Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Noah’s staring up at me.
Smiling, laughing, thirteen years old and innocent. We’re playing in the empty field by our foster home. The one we lived in before Raffaele found us.
Then he’s twenty-four, laying on the icy ground, the hole in his stomach spitting blood at an unstoppable pace.
Streaks of crimson shine on his brown cheek, now sallow, from where I desperately held onto him.
Still the same face from all those years ago.
Screwed up in agony, amber eyes glassy and hopeful.
My shaking fingers, dripping and warm with a mix of his blood and my own, reach to cradle his head once again.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Noah? Can you hear me? I’m so sorry.”
His lips part soundlessly. I kneel closer.
Noah’s breath is cold against my neck. He’s leaving, little pieces of himself falling through my fingers like grains of sand, and I’m helpless.
In the haze, I think my arm might be ripped off.
I don’t care. The moon overhead makes the road sparkle. It’s sickening.
I start pleading.
“Please,” I’m saying, “if you stay with me, help will be here. You’ll get to the hospital, you’ll be safe, okay? I’ll get you as many pudding packs that you want, and when you’re out, we’ll finally take that vacation together, yeah?” My voice begins to crack.
His eyes are unfocused when I pull back. There’s a faint wheezing falling from his mouth.
“No,” I demand, pressing my hand harder onto his gaping wound.
The blood squelches and streams lazily to the puddle at my knees.
I’m soaked in it now, staining more than my clothes.
“You’re not allowed to do this—do you hear me?
You can’t leave me alone. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.
We’re… we’re family, Noah. Please don’t leave me alone, I can’t?—”
Noah’s wet hand grips my wrist.
“Don’t—” He gasps, a guttural noise choking his throat.
His hand goes limp.
I’m being shaken awake.
It takes me longer than usual to come to my senses, reaching for my gun and aiming before my eyes completely focus on my target.
Graham.
His hands are up, and he looks about ready to dive out of the line of fire.
“What’s wrong?”
My chest’s heaving and I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins. Every sense is on edge, ready for a fight, waiting to be directed.
“You were having a nightmare,” he replies matter-of-factly.
I blink and set the gun down. “I don’t have nightmares.”
Except the edges of my hair are plastered to my neck, and my sweater is thick with sweat. My mind’s hazy, but I chalk that up to the life-altering discovery of the previous night. It would’ve been a convincing lie if it weren’t so obvious.
I clear my throat and swing my feet to the floor. It’s midday, based on the sunlight streaming through the open curtains.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?”
Graham gives a casual shrug. “You needed it.”
“Did you… did you get any sleep?”
“I’ll sleep in the car.” He inches closer. “What were you dreaming about?”
I drag a hand over my slick face. “Nothing.”
“You said someone’s name.”
He has my attention now.
“Noah,” Graham adds, and I feel like emptying my stomach again.
It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone else say his name since he was alive. Usually, those who know have referred to that night simply as Chelyabinsk. As if they’d rather ignore the loss than risk having human emotions.
I swallow, sit up against the pillows, and empty the water glass that’s appeared on the side table.
When our eyes meet again, I can’t even pretend to be prepared for this conversation.
In the matter of an interrogation, I’ve been trained to remain calm, adhere to my cover story, and refuse to give any information away with my body language.
Except the only secrets left to protect are my own. The realization sets me on unstable ground.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Graham speaks quietly, with the earnestness of someone who continues to read my mind. “But I’d love to hear about it, if that’s something you want.”
Want.
I clear my throat. “It’s not… currently pertinent.”
Several seconds pass.
Graham nods and pushes his hands into his pockets. “I made breakfast,” he says, motioning to the stairs with his chin. “Meet me down there?”
I reply with a weak smile.
My stomach, the emptiest it’s been in years, rumbles all the way through my five minute shower.
After a change of clothes, I’m a new woman.
Downstairs, Graham’s set a spread of food on the tiny kitchen table, and I begin to wonder how long he spent cooking.
Or if he’s ever cooked before. After a cursory scan of the kitchen and the living room, one might even wonder if he waited to eat.
That would be fatuous. Highly impractical.
We make conversation over omelettes and toast an
d whatever else he scavenged from Alban’s fridge. If I let myself forget about why we’re here and who we are, it’s strangely pleasant—the kind of dull peace I once ridiculed.
After we’ve finished, though, there’s nothing to do but confront reality.
“We can’t stay here,” I start. “Besides the fact that we’ve probably already overstayed Alban’s welcome, it’s too close to Paris.”
“I have a flat in Edinburgh.”
“No—that would be one of the first places they check.”
Graham nods slowly. “That leaves… nowhere.”
“Regardless, we need to get out of the country.” I’m thinking out loud now, and I can’t describe how strange it feels to be the one creating a plan and calling the shots.
Slightly cathartic, definitely terrifying.
“If we’re careful and we pay in cash, we can stay in hotels along the way.
