Chapter 41

He was dying.

He knew it as surely as he knew his mother had named him Steven Jonathan Surry.

The dark, nearly burgundy color of the blood on his hand when he lifted it away from the gruesome wound was highlighted by the relentless revolution of the lighthouse. His liver had taken the deathblow. And the pain… Oh, the pain was unlike anything he had ever known.

Pressing his blood-soaked hand back against his wound, he struggled to stand. His thoughts focused on his mother. He had failed her by failing Spider. But if, before he succumbed, he accomplished this one last task, then maybe…just maybe Spider would take pity on him.

He had heard stories of such. That if one were to fight for Spider ’til the end, Spider would have mercy.

The first step toward the end of the pier had Steven crying out. There was a breathtaking agony so deep inside. But he gritted his teeth, palmed his SIG, and pushed forward. His heart fluttered in an effort to pump what blood remained in his poor, ruined body. And by the time he made it to the railing, his boot was full of the stuff. It was warm and squished between his toes.

His vision blurred when he peered over the rail into the undulating water below. To his surprise and dismay, what he saw wasn’t the couple treading water back to shore. It was Beard. He was climbing into an oddly shaped vessel that rode low in the drink.

A submarine? If Steven hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would not have believed it. As for Chelsea? Regrettably, she was nowhere in sight. But he would take what he could get.

Lifting his SIG, he was disheartened to see his hand shaking. Needs must, he thought and stopped applying pressure to his wound so he could use his free hand to support his firing hand. He could feel his liver leaking faster.

Closing one eye and sighting down the barrel, he gathered his strength to fire. Oddly, his muscles refused to obey, and before he could force them to his will, the hatch on the vessel slammed shut with a loud gong! Then the whole thing sank beneath the waves. A quiet glug-glug and a faint eddy were the only things proving it had ever been there.

“No. No!” he cried, collapsing onto the pier.

Pain and anguish filled the spaces his leaking blood left empty. The echo of sirens was louder now. But he suffered no illusions that the local authorities would get to him quickly enough to save him.

He decided to use his final minutes to call Spider and beg. Not for his own life—that was already forfeit—but for his mother’s.

The mobile was hard to grip in his blood-slicked hands, but he managed to enter Spider’s number. When the man himself answered, his bored tone worked over Steven’s raw nerves like sandpaper.

“Sir.” Was that Steven’s voice? There was barely anything left of it. “I’m dying, sir. Sh-shot in the gut.” There was silence on the other end of the line, and Steven hurried to finish his report while he still had the breath to do it. “Morrison and I followed Miss Duvall from the fisherman’s house back to the Folkestone Harbor Arm. There was confusion. A gun battle. Miss Duvall and her partner escaped in a…a submarine. But not…” He panted against the pain. “Not before I killed Morrison. Had to. He was going to give you up.”

Finally Spider spoke. “Give me up? What do you mean?”

“They th—” Steven gasped when a sharp pain arrowed through his gut, making him nauseous. He thought it possible he might die while tossing his cookies. But then the sickness subsided and all that remained was unimaginable agony. “They thought Morrison was y-you. That’s why they infiltrated his systems. They were looking for proof to bring you down.”

He could hear Spider fumbling with the phone. Gone was any boredom in his voice when he said, “Any idea who they are?”

“CIA? I don’t know. Maybe an…interagency effort.” Between gasping breaths, Steven managed to tell Spider about the supposedly dead but surprisingly alive Christian Watson. “He is with four others. They left in the fisherman’s truck and are being followed by Ramón, Morrison’s driver. I think they have the thumb drive because I heard the man with Duvall admit that the device wasn’t on him, but that he could get it. It would just take a little while. There—” Another pain lanced through him, the blackness closing in. “There might still be time to locate the others and find the drive.”

“Yes. Yes, there might. Even so, I need to begin transferring and emptying any accounts tied to Morrison.”

A herculean task, Steven knew. But if anyone could pull off making millions of dollars disappear without a trace, it was Spider. “Please, sir,” he finished with a crackling wheeze. “My mother… She is innocent. She—”

“Not to worry.” Spider’s voice was calm, almost blasé. “You did as well as can be expected, I suppose. I knew Morrison was a liability from the beginning, but…” Spider’s voice trailed off. Or at least Steven thought it did. It was becoming difficult to hear. Steven’s eyesight was almost completely gone now. He suspected his ears were next. “Miss Duvall and her companion are likely headed to France,” Spider continued as if they were having no more than a friendly conversation, as if Steven wasn’t, in fact, dying.

“I would suspect they will be putting in at Calais as it is the closest point on the French side. I’ll have men waiting to take them out there. As for this Christian Watson fellow and the group traveling with him, I’ll ring up Morrison’s driver myself. Once I know the location of the rest of the group, I’ll send your backup to deal with them.”

Steven had never doubted Spider could right his own ship. The man gave new meaning to the word resourceful.

“I thank you for your service this day, Steven,” Spider added, but Steven didn’t want thanks. He wanted bloody assurances.

“Sir?” His voice was a bare whisper. “Please, my mum?”

“Will finish her days in the luxury she’s grown accustomed to,” Spider said, and Steven nearly fainted with relief. Or blood loss. Probably both. “Like I said, you did well today. I reward my loyal employees.”

“Thank you, sir,” he managed, though his mouth had filled with blood. The iron-rich smell assaulted his nose. He hadn’t the strength to spit it out, instead letting it slip unheeded from the corners of his mouth.

“You’re welcome, Steven. Now, be a smart chap and toss your mobile and your weapon into the Channel before you go. Best not to leave more evidence behind than necessary. Good-bye.”

The line went dead, and the last of Steven’s strength left him. He dropped the phone and his gun to the pier. It took him forever to nudge them over the edge but somehow, eventually, he accomplished it.

With his final task for Spider complete, he surrendered to gravity and toppled onto his side. The pain was less now. Which he knew meant his time was short. He wished he could still see. He would have liked to gaze one last time at the stars above. But he satisfied himself with visualizing his mother’s beloved face.

As he lay struggling to breathe, feeling his heartbeat go thready, he tried not to think of her coming heartbreak and disappointment. He had always been her little hero. Her good boy. But sometimes, due to circumstances beyond their control, even good boys turned into bad men.

He was a bad man. He could admit as much to himself. But it hadn’t always been so. Once upon a time, he had been one of the good guys, fighting to bring the criminals of the world, men like Spider and Morrison, to justice.

He wondered if a lifetime of doing right had been obliterated by the last three years when he’d done nothing but wrong in the almighty name of Spider.

What is the measure of a man?

He would never know. Because with that thought, his heart ceased to beat, his laboring lungs ceased to draw breath, and Steven Surry, once an honorable and decorated member of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service, died.