Chapter Twenty-Six
At the sound of the gunshot, Lucy whirled toward the door to the hall and reached for her firearm. Quinn grabbed the ladder and yanked on it with everything she had. It flew along the front of the bookcase and crashed into the back of the bodyguard. The force sent her sprawling. Her pistol skidded across the Oriental rug when she hit the floor.
Quinn bolted for the door that led to the family room.
“Stop her! I’ll get the gun,” Fitzhugh shouted.
Quinn was most of the way across the room when Lucy, having scrambled to her feet, lunged at Quinn’s lower legs and wrapped her arms around them like a defensive back making an open field tackle.
The floor raced up toward Quinn’s face. Her hands shot out instinctively to break her fall. Pain raced up her left arm and exploded in her shoulder when it took the brunt of her fall. Her chest and stomach slammed against the floor, forcing the air from her lungs.
Her eyes clamped shut and watered in pain as she gulped for air. She rolled onto her side and kicked to break the death grip Lucy had on her ankles. She jerked one foot free and blindly kicked in Lucy’s direction. She caught nothing but air. Quinn drew her knee up and opened her eyes. Target sighted, she drove the heel of her boot into the center of Lucy’s face. There was a sickening crunch followed by an indignant cry. Blood gushed from Lucy’s nose as wild-eyed, she let go of Quinn’s ankle, rolled onto her back, and cupped her hands over her face.
Quinn scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the door. She grabbed the door frame with a hand and slingshot herself into the family room. She darted across the room, dodging furniture, and burst into the hallway.
A gunshot rent the air and the large vase on the table next to her exploded. She ducked and dove for cover. Crouching, she peeked around the end of the bench she hid behind and saw Fitzhugh coming toward her with Lucy’s pistol in his hand.
Quinn lifted the hem of her jeans and grabbed the Baby Glock from the holster strapped to her calf. When James had handed her the firearm he’d told her to only use it in case of emergency. She figured this counted as an emergency.
She whipped the Glock around the end of the bench and fired off a shot in Fitzhugh’s direction. He let out a surprised bellow and disappeared through the doorway of the family room.
“James! Fitzhugh has me pinned down in the entryway.”
“On our way!” James replied through the earwig.
Fitzhugh popped into the hallway and squeezed off another shot. The bullet ripped into the wall behind her, raining down bits of plaster.
James appeared from behind the staircase with another man, his arm slung over James’s shoulder. Quinn couldn’t see his face well, but it had to be Ben. James leaned him against the newel post at the base of the stairway and let go of him long enough to spin around and fire off two rounds down the hall from which they’d just come.
“Quinn! Go! Wait for us in the car out front!”
“No! There’re shooters in both hallways. You can’t hold them both off and get you and Ben out the door. You go. I’ll cover you.”
“No way.” James jerked his head back when a bullet zinged past. He fired again at the same time as Quinn shot at Fitzhugh who’d popped his head out from the doorway. “You go! Now! Be safe!”
“I’m not having this argument with you again,” she growled.
James expelled a frustrated snarl and grumbled a few choice words. “Fine. Don’t move. I’ll be right back to get you.”
“Copy.” She instinctively ducked her head when part of the railing nearest her exploded and sent splintered wood flying in all directions.
James sent two more bullets down the far hall just before he and Ben headed for the door. At the same time, Quinn pinned Fitzhugh down by squeezing off four rapid shots. Ben staggered as they moved, but did so mostly under his own power. It was only a couple of seconds before James threw open the door and they ran outside.
The man who had been following James and Ben burst from behind the staircase and bolted for the front door. He was halfway across the entryway when Quinn took aim and fired. She missed, but the shot sent him swan diving to the floor.
While she was busy with the new threat, Fitzhugh came out from his hiding place and advanced down the hallway toward her. Quinn swung her pistol back toward Fitzhugh and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught him in the shoulder. He jerked and dropped to the floor.
Quinn thought that hallway was now clear, but Fitzhugh’s shouts had roused Lucy. The woman stumbled out from the library and lurched down the hall. Blood covered her hands and a murderous rage darkened her face.
