Chapter 21

Folkestone, England

Rusty Parker’s home wasn’t what Emily would have expected from an outdoorsman.

It was three stories of blue-painted exterior, with an interior that managed to be both chic and warm. Neutral walls were covered in eclectic artwork—most having some sort of nautical theme. Big, comfy furniture was home to the occasional throw pillow. And the old oak floors were so heavily lacquered that she would swear she could see her reflection in the places not covered by brightly hued rugs.

She had chosen the top-floor bathroom to shower off the salt and foam from the Channel—neither smell had proved very pleasant when her body heat had begun to enhance them on the walk from the pier to Rusty’s house. As she toweled her hair dry and made her way to the bottom floor to join her freshly bathed coworkers in the living room, she realized she was out of ideas on how to get them off this giant, pain-in-the-ass rock known as Great Britain.

Rusty had been her ace in the hole.

“So what’s the plan now?” she asked before she’d stepped off the bottom tread.

Strategizing, preparing, taking action…those were her fortes. Sitting around twiddling her thumbs and scratching her ass had always made her feel twitchy. In fact, she was pretty sure that had there been such a diagnosis when she was a kid—or if her parents hadn’t been so busy looking for love in all the wrong places—it might have been determined that she had a touch of ADHD.

Ace was on the phone and lifted a finger for silence. Never something Emily had been very good at, but she obligingly bit her tongue. Then, after a few seconds during which he said a lot of “okays” and “roger that’s,” he finally thumbed off his phone and sighed.

She didn’t like the sigh. Sighs like that usually meant bad news. Paulie Konerko had heaved one very similar sigh when he told the press back in 2014 that he planned to retire from White Sox baseball—a loss she continued to mourn. Her mother had sighed like that when she told Emily she was divorcing her third husband, a man Emily had loved and adored. Richard, her FAS, had heaved a sigh that sounded a lot like Ace’s when he had called her a heartless bitch and told her that he couldn’t work with her another day.

When she thought about it, the list of times she’d heard sighs like that seemed endless.

“Ozzie’s having trouble accessing Morrison’s data,” Ace said. “Something to do with another hacker throwing obstacles in his way.”

“Ruddy inconvenient,” Christian grumbled.

Ace shrugged. His wet blond hair looked almost brown in the low lights of the lamps parked on the big oak end tables. The gray day’s mood had turned from mildly unhappy to full-on sulky. Rain was imminent.

March in England. Gotta love it.

“He says he’ll beat the fuckhead—his word for the guy, not mine—but it could take some time,” Ace explained. “In the meantime, Angel has changed his destination. Instead of Calais, he’s on his way to Le Touquet. Apparently he knows a guy who has a submersible we might be able to use.”

Emily blinked, her mind stopping on the word submersible. “Is that covert operator speak for a flippin’ submarine?”

“A small one.” Ace nodded.

As if size made a difference…er…at least in this particular case? Big or small, a submarine was a submarine. Emily tried to comprehend how, from this morning until now, they had managed to veer off the road and careen crazily toward that little place she liked to call O’Shitsburgh.

Or maybe that should be Underwater O’Shitsburgh.

“Do we, uh… Do we want to know what this friend of Angel’s does with a submarine off the coast of France?” she asked.

“Probably not.” Ace made a face. “This is Angel we’re talking about.”

Right. Jamin “Angel” Agassi. Not his real name.

In point of fact, Emily didn’t know his real name. She wasn’t entirely sure anyone back at BKI did either. What she did know was that Agassi was a former Israeli Mossad agent who had run into a heap of trouble. Trouble so big and bad he had been forced to abandon his post, abandon his country, undergo extensive plastic surgery to completely change his looks, and then, you know, have his vocal cords scoured so that voice recognition software couldn’t identify him.

As if all that wasn’t intriguing—or spooky—enough, after he had come to work for BKI, he had taken on a string of blacker-than-black assignments that had mostly kept him overseas. Emily had only met the man twice. Each time, she had been taken aback by his near-flawless beauty. Whichever plastic surgeon had done the work on him had been a Rembrandt. A true artist. No joke. She thought the Black Knights had been right to give him the nickname Angel.

With black, wavy hair and piercing eyes that looked like they held a thousand secrets, he was downright otherworldly. Which, quite honestly, creeped her out. And made her not trust him.

