by S. Massery
And once I’m safe yet again? He could just walk away. Mission fulfilled. That is where my trust ends.
14
GRIFFIN
We take a cab to the house. The man we’re meeting only goes by Shade. I told Hadley he was a friend of mine, but he’s really a friend of Mason’s. A hacker buddy, Mason called him. As we drive, Hadley can’t seem to keep her attention off the canals, staring at them like something is going to climb out of it and attack her. Once we get out, walking down the street, her gaze jumps around.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She winces. “What?”
“You’re acting weird.”
“No, I’m not.”
I raise my eyebrows, and she just shakes her head. I run my hand down the inside of her arm until our fingers intertwine. We walk like that until we get to the address that Mason sent me. It’s a narrow home with a red front. My instructions were to knock twice, pause, then knock four times, pause, and knock once more.
Hadley squints at me as I do it, and I shoot her a quick smile.
The door swings open, and a short, stocky man stares up at me. “Was expecting you two days ago,” he says in a gruff voice. American accent. “Come in, come in, you’re letting the heat out.”
He steps aside and motions us past him. I have to tug Hadley in behind me, otherwise I think she would’ve frozen in fear on his front step. And once we’re in, the door sealed shut behind us, I realize what he said. Letting the heat out.
I glance back at Hadley, and her lips are a thin line. It’s sweltering in here. The heat presses in, and the tight quarters of the hallway make it worse. It’s the kind of hot where I immediately need to take off my clothes. Humid, too, as if we’re in a damn rainforest. Or back in New York in July.
I cough. “So, Shade—”
“Not yet,” he snaps.
Hadley steps closer to me as Shade locks the door. There are seven different locks, from knee-high all the way up to my eye level. Shade has to stand on the tips of his toes to reach the last one.
“Follow me.”
He squeezes past us, continuing down the narrow hall, then yanks on a door to our right. It opens with a squeal, and he ushers us down into the basement.
It’s ice-cold.
“I’m getting temperature whiplash,” Hadley whispers.
I squeeze her hand. There are a row of computers, a work bench, and a shit ton of storage. The computers are what I’d expect to see from Mason: high-tech and expensive. Monitors are mounted on the walls, showing different angles of the front door, back door, and canal.
“Well,” Shade says directly behind Hadley.
She flinches.
“Interested in the canals? They’re a popular tourist attraction around here—not to mention useful. Paradox said you would need identification. I’m assuming you just need passports and credit cards.”
Hadley swings around and stares at me. “Excuse me?”
I ignore her surprise and tell Shade, “Yes, thank you.”
“Paradox?” she asks.
“Mason,” I tell her. “His, ah… well, he only goes by that name when he’s doing something illegal.”
“He’s infamous.” Shade folds into the chair and rolls toward one particular computer monitor. “We met ages ago. We pay each other in favors.” His gaze snaps back to me. “Although, I’ve never had to meet a friend of his in person.”
I shrug. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Bah.” His fingers fly across the keyboard, and then he jumps up. “Pictures. Right now.”
He goes to grab Hadley’s arm, but I block him.
“Easy with her,” I say in a low voice. “No need to touch.”
Shade grunts, then points toward a far wall. A square of the wall has been painted bright green. There is photography lighting set up, and a camera connected to a tripod. “Easier to change the color,” he explains. “I set this up this morning. As I said, I don’t get guests. Stand there. A foot away from the wall. Yes.”
Hadley looks supremely uncomfortable, but she keeps her mouth shut. Shade flips a switch, and big box lights flicker on. They illuminate her skin, highlighting every bruise. There are dark circles under her eyes—how did I not notice that?
He turns on the camera, putting his eye to the viewfinder and adjusting some settings. “No smiling,” he tells her, right before he takes three photos in a row.
She blinks and shakes her head. “Was that okay?”
He shrugs. “We’ll find out. Your turn, Angel.”
I stiffen, which seems to be funny to Shade. He chuckles under his breath until I step under the lights. It’s easy to glare at him while he takes my photo.
