Chapter 48

Cold.

That’s what Chelsea felt both inside and out as she trudged up the beach after Dagan. Her teeth chattered. Her muscles clenched tight in an effort to generate heat. But it was the frosty chill of his words, the icy way he behaved, that blew through her heart like a winter wind.

Love conquers all.

It was a pretty lie. People believed it because they wanted to believe it. Because they wanted something to cling to, something to combat the fear that the only person they could truly count on was themselves.

For a time, she had dared to believe the pretty lie.

She was such a fool.

“Stay behind me,” Dagan instructed in a harsh whisper.

From the pocket of his coat, he pulled the little revolver he’d taken off Morrison, flicked open the cylinder, and dumped the two remaining bullets into his hand. He blew through the holes of the cylinder to dry them and reloaded.

“What’s happening?” she asked, the skin on her back crawling.

“Someone is watching us.”

She wouldn’t have thought after the day she’d had that a drop of adrenaline remained in her system. But she felt a spike of the stuff shoot through her bloodstream. It helped to speed her steps.

Pulling her glasses from where she’d stored them in a zippered pocket on her jacket, she wiped the water from the lenses as best she could and slid them onto her face. The world came into focus, and the first thing she noticed was that light from the moon. It cast their shadows in long, inky streaks behind them, like they were being trailed by dark, malevolent specters. But other than that, she saw nothing. No movement. No watcher.

The word sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the freezing water dripping from her clothes and her soggy backpack. Then she reminded herself that just because someone was watching didn’t mean that someone wanted to do them harm. Heck, it could be a local or a tourist who’d spotted them lumbering out of the surf—and who wouldn’t stop to watch that?

“Where?” she whispered. Sand stuck to the bottoms of her wet boots, making each step heavier than the one before it.

“Not sure.” Dagan turned toward a parking lot nestled close to the beach. It was empty except for a panel van and one beat-up-looking Renault. The latter appeared to have left the assembly line sometime when Reagan was president.

“Not sure? Then how do you—”

“Instinct,” he cut her off. “A sixth sense. Years of finding myself in the middle of someone’s crosshairs. Whatever you want to call it. Someone is watching us. I can feel it.”

“Okay, then.” She swallowed the fear that rose in the back of her throat.

Just a local or a tourist, she reminded herself. Herself didn’t answer back, which meant the chick remained glaringly skeptical.

“Shit,” Dagan cursed, picking up the pace toward the parking lot when a man in a long, dark raincoat crossed the street and headed in their direction.

“The watcher?” she asked.

“Likely.”

“He doesn’t look too scary.” She breathed a sigh of relief. The man was bald and a good five inches shorter than Dagan. Despite that, she would bet he was pushing 250 pounds dressed and hung, as her daddy would have said.

“Bonsoir!” The man raised a hand. “Nice night for a swim, eh?”

His voice reminded Chelsea of an oil slick, all sticky and dark. And British. There was no mistaking that accent. She was instantly reminded of Surry and Morrison. The hairs along the back of her neck lifted. “Dagan—”

“Stay behind me,” he hissed.

She didn’t dare disobey, quickening her steps until she was right on his boot heels.

“You lost?” Raincoat asked, still moving in a diagonal line toward them. And that was as much a warning sign as anything. A normal person didn’t watch two fully dressed folks mysteriously emerge from the Channel at night and then try to start up a friendly conversation.

“No,” Dagan called. Then he added, “Stay where you are!” when the man stopped his diagonal intercept course and turned directly toward them.

“Don’t think I will,” Raincoat replied. Quicker than Chelsea would have thought possible for a man of his size, Raincoat dropped to one knee, pistol raised.

She barely had time to blink, but in that split second Dagan tossed her onto the sand, flattened himself over the top of her, and got off a shot before the other man could. The boom of the little revolver so close to her ear was deafening. It was immediately followed by a second head-rattling explosion.

Oh my Lord! she thought a little hysterically, two shots equaled two bullets. Their last two bullets.

Spitting sand from her mouth, she lifted her chin to see a bright-red patch of blood flowering in the center of Raincoat’s chest where the halves of his London Fog flapped open. Even from a distance of fifty feet, she could make out the whites of his eyes as they rolled back in his head. He toppled sideways, his face half buried in the sand.

“Let’s go!” Dagan grabbed her arm directly over her wound and yanked her to a stand. Pain lanced through her, but he didn’t give her time to drag in a breath before he pulled her into a sprint. “We have more company!”

She glanced around and saw two men, one to the north and one to the south. They were both the length of a football field away, but they moved with a speed that left no doubt they were intent on closing the distance and doing it fast. If she wasn’t mistaken, the moonlight glinted off a nickel-plated pistol in the hand of the one to the north.