Not entirely, anyway.

Then again, beggars couldn’t be choosers. If Angel and his friend with the submarine could get them off the island, she’d thank her lucky stars and him.

“So then the plan will be to hop onto…er…into this dude’s submarine and Captain Nemo our asses across the Channel?” She tried not to imagine the giant squid from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea wrapping its long, muscular tentacles around the vessel and dragging it down to the black depths until the hull buckled and—

Squeeeeeeeee! The kettle on the stove began singing its ear-piercing tune. On the heels of the giant squid imagery, it made Emily jump.

“Pretty much,” Ace agreed. “Assuming Angel can find this friend of his, and also assuming this friend of his will be willing to help. Angel says it could take an hour or two to locate the guy. He’ll give us a call once he does. But there’s a catch.”

“There always is,” Christian muttered on his way past Emily. He sauntered into the kitchen where Zoelner was busy washing and redressing Chelsea’s wound. After pouring himself a cup, Christian dropped in a teabag and strolled back to the living room.

Emily couldn’t help but notice he carried himself with an easy, almost lazy confidence. It stirred something deep inside her. Something she promptly ignored.

Once bitten, twice shy, baby. She would not mess up the good thing she had going with the Black Knights. Although one look at Christian, and she was sorely tempted.

“The submersible is only big enough for the pilot and two passengers,” Ace said. “So sneaking us all across will take hours.”

Emily frowned. “But really it’s just Chelsea who needs to sneak across, right? Spider and his contacts inside the British government don’t know about the rest of us.”

“Thanks for the all-for-one and one-for-all attitude, Em!” Chelsea called from the kitchen.

“You know I love you like my luggage!” Emily called back. Then, “But seriously, we could load Chelsea into the submarine, and then the rest of us could grab a ferry across or else take the train through the Chunnel. All on the up and up. Easy as you pleasy.”

Plus, the plan had the added benefit of allowing Emily to avoid a chance run-in with a giant squid. And yes, she knew that particular concern was ludicrous, but that didn’t mean it went away. Obviously she’d read Twenty-Thousand Leagues when she was too young and too impressionable.

Where had her parents been?

Oh yeah. Out. They had always been out. Each of them more concerned with finding the next love of their life—and the next, and the next, and the next—than looking after their own daughter.

“Good point.” Christian’s eyes darted to his watch. “On that note, and since it seems like we’ll have a while to knock about regardless, what say we toddle over to the local pub? I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s going on sixteen hundred, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’m getting peckish.”

“Chelsea can’t go out.” Emily glanced over her shoulder at the woman under discussion, giving her a wink that said, See? I got a sister’s back. “Not with her mug splashed all over the news.”

“We’ll fetch her back something,” Christian insisted.

“But Rusty said there was food in the fridge.”

“Tuna salad, a block of cheddar cheese, and a carton of milk do not a meal make, darling.” Just like always, the endearment gave Emily a little thrill. “Besides,” he continued, “if we go ’round to the pub, it’ll give us a chance to have a pint and see if we can come up with a viable alternative, should Angel’s friend not come through for us. You know, drink things through, as is the custom of my people.”

Christian Watson was English through and through, right down to his love of Earl Grey and beer. Both served warm. Bleck!

“You guys go,” Zoelner called from the kitchen. “I’ll stay here and keep Chelsea company.”

I just bet you will, Emily thought, hiding a smile. She knew the two of them needed time alone to work out their shit, so she was quick to jump on the bandwagon and add, “Come to think of it, I could really benefit from a plate of fish and chips.”

“Good girl!” Christian clapped his hands and plucked his coat from the hall tree on the way to the door.

And that was how, two minutes later, Emily found herself walking down a quiet Folkestone street while all of England was on the hunt for her friend and coworker.

Life as a supersecret agent was weird indeed. People expected that it was all gas, no brakes. But the truth of the matter was that between bouts of chasing down the bad guys and running for their lives, there were long stretches of the everyday. Laundry. Bills. A walk to the pub for fish and chips because, you know, a girl needs to eat!

She contemplated the surrealism of it all as a light drizzle began to fall.

Gotta love England, she thought again. Chancing a glance at Christian, she admitted the man had more jawline than any mortal should. Gotta love Englishmen too, she silently added.