Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
I jolt awake when the surface I’m sleeping on gives out.
My fingers reach for the knife under my thigh before my eyes can focus. The car door swings open beside me. Afternoon sunlight warms my skin and I squint as Graham’s face appears above me, mussed hair illuminated by a halo.
The irony isn’t beyond me.
When I stand from the car and the door is shut, Josef pulls away and back down the long gravel drive. A man of efficiency.
The small cottage sits beside us, swathed by an overgrown garden of wildflowers and framed by rolling green hills. Beyond that, sparkling in the distance, a sliver of deep blue horizon. Birds sing in the trees overhead, branches dancing and tickling the briney air every so often.
It would almost be idyllic if not for the circumstances.
Crunching gravel underfoot alerts me to Graham approaching the house and leaving my side.
Protocol dictates I should follow, although I’m unsure if he’s even in my custody anymore.
What are the parameters here? If someone could give me a new book of rules, I’d be grateful—because prisoners aren’t in the habit of saving their captor’s life.
I’m in uncharted territory. And I’m not an explorer.
I trail behind him anyway, because the empty expanse of land surrounding us is beginning to border on eerie.
Through the garden and up a few steps, we stop at a large black door.
Every window of the cottage has shutters, no doubt for coastal storms, but I’m already thinking about how it might be to our advantage tactically.
I turn my back to the wall and scan our surroundings while Graham fiddles with something in his pocket.
A series of clicking noises brings my attention to the lock.
The lock which Graham is now picking.
“You can’t be serious,” I snap at him, ready to smack the tool away. “Where, exactly, does breaking and entering fall in the category of laying low?”
He tosses me a glare over his shoulder, but it’s more appealing than intimidating. Which is downright horrifying in itself.
“This is Alban’s vacation home,” he mutters.
“And how does that excuse the felony?”
He sighs and presses his forehead to the door, his fingers still working. “Will you please allow me to focus? The sea air causes locks to rust and I’m somewhat out of practice?—”
The whine of the hinges swinging open interrupts him.
“Nevermind, then.” Graham smiles and steps inside with a wink. “Rather impressive, don’t you think? One could say it’s like riding a bicycle.”
I give him a flat look and begrudgingly enter, locking the door behind me. “Remember what we discussed in the car?”
“Something about how heroic I am for rescuing you,” he replies, his voice dampening as he leaves the foyer and disappears through another doorway.
I huff out a groan and track the sound of flexing floorboards to a small living room with two sets of French doors and a fireplace.
Graham’s staring through the glass, arms crossed, and I choose to linger behind him and fixate on one of my own blonde hairs that somehow found its way to the shoulder of his wrinkled suit jacket.
Better to stay on task than allow myself to be distracted by the view.
“You said there’d be no more secrets,” I say, a lot more gently than I expected. “That you’d tell me everything I want to know.”
There’s an extended pause before he replies.
“Alban allows me free use of this house whenever I need to…”
“Evade the law?”
Shrugging his jacket off and tossing it onto a nearby couch, his shoulders lift with a silent laugh. “Yes, quite. No use in having to keep hold of a key when I’ve never met a lock I can’t pick.”
“I guess that tracks. And what about the?—”
Graham opens the door without warning, striding quickly down the brick steps.
Infuriating man. I follow him yet again, hopping to the ground and picking up my pace to catch him.
His legs quickly eat the stretch between the cottage and the field, and I’m embarrassingly flushed by the time I’ve managed to match his gait.
I’m about to grab his arm and stop him when we crest the low hill and a strong gust blows my hair across my face.
I yank the tangled hairs into submission, mouth open with a barrage of questions at the ready, and immediately snap my jaw shut.
We’re standing at the top of a cliff, balmy gusts tossing a thick blanket of green and fanning out across the cerulean ocean.
Mossy crags create chalky angles and rounded bluffs, towering over the rocky beach like a wall of verdure-capped steps.
I reach my palms out to trace the tops of the beachgrass, dry and prickling against my calloused skin, transfixed by the low whistling they make in the wind.
I’m not usually prone to overly flowery language.
The arts were often overlooked at the academy, favoring the study of military strategy and psychology instead.
And I’ve yet to require much knowledge of writers or poets for any of my covers.