Quinn couldn’t wait around for James to come back for her. With one guy crawling across the floor like a commando for the safety of the staircase, Fitzhugh down, and a bloodthirsty Lucy soon to be but not yet armed, it was her only chance to make a break for the open door. By her count, she had seven rounds left in the Glock. No problem.
She stood and fired twice down the left hallway, forcing Lucy to plaster herself flat against the wall.
As Quinn moved toward the front door, she fired at the commando guy and sent him skittering for cover. Her firearm was trained on him when movement to her left caught her eye. She glanced over to see Lucy raise her gun.
Quinn ran for the door. She tore out of the house right before a bullet embedded itself in the door frame. She didn’t look back and ran as fast as she could.
She ran to James. He stood next to the open door of a silver sports coupe parked twenty yards away. When she yelled his name, he spun around and his eyes widened. He looked at her and then his focus shifted to something behind her. “Duck!”
She hunched, but kept her feet moving. He stepped away from the open car door as he repeatedly fired his Sig at the front of the house.
Lungs burning, she sucked down the cold evening air and sprinted for the car. She dove into the front seat, scrambled over the center console, swung her legs around, and hunkered down in the passenger seat.
James climbed in behind the steering wheel and handed her his Sig.
He hit the ignition and the engine growled to life. He popped the clutch and smashed his foot on the accelerator. Bits of gravel sprayed up in rooster tails from the spinning rear tires. When they gained traction, the car launched forward. At the end of the driveway, Quinn braced for the upcoming high-speed turn. Pain erupted in her shoulder when her elbow pressed against the door. She hissed when she sucked in air through clenched teeth.
“Quinn? What is it? Did you get shot? Oh my God! You’re shot!” James sounded absolutely panicked. The back of the car slid when he cranked on the steering wheel and turned onto the lane, casting a glance at her at the same time.
“I’m not shot.” Despite the adrenaline coursing through her, she tried to keep her voice calm. “My shoulder got jammed when Ms. Badass tackled me. I’m fine.” After safely stowing the Sig under her thigh and returning her Glock to its holster, she grabbed the seat belt. She yanked it across her chest and clipped herself in.
James peered over at her, his face tight with concern. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Positive. You okay?”
“Yeah.” He glanced into the rearview mirror. “Check around for a remote control or something to open the gate. This car can’t smash through it.”
She’d have to find it fast since they were almost to it and James had to slow the car. The center console was empty as were the storage bins in the doors.
From behind, a rasping voice said, “Try the sun visors.”
The car was almost to a complete stop when Quinn spotted the small box attached to the visor above James’s head. Quinn reached over and pressed the button. The gates jerked and began to swing toward them at a frustratingly unhurried pace.
“Come on, come on,” James urged under his breath. In the rearview mirror, they could see the headlights from a car racing up behind them. He stomped on the gas the second the gap in the gate grew wide enough. The car flew through the opening and careened onto the main road.
Quinn craned around to look over her shoulder at the man wedged into the tiny backseat. She smiled. “Hi, Ben.”
Even in the dark, she noticed his once-white dress shirt was filthy, torn, and splattered with blood. One eyelid was puffy and partly closed, the skin around it purple and mottled with red. Dried blood was caked at the corner of his mouth and clinging to several days’ growth of scruff. She winced at the way two of the fingers on the hand resting limply on his lap were swollen and bent in unnatural positions. Bruiser’s handiwork, she assumed. The thought of the pain he must have endured turned her stomach. Despite it all, he smiled at her a smile that reached his eyes. “It’s great to finally meet you in person, Quinn.”
“You too.” Her heart soared to have him safely with them.
James cut in. “It’s great you two have finally met and all, but we still have Fitzhugh, or at least one of his flunkies, on our tail.”
Quinn turned forward again. “Probably not Fitzhugh. I put a bullet in his shoulder.”
James’s head snapped back.
“Ms. Badass might be riding along, but I doubt she’s able to drive. I’m pretty sure I broke her nose when I smashed the heel of my boot into her face.”
“Marry her,” Ben said to James.
