field.
In fact, the only time I allowed myself to operate with anything but obligation, I lost the person that meant the most to me.
Graham’s worry appears to be entirely unselfish. But maybe all the years of relentless trauma have finally made me lose my marbles.
The car’s vibrations rattle against my skull as I lean back and allow my eyes to slip closed for a few moments.
Despite it all—running for my life, having a bounty placed on my head by an internationally prolific criminal—that weightless feeling begins flooding through my veins again.
Just as heady and addictive as it is dangerous.
Beneath the knee-jerk panic, all the possibilities I never considered have rolled out before me like a beckoning yellow-brick road.
Forked and winding and riddled with choices.
As if my tethers being loosed might not automatically mean I’ll freefall—maybe something waits beyond, like the ground my skull is plummeting toward could be a mirage.
And yet, if my skin is scraped, anyone could see that I’ve been hollowed out. Replaced by the crude tool Graham so astutely accused me of being. A blunt object without a soul masquerading as human. No thoughts or desires beyond the mission objective.
I’ll have to wait until I get my burner phone back, or maybe I’ll find a functioning payphone. Better to be fired or demoted than dead.
As I fade into an easy sleep, I think how strange it is that my body feels comfortable around Graham before my brain has caught up.