Ximena is the only person I knew with an affinity for poetry, selecting a piece by Robert Frost for my passphrase.
Here, overlooking something so breathtaking, I wish—for the first time—that I had more words to describe it.
As the wind ebbs to a whisper just long enough to hear the waves crashing below, its fingers ruffling through my hair, an uneasiness begins to churn deep in my stomach. It’s not the emptiness or the quiet. My muscles aren’t jumping to examine our surroundings.
It’s an ache I can’t name, the one I’m usually adept at subduing and outrunning.
Here, though, it seeps into my bone marrow like lead and makes a home, sinking me into the soil.
The unease I feel isn’t from the threat of torture or the man behind the barrel of a gun—rather, the knowledge that something is missing or broken, and I’m not sure I can fix it.
Maybe I’d trade this boundless hunger for death as a soulless tool.
Or maybe here, at the top of the world, I can withstand a little pain for whatever waits on the other side.
“Monet painted the cliffs of étretat over eighty times,” Graham says, so low that it’s nearly carried away by the wind.
“He called it intoxicating—he was so desperate to properly capture its beauty, he became obsessed. It’s hard to imagine what would inspire that kind of inspiration until you’re here, walking where Monet likely walked. ”
I wish I could say I don’t understand, but I do, and it’s awful.
Graham continues, distracted by the waves below. “I’ve been all over the world, Sloane. The temples of Kyoto, the vibrant cityscape of Porto, a 12th-century Gothic cathedral in Edinburgh—but I find that it pales in comparison to the extraordinary simplicity of nature. Don’t you agree?”
“I do,” I say, more of a sigh than an audible response.
“Consider the greatest paintings of all time.” He half-turns to me, and a strange thrill shoots down my spine at the intensity in his eyes. “They’re not buildings, or works of man—they’re almost always depictions of the natural world that are taken for granted today.”
“I don’t think I know enough to disagree,” I reply with an involuntary laugh.
“Hills, oceans, mountains…”
“And people.”
Graham lifts an eyebrow with interest. “Correct, Agent. That is an aspect of nature that frequently eludes me.”
“I thought we said no more lies.”
“And what makes you think I’m not telling the truth?”
I lift my shoulders in a helpless shrug. “How can you claim to know so little about people, yet manipulate them so easily?”
A gust cuts through my sweater, a few degrees cooler now that the sun has dipped lower in the sky and begun to turn a shade of amber.
My gaze lingers on the shifting flames cast across the ocean so long that I almost forget I’m waiting for Graham to answer my question.
I should be focused on getting the necessary information to relay to HQ, not hanging on his next words like they aren’t completely irrelevant to our situation.
“You’ve spent more time with me, alone, than anyone at the International Security Agency.”
I send him an inquisitive frown. “Yes?”
“Yet you continue to assume I’m nothing more than a stack of documents in a folder compiled by someone who’d put me in a casket if they had the chance,” he says, so matter-of-fact that it feels as if I’ve been slapped.
“So, what would you like to know? Anything in the world, as long as you repay the favor.”
“Repay the favor?” I echo.
“A truth for a truth.”
My arms cross and I face the sea again. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Then perhaps I’m changing the conditions,” Graham replies. “I do believe you’re alive because of me—or does that mean nothing to you, Agent?” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, but I can tell he won’t be budging.
Massaging my temples, I let out a heavy sigh and turn on him. “I reserve the right to deny or redirect your chosen line of questioning.”
“Naturally.”
He starts to open his mouth again, but I cut him off. “How do you know we can trust Josef?”
“I told you. He is a very, very wealthy man now.”
“Money’s not everything,” I reply testily.
“Of course not.” Graham gives me a sidelong glance and a smile. “But men like Josef have been fighting for very nearly their entire lives. When given the choice between fighting for the rest of his days, or finally living—well, the price of his loyalty becomes clear.”
The toe of my shoes dig into the ground and I absentmindedly kick a pebble over the edge. “Sometimes loyalty is about more than your own desires.”
“You’re not a soldier, Sloane,” he replies, facing me fully. “Your devotion is to a private corporation that pledges fealty to neither country nor entity. It’s important to me that you know that.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Of course not.”