She chuckled and hoped the darkness hid her blush. “Actually, we are married. Well, sort of.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story,” James said. “We’ll bring you up to speed later.” He lifted the phone from his back pocket and handed it to Quinn. “Bring up a map and figure out where we are exactly, would you?”
She did and said, “We’re headed northwest and about five miles east of the M1. If we stay on this road, it’ll take us right to it.”
James shook his head. “We don’t want to do that. Too exposed, too dangerous to other drivers.” He glanced up in the rearview mirror again. “If they’re in the Lamborghini, we can’t outrun them.”
She did a double take. “You passed up a chance to drive a Lamborghini?” One glance at the small logo that looked like a set of pilot’s wings in the center of the steering wheel told her they were in an Aston Martin.
“The Lambo only has two seats. The DB9 at least has a tiny backseat.”
“Oh.”
James downshifted when they raced up on the glowing red taillights of a much slower car ahead. The Aston Martin’s tires squealed in protest when they made a hard right turn onto a narrower road.
Once she was upright in her seat again after being pressed to the door during the violent turn, Quinn asked, “Do we keep driving until one of us runs out of gas?” She peered out the back window. The headlights reappeared behind them and seemed to be edging closer. Not good.
“What if it’s us?” James answered and shook his head. “We can’t chance it. We’ve got to disable them somehow.”
“I take it this thing doesn’t have the James Bond premium package, complete with machine guns installed in the bumpers and exhaust pipes that squirt oil slicks,” she said.
“Seriously, James. Marry her.”
James smiled and glanced at his partner in the rearview mirror. “Sorry. No grenade launchers that I know of. We need to use the darkness to our advantage. Doing something unexpected that will stop them long enough to give us time to get away.”
British operative Edward Walker’s car chase in Target São Paulo sprang to mind. “Like have them end up in a sheep pasture?” she asked.
“Yeah, like that.”
Quinn studied the map and spotted something that looked promising. She switched to the satellite view and nodded in approval. “How do you feel about a road that comes to a T at a pond?”
“I like it. Get us there.”
“Okay. At the next road, make a left. We’ll go about a quarter mile and make a right.”
Fortunately, they were on country lanes with no traffic. At the impressive clip they were traveling, it didn’t take long to execute her directions.
Focused on the blue dot moving across the tiny screen, she said, “After the second roundabout, take the first right.” When they’d done so, she checked behind them again. The headlights were so close they practically filled the back window. She spun around again. “This is the road. It’s a straight shot. The end is in a mile.”
“Roger that,” James said. The tension in the car ramped up as they hurtled down the lane. “Tell me when we’re two hundred feet from the pond.”
“Will do.”
“Ben, you strapped in back there?” James asked.
“Yep. Let ’er rip.”
Quinn’s gaze was glued to the map. “Three hundred feet. Two-fifty,” she said, her voice growing louder with each announcement. “Two hundred!”
The engine whined in protest when James downshifted. “Hang on!”
Quinn braced her feet against the floorboard, pressed her back into the seat, and white-knuckle gripped the door handle.
James flicked the steering wheel a touch to the left, stomped on the brake, and then snapped the wheel to the right. The tires skidded and squealed when the back of the car kicked out and spun around one hundred eighty degrees. It came to rest only a few feet from a clump of reedy trees.
Their pursuer’s car flashed past them in a yellow blur. By the time the driver hit the brakes it was too late. The two beams of light from the headlamps wobbled up and down in the darkness as the Lamborghini bounced over the uneven ground. Then they disappeared completely.
Not wasting any time, James slammed the car into first gear and sped off.
Quinn’s every extremity buzzed. She slapped a trembling hand to her chest to keep her heart from hammering its way out of her rib cage.
“You okay?” James asked.
She took in a deep breath, held it, and then blew it out slowly. “Yeah, I’m good. You’ll be happy to know you’re a much better driver than Madison. He did a turn like that once with me in the car. Only, when he did it, it wasn’t on purpose.” Quinn looked over her shoulder at Ben. “Do we need to get you to a hospital?”
“No, I’m okay. We need to clear out, right, James?”
