Chapter 47

Calais, France

Dagan felt like he had been punched in the chest by Tyson Fury.

He’d thought he knew heartbreak. His mother’s cancer, his father’s aneurysm, seeing Avan in the hospital looking like he was knocking on death’s door. All of it had hurt him in ways he wouldn’t have thought it possible to hurt. But this…this was worse. Because this…she was not the woman he thought he knew.

“We arrive,” Gautier announced from the front of the sub. “I regret I cannot get closer, but the shore, she is not so far. Twenty meters, peut-être? No more.”

“Dagan.” Chelsea reached for him. “Please, I promise I’ll—”

“Don’t,” he told her, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Another one was going to town in his right eye. “I can’t right now. Just…” He shook his head. “Just leave it alone.”

Her eyes were huge as she blinked up at him. He thought he saw her perfect mouth quiver, but he couldn’t be sure because he quickly looked away.

When Gautier popped the top on the sub, Dagan inchwormed his way toward the front until he could see through the hatch to the stars shining overhead.

Huh. The world is still spinning.

He thought that odd considering his world, everything he thought he knew about Chelsea, everything he thought he knew about himself, had been blown to shit.

A series of vibrations buzzed in his pocket, alerting him to a waiting voice mail. He extracted his iPhone, thankful for the waterproof case, and glanced at the screen. It read Unknown Number* But the little asterisk beside the text told him it was someone from Black Knights Inc.

Without looking at Chelsea—he couldn’t look at her; he was too confused, too dismayed—he held the phone to his ear and listened, his jaw sawing faster as each harried word entered his ear.

Thumbing off the device, he grabbed his backpack. “Change of plans,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

“That was Emily. She called to say they ran into some trouble. Looks like someone was waiting for them at the Eurotunnel terminal.”

“How could anyone possibly know—”

“Same way they found out about you and me, maybe? Surveillance cameras? But the how doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re safe. They’re headed to Christian’s uncle’s cottage in Port Isaac.”

“Christian has an uncle?”

“Apparently so. Their plan is to lie low and wait until the heat dies down or until we can figure out what’s going on. You and I are on our own for now. Get your pack ready. We have another swim in front of us.”

“Dagan, we—”

“Chelsea, now’s not the time.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to say anything about…” When she swallowed, he could actually hear the lump in her throat. “We need to call the others and fill them in on what’s happened,” she finished. “They need to know about Morrison and Spider.”

Right. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Oh yeah. Because she’d dropped a bomb, and he was still reeling from the explosion. “Do it,” he told her. “But be quick. I don’t like sitting out here in the open. Makes me twitchy.”

Chelsea pulled her phone from her back pocket. As she dialed, Dagan tossed his backpack through the hatch. It landed atop the sub with a hollow-sounding pong.

“Emily? We made it across,” he heard Chelsea say, followed by, “No. No. We’re fine. But Morrison isn’t.” Then she filled Emily in on Morrison’s death, his revelation that he wasn’t Spider, and the ensuing shoot-out with Surry. “Dagan thinks they used the CCTV cameras to track us. They’re probably doing the same to you. Change cars often. Away from the eyes of those stupid cameras if at all possible, okay? And one more thing…y’all be careful over there.” Her Southern drawl slipped out again, a testament to how little control she had over herself at the moment. Dagan refused to think too hard about that.

After she signed off, he pulled himself through the hatchway and sat atop the sub. The moon was half full and bright as a spotlight in the clear night. The air was warmer on this side of the Channel, but the metal skin of the vessel was absolutely freezing. It matched the ice that was quickly growing around his heart.

Shock was giving way to a cold, insidious kind of anger. How could she have kept all that from me? How could she? The question spiraled around and around inside his head, becoming louder each time. He understood the impossible position Edens had put her in. Hell, given the choice between family and a coworker, he’d choose family every damn time, too. But the minute Edens died she should have— He squashed the thought.

Shrugging into his backpack, he angrily accepted Chelsea’s when she handed it up to him. Despite everything, he couldn’t ignore the jiggle of her breasts when she wiggled her hips through the hatch. With the zipper on her down coat open, and her wet sweatshirt plastered against her front, her boobs were impossible to miss. Inexplicably, he felt a frisson of awareness.

He still wanted her, damnit. He didn’t know how to consolidate that feeling with the icy fury gaining momentum inside him. Looking for the answers in the twinkling lights of the city perched beyond the beach proved fruitless. All he saw was a distant clock tower, the flicker of headlights on the streets, and the long lines of hotels and condos that faced the water. When he searched inside himself, what he found was just as disjointed and even more confusing.

“I’ll take that.” Chelsea pulled her pack from his lap. She shrugged into the straps and turned to Gautier. “Thanks for the ride.”

Gautier’s shrug was classically Gallic. “I owed Angel a great debt, voyez-vous? Now debt is paid.”

Chelsea nodded but said nothing more before glancing at Dagan. He noticed she had as much trouble meeting his eyes as he had meeting hers. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Sure. I mean, I’ve spent all day treading water and saving your ass. Why should I stop now?”

He realized how harsh his tone was when she ducked her chin and blinked rapidly. Sighing, unsure if he was more pissed at her or at himself or at a world where a man like Ted Edens could make dumbass decisions that took the lives of good men and make threats that put an earnest young woman in an impossible position.

“Let’s go,” he said, ready to be back stateside so he could sit down for a damn minute and think about everything she’d told him and what it meant for him, for her, for them.

But just before they pushed from the top of the sub and slid into the choppy waters of the Channel for the third time that day, the hairs on the back of his neck twanged to life and his palms prickled.

Someone was watching…