Indignant warmth crawls up my neck. “Who do you pledge your fealty to? King and country, or your own comfort?”
“Two more questions—” The corner of his mouth turns upward in a wily smirk. “—and you still owe me one.”
I wave my hand at him as if to say go ahead and refocus on the steadily setting sun.
He’s probably going to aim for something invaluable—insider details on the ISA, or pieces of information he can later use to negotiate his freedom.
The words, “I can neither confirm nor deny,” sit on my tongue and at the ready.
“Who were you, Sloane? Before the ISA?”
An unwelcome flush blossoms across my cheeks. I choke down a sputter and reply, “I don’t understand.”
“Good heavens—did they steal you from your cradle? Or were you born in a lab?”
“Shut up,” I mumble, and my lips form a smile against my will. “I never had a family, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It comes out easily, despite the rather painful lie, and the mocking voice in my mind begins to laugh. My own voice. So quick to forget, it says. Except I haven’t forgotten. I couldn’t, despite my best attempts.
“No parents? Siblings?”
“My parents died when I was a baby—drug deal gone wrong.” I’m not sure why I’m divulging more than absolutely necessary.
Time seems to be crawling, rolling by like molasses, making it difficult to remember who I am and why I’m here.
I can’t gather the energy to be upset by that.
“Do you still speak to your father?” I ask, abandoning any pretense of fighting this conversation.
My casual re-direct will go unnoticed. At least I hope.
“Not since my eighteenth birthday,” Graham replies. “He passed a week later. I, of course, did not attend his funeral.”
“And your mother?”
“She passed away when I was a child.” The muscles of his jaw twitch, but he recovers quickly into another easy smile.
My mouth twists into a frown. Based on the ISA’s records, Mrs. Baudelaire is alive and well. And Manon doesn’t need to use a cane to walk…
I shake it away and raise an eyebrow at him. “You dropped out of Eton College when your father died?”
“He nearly keeled over on the spot when I informed him I dropped out of Eton the moment I turned eighteen. The last thing I told him was that, as a legal adult, I had no interest in continuing a relationship with the man who terrorized us as children—and certainly not respecting his wishes.” His lips flatten, and my stomach lurches at the memory of Graham’s first-ever theft and the reason why his sister has to use a cane.
“He had disowned Manon long before, but he didn’t remove me from his will before he succumbed to the cancer.
His houses, his cars, all his money—enough for university tuition and a…
life of luxury, as you say,” Graham finishes.
“But you turned it down, only months away from Eton graduation.”
He tugs a hand through his hair and an errant piece falls over his forehead. It proves to be so distracting, I’m almost startled when he begins speaking again. “I offered it to Manon, but she was already well established,” he sighs. “We chose to donate it all to charity.”
“What about the estate in Paris?”
His eyes twinkle when they meet mine. “I believe that counts as another question, Sloane, but I suppose you’ve earned it. That house belonged to my mother.”
The rueful edge to his words is undeniable, even to the untrained ear.
A whispered, “I’m sorry,” forms on my tongue spontaneously.
“What ever for?”
My hands toss through the air in an attempt to look far more casual than I feel. “The ISA—I know they didn’t ask politely for access to your home… and it must be important to you.”
His trick with the fumigation and the hotel doesn’t feel so infuriating anymore.
“Color me intrigued,” he replies, leaning close to mutter, “that may be the first negative thing you’ve said about your employer since we met.”
“Whatever,” I croak. Turning on my heel, I hold my arms close to my body and start marching back toward the cabin. “You can stay out here in the cold all you like, in perfect view for a sniper, but I’ll be behind those nice brick walls over there with a warm fire.”
I’m not cold. In the slightest.
Graham’s deep laugh sounds somewhere between the wind and the waves. He falls in step with me, far too close and friendly for my liking.
My lips continue moving so that I can stop thinking about the wafts of cologne that reach from this distance. “It’s funny. You always struck me as a bored trust fund kid, thrill-seeking until you decide to retire with millions of unearned dollars,” I say.
“I can assure you, darling, all my money is well earned.”
“Don’t call me that.”
There’s a smile in his voice when he eventually replies, “You should know better than anyone how dangerous it is.”
“What?” I toss him an annoyed look.
“Assumptions,” Graham says, “they can be deadly.”