“Yeah. With a bullet in Fitzhugh, he’ll probably have to go to the hospital and the police will get involved. It won’t be long before the three of us are wanted for all kinds of bad stuff, including stealing this car. We need to ditch it and take a train back to London.”
“You don’t want to hook up with our backup?” she asked and opened the map application on James’s phone again.
“No. Fitzhugh doesn’t know we’re CIA. We want to keep it that way. Right, Ben?”
“Right. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“I have a question about that,” Quinn said. She paused and examined the map. To James, she said, “The closest train station is Long Buckby about five, six miles due south. The next left will take us straight there and keep us off the main roads.”
“Perfect,” James said. A half minute later he made the turn and checked the mirror. “No one’s behind us. I think we’re good.”
All three relaxed and the tension inside the car disappeared. James slowed and drove at a less conspicuous pace.
“If you’re not up to talking right now, or you can’t say in front of me, that’s fine,” Quinn said.
“I’m okay talking,” Ben said. “It’s moving that I’m having some trouble with.”
“Well, stop me if you get too tired,” she said. “Here’s my question. Was Fitzhugh bluffing when he told me you and James were part of a weapons organization trying to find Dobrynin’s stash?”
“No, he really believes it. The whole thing went pear-shaped when I was at this party he threw at his place in Notting Hill Saturday night. I didn’t want to go, but I knew Ben Baker the insurance guy would go schmooze the rich and powerful to drum up business. So I’m working the room, pressing the flesh, and I recognize one of Fitzhugh’s guests. The minute he sees me, I know he’s pinned me as part of a weapons ring—I’d been undercover in one during an op in Chechnya.”
Ben stopped for a moment to catch his breath before continuing. “He goes straight for Fitzhugh to tell him I’m not an insurance agent but a weapons guy working for a rival syndicate and I take off, knowing Fitzhugh will immediately connect what I’m doing with the Dobrynin rumor.”
“What did you do?” Quinn asked.
“I grabbed a cab and headed for Victoria Station. I sent the e-mail with the coded ISBNs to James’s account on the way. Two of Fitzhugh’s goons caught up with me before I could catch a train to Destination Anywhere.”
“It must have really hit the fan when Fitzhugh realized the manuscript was missing,” she said. “How’d it end up at the library?”
“So you found and deciphered my research notes. Good. I figured you would if I ever got in a jam. I left the manuscript there in case it turned out to be important. I’d done it before with other items. I didn’t want to take the chance of Fitzhugh taking something that might be important before I’d cleared it. The big guy, Joseph, was with me Saturday. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and never bothered to check to make sure the manuscript was in the briefcase before we left.”
“Weren’t you afraid someone in the library would find it before you came back for it?”
“I always made sure to be the last person there when they closed and the first one there the next time they opened.”
“So you stashed the manuscript Saturday afternoon before the party and planned to be there when the library opened Monday morning.”
“Yeah.”
“But you were exposed and captured on Saturday night and couldn’t be there.”
“Exactly. I wish I could’ve seen Fitzhugh’s face when he opened the briefcase and found an old Bible instead of the medieval manuscript. He must have gone ballistic since he had Joseph and Hamish beat the crap out of me to get me to tell them where it was.”
“Hamish was the one chasing us after I found you tied up in the cellar?” James asked.
“Yeah. He’s a real charmer.”
“I’m sure,” Quinn said. “We’re familiar with his nephew.” Her nose wrinkled at the memory of the delightful Ethan. She pushed aside thoughts of that little weasel and asked, “Why didn’t they search your flat for the manuscript?”
“I thought they did.”
“Nothing was out of order when our guys got there to look for you,” James said. “Your phone was there, too.”
“They must have done that to make it look like nothing was wrong, to keep my people from looking for me.”
“It worked, sort of,” James said. “We knew you’d gone off grid because of the e-mail, but we didn’t know what had happened to you until Fitzhugh called us today.”
“We thought maybe you were sipping mai tais on a beach somewhere,” Quinn added.
Ben chuckled and then groaned. “I wish.”
James slowed the car as they drove through a tiny village. “They must have looked at the calls on your phone and figured out who Professor Gemma Dudley was. That’s how Fitzhugh knew to have her followed. He assumed we’d find the manuscript and take it to her like you were going to.”
