Chapter 40
CHAPTER
FORTY
It’s funny how easily you can avoid the man you have feelings for when you’re holding the order for his murder in your hands.
That is, until you’re stuck on a four-hour train ride with him.
Carmine booked himself a first class ticket, mumbling something about taking advantage of the few government work perks he could.
Jones is due to meet us in Glasgow, where she’ll have gathered a team of former colleagues she’s confident she can trust—“With ma whole heart,” she’d say, dragging out the third word.
And tomorrow night, we’ll descend on the Consultant’s compound in Scotland.
Less than twenty-four hours until Raffaele’s ticking clock is up.
Graham sits across from me in a suspiciously crisp three-piece suit. Without him bankrolling my wardrobe, I’ve been roughing it for days in the same clothes, washed and dried religiously each night at one of the NCA’s safehouses. He slings one leg over the other and smiles at me.
“This feels familiar, don’t you agree?”
A single, traitorous butterfly escapes in my stomach. I nod and angle myself toward the window, where urban greys have begun to blur into emerald greens. The butterfly lays twitching and broken where I stomped it.
“Not quite the same as first class, you’re right,” Graham continues as if I’ve responded.
The rumble of the train fills the silence.
“Thank you,” he says, “I do think I look rather dashing today.”
I send him a glare, which only broadens his smile. When I turn back to the window, intent on a cold shoulder for the foreseeable future, he tries again.
“Sloane—please tell me what I’ve done.”
Maybe it’s the earnestness in his voice, or maybe it’s that Graham has crawled under my skin and taken up residence as my last remaining soft spot.
But I prop my elbows on my knees and lean forward, hyper aware of all the other occupants in our cabin.
“I’m only focused on the assignment,” I reply sotto voce.
“The kind of people who will be in attendance—we’ll be walking into the lion’s den. ”
He takes the opportunity to grab my hands and I start to forget why, exactly, I was ignoring him in the first place. “Which would you like to see first—Rome or Kyoto?”
“I’ve already been to both,” I mumble quickly, face hot.
“That wasn’t my question,” Graham says. “I asked for your opinion.”
For one, blissful moment, my head fills with images of a thousand impossible possibilities—security, love, maybe even a family. And then I’m brought back to reality in a cruel twist of the knife as Raffaele’s voice echoes in my memory.
Kill Mr. Baudelaire. His life in exchange for my freedom.
I wrench my hands from Graham’s hold and settle back into my seat. It turns my stomach to relish his touch when I’m pondering his murder. His brows furrow for a second before something steely hardens his gaze.
For all I know, he could be leading us into an ambush.
A really, really, overly elaborate ambush, involving almost getting murdered by two ISA agents. I shake my head, jaw setting. There has to be a reason for all of this. Graham seems to be a central component, but why? He doesn’t stand to gain anything by placing himself in harm’s way.
Maybe it’s blind faith. Or maybe he really is who he’s shown himself to be.
I know how it looks on the outside. Carmine’s right to be suspicious—he’s following Graham’s lead, accepting the help, but with a gun pointed at his back.
They won’t hesitate to slap a pair of handcuffs on him the second this is all over.
He’ll be disappeared and safely tucked into that federal supermax.
I’m backed into a corner with only two options: kill or be killed.
What would a thief do, though?
He’d weasel his way out of this and leave us all pointing our guns at each other.
If London is concrete and glass, then Glasgow is bursting with life.
Graham and I are taking every precaution, checking into an inn on the other side of the city from the NCA, on the off chance we’re being watched.
Gaining entrance to the Consultant’s soirée will already be hard.
It’ll be insurmountable if the entire criminal world has been alerted to us cozying up to the feds only a few hours away.
Once I shoulder into my room, a rickety old thing that looks like it was once a closet, I drop my trusty duffel on the bed and dump its contents onto the quilt.
Gun, ammo, Kat’s throwing knives.
I carefully unsheath them and stare at the steel in my hands. She had them specially made by a blacksmith in Japan. The only piece of heritage she was allowed, and it was because the ISA could weaponize it.
A strange sensation blooms across my chest and my eyes sting.
I throw them, one by one, into the narrow door frame. Not as perfectly as Kat would have.
I’m angry again, but for the first time in years, hot streaks form rivers down my cheeks and drip off my jaw. I swat at them. They keep coming.
Maybe I should’ve killed Raffaele.
I’d probably be sitting in prison right about now, but at least Graham would be safe and I would be… alive. Prison can’t be that much different from the past decade of my life. Three meals a day, a roof over my head, no way out.
My nostrils are barely above water, and I’m treading, but my ankles have been tied by concrete weights.
I’m not sure how much longer I can keep surviving before someone else has to die.
Ensuring that I’m the one who walks away has been ingrained in me since my parents were killed—but maybe I don’t deserve to this time.
I find it deeply ironic that I’m considering falling on my sword now that I’ve finally discovered something I want to live for.
Someone.
All I’ll need to do is make sure Graham escapes once the Consultant is arrested. He evaded capture for so many years, surely he can do it for a little while longer.
Then, I will end the ISA once and for all. At least I’ll go down in a blaze of glory.
I wipe my face and stand, plucking the knives from the doorframe, scowling as a knock sounds on the wood. The inn’s so old that there are no peep holes, so I hide the knives behind my back and crack the door open.
Graham stands on the other side, half his face shadowed by the dim hallway lights.
He’s propped one hand against the wall outside, dress shirt half-unbuttoned, a satiny, black gift box tucked under his other arm.
I blink rapidly, hoping he can’t tell I’ve been in the throes of an existential crisis.
“I’m not sure what’s changed since last week,” he starts, eyes trained on the floor between us. “But if you’ll allow me, I’d really like a second chance, Sloane.”
I press between my ribs where the stabbing ache has started again.
Perhaps it’s selfish. Maybe I’m desperate, and not thinking straight, and Graham’s presence makes me feel like I’m a magnet and he’s solid steel. But when I reply with, “What do you have in mind?”, I don’t care about anything but the hopeful smile that curls on his lips.
Call it a dying woman’s final wish.