Assuming Paris is the Consultant’s home base, it’s time we try to even the playing field and get to more neutral ground. ”
“His reach is far, Sloane.”
“And there’s nothing we can do about that,” I reply. “All I know right now is that we need friends—and I… don’t have any.”
He shrugs. “Nor I.”
“Alban, Claudette…”
“Not friends.” A rueful grin tugs at his lips. “Colleagues, perhaps. People in my orbit who like to keep me on their side.”
Another point for my complete miscalculation of Graham. Or maybe I too quickly accepted the information I was given, trusting my source over the real person. There’s no use dwelling on all my deficiencies or the ways I was ill-prepared to get us out of this—at least not at the moment.
“Well, our best bet is… England,” I say, “you still have your citizenship, so if we end up needing it, we’ll have someone on our side.”
Graham hums. “If we avoid Scotland Yard, that should work.”
“The entire… police force.”
“Indeed.” He gives me a sheepish grin. “I fear they’re not my biggest fans.”
Falling forward onto my hands, I massage my temples for a few seconds before heaving a sigh and settling back into my chair. “Lucky for us, I might know someone who can help.”
Just admitting it out loud makes me want to run outside and jump off that cliff.
I ignore the nerves tingling at my fingertips by helping him clean the mess we made and pack the car.
In the bathroom where I threw up last night, I tuck my gun under the back of my waistband and secure my knife in my boot.
I tug at my white-blonde hair, far too recognizable for my liking, and glower at the dark roots.
I’m fresh-faced today—looking the most rested I have in months, honestly—wearing a pair of overpriced jeans and a dark green turtleneck.
A color which I’ve decided I quite like.
The color’s beside the point, though.
This particular outfit is loose but slim, with enough stretch in the denim to make maneuvering any situation seamless. I don’t want trouble. But I do expect it.
Years of training and field experience is both a blessing and curse.
Outside, Graham pops the driver’s side door open before rounding the hood and claiming the passenger seat, mumbling something about needing his beauty rest. I’m about to slip inside when a cool, salty breeze wafts through my half-dried hair and makes me turn.
The afternoon sun, darkening to gold and casting long shadows over the garden, tingles across my skin.
I drag a deep breath and my eyes slide shut.
There was life before I met Graham, and now there is only life after.
I am not the Sloane from a year ago, or a month, or even a week.
Whoever I am now, she’s a stranger—a blank shell I find myself in, drifting rudderless yet directed by the base, animalistic instinct to survive.
So, I put one foot in front of the other.
Maybe I haven’t been in charge of my own destiny since I was fourteen and naive, but at least I know how to satisfy that instinct.
I know it better than I know myself.
Unfortunately, I have a less-than-stellar track record of making sure other people remain breathing. My unique skillset lies somewhere in the opposite.
But that was then, and this is now.
I haven’t fully grasped where we’re going or what we’ll do when we get there—that’s always been Mateo’s job description—but I know at the end of this, the Consultant needs to be behind bars.
The ISA will wonder, at first, where I’ve gone or if I’m alive.
Then they’ll mark me as Missing, Presumed Dead and proceed with their lives, claiming the Consultant’s arrest as their own when he’s delivered to them on a silver platter.
I’ve no interest in burning the ISA to the ground, however corrupt they may be. I’m well acquainted with the power they hold and how easy it would be to quell any whispers of mutiny. Raffaele designed it that way—he’s untouchable. Choosing to vanish is the best case scenario.
Graham will… he will be safe, wherever he goes. He’ll be free. I’ll make sure of it.
When my eyes open, I could swear the colors appear more vibrant. Most likely a trick of the light.
I fall into the driver’s seat, locking the doors with a resigned huff, and am nearly startled at the sound of Graham’s snore.
He’s sleeping with his hands clasped across his lap and his head tipped perfectly backward, the picture of elegance if it weren’t for the guttural noises falling from his lips.
A single lock of wavy, near-black hair hangs over his forehead, as if it springs loose every chance it gets.
An involuntary smile forms on my lips. I don’t have any control over my limbs when my fingers reach out and push that renegade hair back in place. My arm freezes mid-air, and I stare at it, dumbfounded and backstabbed by the very muscles I spent so long training into submission.
I mechanically force my hands to the steering wheel and start the engine. My knuckles blanch around the leather. I can’t think about the magnetic pull that tows me closer as innately as my need to survive.
I’m distracted. He’s distracting.
Which is particularly inconvenient, all things considered.
Sooner or later, this will be over, and we’ll never see each other again. After the events of the last twenty-four hours, allowing him to walk free is an easy deal. But he will remain a thief, and I’ll… I’ll be no one. A ghost. To him and to the world.
That’s how it has to be.
My pulse gives a tiny lurch as I turn the car around and pull us back down the drive. At the bottom of the hill, where gravel becomes a dirt road, my gaze lingers on the cottage in the rearview mirror. A respite and a nightmare.
And the resting place for everything I once knew.