“He guessed right,” Quinn said. “Ben, how did you know the manuscript was connected to Dobrynin?”
Ben shifted in his cramped seat. “It was? I didn’t know for sure. If I had, I would have taken it straight to our station in London. Something was hinky about it. I just didn’t know what. I figured talking to Professor Dudley would be a good start. So it really had important stuff in it? You’re sure?”
“Mmm-hmm. Dobrynin tucked away some SS-24 Scalpels,” James said. “The agency is mobilizing to verify and intercept.”
Ben blew out a low whistle.
“The text in the manuscript gave us the locations. Quinn figured it out,” he said, turning the Aston Martin into the train station parking lot.
“No,” she said. “We figured it out.”
“Okay, we figured it out,” he said with a smile. “Ben, we’ll tell you more about our adventures later,” he said as he parked the car. “Right now, we need to get on the next train out of here.”
After shutting off the engine, James took the sleeve of his coat and wiped it over the steering wheel. Quinn did the same with the door handle she’d touched. James jumped out of the car and pushed a lever on the seat. The seatback folded forward and Ben slowly maneuvered himself out. James had already shrugged off his coat and was helping Ben’s arms into the sleeves when Quinn joined them. She handed James his Sig, which he promptly returned to its holster.
Ben tugged the coat closed and walked gingerly across the parking lot with Quinn and James flanking him on either side. A gust of cold wind cut through her sweater, sending an icy chill through her. She was bummed her beautiful CIA-issue wool coat was forever lost to Roderick Fitzhugh. She pictured Lucy using it for target practice. “You’re going to leave the key in the ignition?”
“If someone takes it for a joy ride and it ends up in Birmingham, all the better for us,” James said.
The station wasn’t much more than an outdoor platform. James bought the tickets from a vending machine and the trio slowly climbed the stairs. They took refuge in a small covered shelter on the platform. It was of little comfort. Quinn shivered on the cold bench and pressed her hands between her knees in a vain attempt to keep them warm. She really missed her coat.
They waited ten agonizing minutes for the train to arrive, and when it came to a stop, Quinn was off the bench like she’d been shot from a cannon. She hopped on the train as soon as the doors opened. It wasn’t exactly a sauna, but it was infinitely better than being outside.
She knew where James wanted to sit, so she walked toward the last row of seats in the car. As she did, she noticed the furtive looks sent Ben’s direction from the passengers already seated. She couldn’t blame them. He looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a boxing kangaroo. Ben didn’t seem to care since he was asleep within a minute of the train rolling away from the station.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, the train arrived at Euston Station. As they walked down the platform, James said to Quinn in a low tone, “I need to help get Ben cleaned up some.” He steered them toward the closest place to sit. “I’m gonna go to the pharmacy over there and pick up a few things.”
Quinn nodded, sat down with Ben, and watched James hustle off. Five minutes later, he returned, bag in hand.
The three walked to the men’s room and just before James and Ben went inside, James took out his money clip, peeled off two twenty-pound notes, and handed them to Quinn. “Can you go next door and buy some food and water?”
“Sure,” she said, and plucked the money from his fingers. “You trust me to go it alone?”
“You’ll be okay.” A wink accompanied his smile. “I happen to know you’re still armed and dangerous.”
She flashed him a grin. “I am.”
Had she looked over at Ben, she would have seen him smile, roll his eyes, and shake his head. Instead, she spun on her heel and walked toward the convenience store while he and James disappeared into the men’s room.
A few minutes later, she exited the store with a bag loaded with three large bottles of water and some prepackaged sandwiches. She walked toward James who stood alone near the bathroom’s entrance. When he caught sight of her, he smiled. She noticed his entire body go slack in relief. “There you are,” he said.
“I was only gone for five minutes.” She glanced around. “Where’s Ben?”
“He had some business to take care of that a man’s gotta do on his own.” He opened his arms to her and she didn’t hesitate to accept his invitation. Arms around each other in a comfortable embrace, she rested her head on his chest. It vibrated when he said, “And maybe you were only gone for five minutes, but the last time you went someplace by yourself, you ended up running from a hail of bullets.”
