Chapter 35
Chelsea followed Dagan down the stairs on rickety legs. She was old enough to know that words were cheap. It was easy to say something in the heat of the moment. But it was another thing entirely when the chips were down and the truth was revealed.
Dagan reached the bottom step and turned, offering his hand. Scratch that, his paw—the man’s hands were too large and scarred and callused to be called anything else.
She reached for his fingers, and the instant they were skin to skin, a jolt of electricity zapped her system. Was it her imagination, or did the lights flicker? Would she always feel that white-hot frisson of awareness? If he were to touch her every day for the next fifty years, would she still feel a shock at the brush of his fingertips?
Please, Lord! Let me find out.
“In case it isn’t obvious,” Ace said when they walked into the living room. Joy of joys, the whole gang was gathered, grinning at them like a bunch of nitwits. “These two have finally admitted they’re hot to trot for each other.”
“More like ass over teakettle,” Emily chimed in. “According to Zoelner, they’re in love.” She made the word into two syllables. Luh-uv. “And as I said upstairs, another one bites the dust. It’s nearly enough to make a single girl want to scream and pull out her hair.”
“Mmm,” Angel hummed noncommittally. “I suppose congratulations are in order, then.”
The former Israeli Mossad agent looked at Chelsea with his dark, uncanny eyes. The man gave new meaning to the phrase Riddle wrapped in a mystery shoved inside an enigma. In all the time she had worked as the CIA liaison to Black Knights Inc., Chelsea had only met him on a handful of occasions. Each time, she had come away feeling slightly unsettled.
There was just something about Angel.
“Thank you for doing this, Angel,” she said. “You’re saving my bacon.”
“No thanks necessary.” He spoke with a precision that would make an English teacher weep with happiness and an accent that was impossible to place.
Chelsea reckoned both affectations were intentional.
“Well, now that the social niceties have been concluded, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” Emily said. “This has been one long-ass day, and I, for one, can’t wait to hop on that swanky private jet and catch some z’s. Adrenaline is hell on the body.” She shouldered into her backpack. When she had trouble with one strap, Christian obligingly helped her on with it. “You know”—she turned to the Brit and smiled—“you’re really not so bad.”
Christian clutched his chest. “My God! I’m having that put on a T-shirt.”
“Like you’d wear a T-shirt.” Emily rolled her eyes, then turned to Angel with a hand on the knob of the front door. “Say, Angel, what does this friend of yours do with a submarine in the English Channel, anyway?”
Angel’s face was expressionless. “He is not a friend. He is a…contact. And one would not necessarily call him a law-abiding citizen.” Drug smuggler, Chelsea thought, her stomach sinking. “Are you certain you wish to know the what, why, and how of his operations?”
Emily curled her lip. “Well, not when you put it that way. Jeez!”
“Very good.” Angel nodded. “Shall we go?”
“Uh, Angel?” Chelsea didn’t like the hesitation in her voice. But, lovesick puppy that she was, she really liked the way Dagan gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. How was it possible he could be so attuned to her and not know she was hiding something huge and life-changing from him? Please don’t let it be love-changing too! “How, um, how long will it take?”
She didn’t need to clarify. Along with being spooky, Angel was sharp as a tack. “Gautier’s vessel is small, but it is fast. He can have you to Calais in ninety minutes. Barring any course corrections he might need to make to avoid the tanker and cargo ships that pile through the Channel, of course.”
Gulp. She hadn’t considered that.
A series of images bloomed to life inside her head. A propeller striking the submarine. A loss of pressure. Her, Dagan, and Gautier—that sounded like a drug smuggler’s name if ever she’d heard one—sinking to their watery deaths.
“Right-oh.” Christian nodded. “It’s a piece of cake.”
“You’ll be in and out before you know it,” Ace added.
Rusty winked. “Easy breezy.”
“Says everyone who isn’t about to be squeezed into the vessel of a criminal named Gautier,” Chelsea groused, giving them all dirty looks. “And how will the rest of you be crossing?”
“It is my hope that Mr. Parker will be good enough to take his truck with us through the Eurotunnel,” Angel said. The train that ran beneath the English Channel was equipped to carry both passengers and vehicles. “Once we are on the other side, he can give us all a lift to Paris.”
“No problem,” Rusty assured him. “Done and done.”
“Thank you.” Angel nodded. Then he added, “If the online schedule is correct, Chelsea, you and Zoelner will beat us across by approximately thirty minutes. You will wait near the beach until we can come and get you. It is all very simple.”
Simple? That’s not a word she would have used. Not with a French drug runner and a submarine involved.
“You will want to wear coats,” Angel advised in that raspy, scoured-vocal-cord voice of his when she and Dagan had moved to don their backpacks. “The Channel…she is very cold.”
“Tell me about it,” Chelsea grumbled. The memory of that afternoon’s swim was all too clear in her mind’s eye. Then a terrible thought occurred. “We don’t have to swim out to the sub, do we? Where is it?”
“It is beneath the end of the pier.” Right. The pier. Good. Great. Her wounded shoulder chose that moment to throb dully. “I swam to shore,” Angel continued, and she noticed his jet-black hair was wet. His clothes on the other hand? Bone dry.
Huh. She wondered how he had managed that. Something similar to what they had done with the waterproof float bags, she hoped. Though she had the sneaking suspicion that he might have swum to shore—either clothed or naked—and then stolen dry threads off someone’s clothesline or out of someone’s dryer.
Stories of Angel’s deft hand when it came to five-fingered discounts abounded back at BKI. And if she needed further proof that those stories were true, Angel finished with, “But not to worry. I appropriated a dinghy for you.” Appropriated. Right. “It is tied on the beach beneath the pier. All you need to do is boat to the end of the harbor arm. Gautier is there waiting.”
Okay. So…she was about to hop into a stolen dinghy to row out to a drug-smuggling submarine, which she would then take across the busy English Channel, all while telling the man she loved that once upon a time, when she had been scared and dumb and faced with an impossible decision, she had chosen her mother’s happiness and memories of her father over him.
You know, just your ordinary, average day.