“Gun!” she rasped, willing her legs to churn faster. When did the beach turn to quicksand? Her thigh muscles screamed with the effort, but every step seemed to get her nowhere.

“I know! Hurry!”

She was trying, damnit!

Without missing a step, Dagan reached down and snagged Raincoat’s weapon as they charged by him. Five seconds later, her boots hit the parking lot’s concrete surface and they ran toward the Renault. Dagan used the butt of Raincoat’s weapon to smash the driver’s side glass. His first blow only created a spiderweb crack in the surface. The second blow was the charm. The tempered glass shattered. He reached in and quickly unlocked the door.

“Get in!” he yelled.

She had to crawl over the gearshift. The wet hem of her jeans got stuck on something, but she managed to unhook it and slide into the passenger seat. When she turned, Dagan was already in the driver’s seat ripping the plastic covering from the steering column.

Her heart was going nuts behind her breastbone. When she lifted a hand to adjust her glasses, she saw how badly it was shaking.

In contrast, Dagan was as calm as a yoga instructor. His fingers flew beneath the column, searching through the various wires. When he found the ones he was looking for, he went to work on the insulation around the wires.

She wondered why he hadn’t chosen the van. Not that it appeared extra speedy or anything, but at least it looked like it had been serviced in the past few years. The Renault on the other hand? Yeah, no. Then again, the little subcompact was too ancient to come equipped with an alarm or antitheft device, so perhaps it was the better choice. She’d determine that if and when the crusty thing started.

“Status report,” he said, not looking up from the column. He put the pistol he had taken from Raincoat on the dash, and she noted that the gun black was worn from the trigger. It was obviously a well-loved and well-used weapon. That gave her the willies. “Chels!” he barked. “Status report, damnit!”

“Huh?” She blinked.

“How close are they?”

“Oh, uh…” She peeked out the window. “The one to the south is still fifty yards away. The one to the north…maybe thirty.”

“Okay. Duck down onto the floorboard. This is going to be a close one.”

Oh, Lord! Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! She wasn’t sure if she was really praying as she slipped out of her backpack and folded herself as tightly as she could into the space between the passenger seat and the glove box.

The car smelled like stale cigarette smoke and old oil. Her face itched from the sand clinging to it. And the taste of fear was sour on her tongue. It was odd the things she noticed when she was seconds away from being gunned down and—

Dagan sparked two wires together, and the Renault coughed to life.

Hallelujah!

He wasted no time putting the car in reverse and pulling from the parking spot. He’d shifted into first gear by the time the first bullet blew through the Renault’s metal frame and lodged into the middle of the passenger seat. The passenger seat where she would have been sitting if—

He gunned the little car, working the clutch and shifting through gears. By the time he reached fourth, another bullet slammed into the vehicle. This time, she couldn’t see where it hit. The back quarter panel maybe? Which was good, right? It meant they were leaving the shooters behind.

She peeked up at Dagan. She could see the muscles in his jaw working even through the pelt of his beard. His eyes were as hard as stone.

“Okay to come out?” she asked, her throat unbelievably dry. She swallowed, but she didn’t have enough spit left to do herself much good.

“Give it a few more minutes. I want to make sure we’re not being followed.”

Given the way he whipped the vehicle around corner after corner, she figured their route was too dizzying for anyone to track. But she obeyed him nonetheless.

One minute stretched to two. Two quickly became ten. Chelsea stopped counting when her left foot fell asleep and the material of her coat began to dry. The lights of the city gave way to the darkness of a country road. Only when trees whipped by the Renault on either side did Dagan visibly relax.

“Okay. You can come out now.”

She’d been folded in a ball so long that it took some effort to climb into the passenger seat. Pins and needles went to work in her left foot as she glanced behind them expecting… What? She wasn’t sure. But after everything, after being found at every turn, after feeling safe only to be accosted and shot at on both sides of the Channel, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see headlights behind them and closing fast.

Fortunately, all that showed in the red glow of the taillights were the dairy cows in the fields on either side of the road. Their black-and-white sides looked like big bucolic Rorschach tests. After a while, Chelsea’s breathing returned to normal. Her heartbeat soon followed suit, and she turned to Dagan.

“How the heckfire did they know where to find us?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How could they possibly have—”

“Surry saw the sub,” he interrupted. “It’s possible he was able to pass on the information before he died. And Calais is the obvious point of entry into France, so…” He shrugged. “It wasn’t too much of a stretch.”

“If this is all Spider’s doing…”

“I’d bet my left nut it is.”

“Then the man is faster, smarter, and deadlier than we gave him credit for.”

“Which is why we need to get back home as quickly as possible. Pull up a map. I need you to navigate me to that private jet airport Emily talked about. What was the name of it again?”

“Paris–Le Bourget.” She dug her phone from her pocket and brought up Google Maps.