She tilted her head back and looked into his face. “I’m not sure it was a hail of bullets. I think it was more like a smattering.”
His lips only twitched before his face clouded. “Do you know how terrified I was when you were being shot at?”
“I have a pretty good idea since you were dodging bullets, too.”
A smile appeared. He’d caught her meaning and an impish twinkle sparkled in his eyes. “You were worried about me even though I’m a blackguard and a liar?”
She winced. “You heard that, huh?”
He nodded and raised his eyebrows in amusement.
“I was playing along with what Fitzhugh said about you being a bad guy. I wanted him to believe I was okay with you lying to me because I was in love with you and would do anything for you no matter what, including telling him about what was in the manuscript. Betrayed Quinn was in love with blackguard you. Not James you.” She was powerless to stop the panicky rambling. “Not that I don’t lo—erm, care about you, because I do. Or wouldn’t do anything for you. I would. Well, I mean, there are things I wouldn’t do, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I thought they had you tied up somewhere and that it was up to me to save you. You, James, you. Not blackguard, you. And Ben! To save Ben, too. And that was why I said what I said.” She closed her eyes and dropped her forehead against his chest. “You’re going to abandon me here in this train station, aren’t you?”
He laughed and squeezed her tighter. She smiled despite her embarrassment. “Not a chance.”
“How did you get away from Bruiser, anyway?” she asked, looking up at him again. “Fitzhugh told me he had you tied up.”
“Bruiser, huh?”
She lifted a shoulder and smiled.
“I like it. It fits. I was never tied up. The door had barely closed when you went into the house with Fitzhugh and Ms. Badass . . . is that what you called her?” When her smile broadened and she nodded, he chuckled and continued. “Anyway, the minute you were inside, Bruiser had his gun pointed at me. After I wrenched it away, I hustled him off to the garage.”
“Don’t believe a word he tells you, Quinn,” Ben’s voice said from behind James. “This guy’s full of crap.”
At Ben’s return, Quinn expected James to release her. To her surprise, he didn’t. Instead, she remained firmly in James’s embrace and he replied with a mild, “She already knows that.”
“And she’s still here with you?” To Quinn, Ben said, “I’m disappointed in you. All this time, I thought you were smarter than that.”
“What can I say? He knows how to show a girl a good time. Technically, we’re still on our first date.”
They turned and started toward the Underground section of Euston Station. James draped an arm around her shoulders and she slipped one of hers around his waist. She looked up at him. “Or did it end when you shot me in the back with a tranquilizer dart?”
“He what?” Ben asked, sounding both amused and incredulous.
James grimaced. “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”
“Nope,” she said. She shifted her gaze to Ben. “You feeling a little better?” He looked better. The nasty purpling around his gray eyes was still prominent and his gait remained slow, but the dried blood on his face had been wiped away and the previously unruly brown hair had been tamed with a comb. In the light, Quinn noticed the flecks of gray at his chin in his four-day-old stubble. When she’d first seen him in the backseat of the Aston Martin all battered and bruised, he looked seventy. At least now he looked forty again. His previously contorted fingers were now taped together. She didn’t want to think about what Ben had endured to straighten them.
“A little, yeah. Thanks. The painkillers will be kicking in soon. And don’t change the subject. I want to hear about my boy, here, shooting you on your first date.” He scowled at James and teased, “What’s the matter with you?”
Quinn opened the bag she carried, took out a bottle of water, and unscrewed the cap. She reached across James and handed it to Ben. He took it and greedily chugged down half the bottle in one go.
“We’ll fill you in on our adventures after he finishes telling me how he found you inside Fitzhugh’s house,” she said. She prompted James. “You just relieved Bruiser of his weapon and marched him into the garage.”
“Right. I found some rope and secured him. At first, when I asked him where Ben was being held, he wasn’t very forthcoming. With a little persuasion, he told me Ben was in the cellar and how to get there. He failed to mention Hamish was skulking around. We ran into him as we left the cellar. That’s when I told you to run, Quinn.”
“Persuasion?” Ben asked.