For a long time, they sat in silence that was only broken when she told him to make a turn. It was a cutting emptiness she desperately wanted to fill.

Peeking over at him, noting how the lights of the dashboard created fascinating shadows over his hard, uncompromising face and how the wind from the shattered window and wide-open vents tousled his drying hair, she finally said, “Dagan, I just need to tell you that—”

“Chels, unless whatever is about to come out of your mouth has something to do with this mission or getting us to the airport, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk. I need to think.”

“I just wanted to apologize again and say how much I—”

He held up a hand, stopping her mid-sentence.

“Dagan, please. Just let me—”

He shook his head, and she bit down on her tongue. He’d closed his ears to her—likely his mind too. Trying to talk to him would be as helpful as carrying on a conversation with a brick wall.

The adrenaline that had raged through her system left an acidic residue behind. It strafed her nerve endings raw. After the day’s twists and turns, shoot-outs and narrow escapes, the peace of the country road felt impossibly contradictory.

“I should probably call Emily and let her know what happened,” she finally said. That fell into the first category of his mission-slash-directions stipulation, right?

He grunted his agreement, but she wanted more. She wanted to hear his voice. Needed to keep the lines of communication open. She knew how quickly silence could build on itself until it felt too big and wide and deep to overcome.

“Dagan?” She thumbed on her phone and dialed Emily’s number. “Don’t you think—”

The look he flicked her stung more than a slap to the face. He was on to her. He knew her game and wanted no part of it. As far as he was concerned, the lines of communication had been clipped, and there was no telling when or even if they would ever be repaired.

She blinked away the tears that stung her eyes. She would rather he scream at her, rail at her, call her names. At least then she would know what he was feeling. What he was thinking. At least then she would—

“You on your way to the airport?” Emily answered in lieu of a salutation.

“We are.” Chelsea filled her in on what had happened at the beach. “Just thought you all should know.”

“For the love of Fielder Jones.” Emily sighed. “I’ll be glad when you get back stateside and figure this mess out. If I have to spend too much time cooped up with these cretins, I—”

“Cretins?” Chelsea heard Christian say in the background. “It takes one to know one, darling.”

“—Might just commit mass murder,” Emily spoke over him.

“Once again,” Christian said, “I ask you: With what weapons you plan to commit this mass murder since we’ve bloody well left everything that goes boom back at Rusty’s?”

“And again…” Emily came right back at him. Chelsea could tell Emily had turned from the phone because her voice was fainter. “I’d like to remind you of two things. One, I’m very creative. Two, you have to sleep sometime.” Emily’s voice became louder as she spoke directly into the receiver again. “Tell me, Chels, do you remember the news story of that woman who waited until her cheating husband fell asleep before supergluing his dick to the inside of his leg? I’ve always appreciated her ingenuity and—”

“You are a complete nutter!” Christian wailed.

“Never said I wasn’t.” There was laughter in Emily’s voice.

“Holy duck fuck!” Chelsea heard Ace shout. “Either you two cut the shit, or I’m going to call Don King and go ahead and make this an event.”

There was a beat or two of silence following that outburst. Then Emily huffed. “Men… They’re impossible.” In a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “And British men are the worst.”

“Uh-huh. Right. Keep telling yourself that, sister,” Chelsea said. If her day hadn’t put her in a terrible temper, and if she weren’t terrified that she had lost Dagan for good, she might have enjoyed Emily and Christian’s banter. As it was, it only gave her a headache.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Emily demanded.

“Nothing. I really need to go. Stay safe, Em. Stay away from the cameras when you can. Hopefully once Z and I”—was it her imagination or did Dagan flinch when he heard his nickname?—“are back stateside, we’ll be able to get this mess cleaned up and it’ll be safe to call you all home.”

After they’d said their good-byes, and after Chelsea had returned her phone to her pocket, the car once again filled with silence. There was only the hum of the Renault’s engine, the howl of the wind through the broken window, and the slight whistle of the heat blowing through the vents.

Chelsea was reminded of the Silence Charm Hermione Granger had used on a Death Eater during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. When she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she finally said, “Thank you.”

Dagan didn’t look at her, but thank goodness the Silence Charm had been broken. “For what?” he asked.

“For back there on the beach. For saving my ass. Again.” For the record, she was still obeying his edict. She was only talking about the mission.

Muscles ticked in his jaw, causing the Beard to twitch. His moonshine voice no longer sounded smooth and distilled. Now, it was dark and harsh. “Just doing my job.”

Annnnddd there they were again, words so cold they left a thick layer of ice around her heart.

She turned the vents more fully toward her, trying to get warm. It was a wasted effort. She would never be warm again. Dagan had taken the fire of his passion, the heat of his love from her, and all that was left was a cold, aching void.