He stiffened, slid his gaze toward Quinn, and then forward again. “Lug wrench.”
To be confronted with the brutality of James and Ben’s world made her queasy. She knew James to be funny and sweet and kind and brave and smart and protective. And yet, in a world filled with dangerous and violent people, at times he had to be dangerous and violent himself.
In a flash, it hit her that she was no different, really. In the fluid situation inside Fitzhugh’s house, she’d put a bullet into another human being and broke another’s nose. When the reality of her injuring others hit her full force, the world tilted and she stumbled.
The arm around her shoulders steadied her. “Quinn? What’s wrong?” James asked. His voice was strained. “You’re pale. Do you need to sit down?”
They stopped and Quinn felt him lift the bag she carried from her hand. A bottle of water was pressed into her hand. “Drink,” James’s voice commanded.
The cool water cleared the fuzziness from her head. She blinked and James’s face, inches from hers and tight with worry, came into focus. Her voice was hoarse when she said, “I . . . I shot someone today.”
James’s arms engulfed her and crushed her to him. There was no condemnation, only compassion in his soft reply. “I know.”
She was vaguely aware of people rushing past them. The only thing she truly comprehended was the hand drawing soothing circles on her back. When James spoke again, his tone was filled with understanding, but firm with conviction. “You only did what you had to do. You only shot at them because they shot at you first, right?”
She thought back on the moment when Fitzhugh’s bullet blew that vase to smithereens. Had she not been armed and returned fire, things would have turned out very differently for her, and for James and Ben. She nodded against his chest.
“If you hadn’t done what you . . .” He paused, cleared his throat and started again. “It was your only option.” His hand gently caressed her cheek, lifted her head, and turned her face to his. “I want you to remind yourself of that whenever you start to beat yourself up over this.” With a raised eyebrow, he added, “Because I know you will.”
She nodded mutely and gave him a watery smile.
His thumb lightly rubbed her chin. He closed in and gave her a gentle, lingering kiss. It was so heartfelt and filled with tenderness, the tears that had been threatening finally squeezed through her lashes and trailed down her cheeks.
Their kiss ended and James wiped at the wetness on her face with his thumbs. “I hate to push you, but we really need to keep going.”
She swallowed hard, breathed deeply, and gritted her teeth. “I’m okay.” They released each other from the embrace, and immediately took each other’s hands. She glanced over at Ben who had moved a discreet distance away to give them some privacy. “Sorry about my little breakdown, Ben.”
His sympathetic smile came quickly. “Are you kidding? You’re a warrior,” he said as he joined them and they started toward the escalators. “Anybody else who’d been shot at like you were today would be curled in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, and talking to their hand.”
“He paints quite a picture, doesn’t he?” James said.
She sent Ben a smile, grateful for his words. “He really does.”
James’s phone chimed as they stepped onto the escalator. He glanced at the screen. “Our ride home tonight is lined up.”
“Wait, home home? Like me going straight back to L.A. home? Tonight?” She was in no way mentally prepared to simply wave good-bye to James in an hour and fly off alone.
James scowled and shook his head. “Oh God, no. All three of us are flying to Virginia together.” He gave Quinn a meaningful look. “My boss needs to talk to you.”
Apparently debrief was not a word James wanted to utter in public.
“Oh, okay. That makes sense,” she said, relieved.
“What’s our time frame?” Ben asked. “Can we swing by my flat? I need to change my clothes and grab a few things.”
“I think so. We have to be at the heliport in an hour. A copter will fly us to the RAF base in Suffolk where we’ll hitch a ride on a C-17. Just don’t take too long. Quinn and I need to grab our stuff from the hotel, too.”
Ben winked at Quinn and said, “Hang on, James. Are you saying we don’t have time to box up all my books and bring them with us? I’m not sure I’m okay with that.”
Quinn grinned while James huffed a breath in feigned exasperation. “You librarians are all alike.”
They stepped off the escalator and walked toward the platform. Quinn slipped her arm around James’s waist and said, “If you mean we’re all kickass, then yeah, we are.”
He hugged her to his side and kissed her head. “That’s exactly what I mean.”