“All right, all right.” Shade pulls out the SD card and rushes back to his computer.
Hadley is right next to me, her arm against mine, and she says in a low voice, “Why are we doing this?”
I look down at her. “I’m sorry, Hadley. They know who we are, and they know we’re in Amsterdam. The safest way to get…” I glance at Shade, then back to Hadley, “out of the country is with new IDs.”
Her nod comes slower. “I don’t know much about this, you know? I’m just trying to follow your lead.”
“Sit,” Shade barks, still focused on his computer. “You’re making me anxious.”
“I’m going to kill Mason,” I mutter.
She giggles. “Me, too, and I’ve never met the guy.”
We sit on the stairs—the only seating we can find—and after a few seconds of debating, I pick Hadley up and set her on my lap. She gives me a smile I’d like to bottle and save for a rainy day. “Much better.”
I lean forward and steal a kiss from her lips. The worry from earlier has dissipated in her eyes. “You never think about a cure?” I ask.
Her whole body tenses. So much for her relaxing. “A cure?”
“A bone marrow transplant, radiation, chemo—something? It doesn’t have to be in a hospital.”
She pastes on a smile, but it’s brittle. “I’ve done the chemo and radiation before,” she says. “It was a great experience.”
“You’ve done it before? When?”
She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have missed my doctor’s appointment. I refused to see the symptoms as just that: symptoms of the cancer.”
“Hadley… How bad is it?” I tighten my grip on her hip.
She bites her lip. “Ah… Pretty bad. Obviously.”
“Out!” Shade proclaims. “I can’t work like this. Go upstairs. Go outside. I don’t care, as long as you aren’t in this basement, stinking it up with your tension.”
We don’t move for a second. Hadley keeps staring at me, like she’s about to admit something. But her gaze switches to Shade, and her eyes narrow.
“Go up,” I say, helping her stand. “I just…”
Her head jerks up. “I get it,” she mumbles. “Secret shit.”
My lips quirk. Yeah, that’s one way to phrase it. She scrambles up the stairs and closes the door behind her, and I look back at Shade.
“How much?” I ask him.
He spins in his chair, fixing me with a weird expression. It isn’t like he’s appraising me, but rather that he’s surprised by this turn of events. There are only so many things you can predict correctly before you’re wrong. “How much do you have?”
I shrug, crossing my arms. “This isn’t a negotiation. You have a price, and I want to know the number.”
He chuckles. “Boy, if only your mama could see you now. How disappointed do you think she’d be?”
“You looked into me?” I shove off the stairs and walk toward him. “I’m not too fond of people digging around in my past, especially when I don’t know them.”
He stands, holding up his hands. “I do my due diligence, Angel. You think I just let anyone in? A friend of Paradox or not, I make sure I know who is threatening my safety.”
I cock my head to the side. “Damn Paradox,” I’m going to kill Mason. “He ga
ve you my name.”
“He said you had a high need.”
I grit my teeth. “How can I trust you?” I don’t trust many.
Shade lifts one shoulder. “My name is Devos Sinclair. I have a son, Elijah, who is studying to become an engineer in Belgium. My other son, Reece—”
I squint at him, because Reece Sinclair rings some bells. “A pilot. He knows a friend of mine.”
Shade—Devos, I correct—nods. “It was that particular favor I asked of your friend which laid the groundwork for our meeting, Angel. Without Paradox’s help securing Reece’s future as a pilot, we would not be here right now.”
“We’re in your hands while he’s in ours,” I say. “And I suppose that’s how I can trust you.”
“That, and you now know I have liabilities. Family. I wouldn’t be able to live if anything happened to them.”
“Okay,” I finally say. The niggling feeling in my stomach subsides. I extend my hand, and Devos shakes it. “We’ll be upstairs.”
“Keep safe, Angel,” Devos says.
I almost tell him not to call me that—that Hadley will ask too many questions—but she’s not here, and I prefer it on his lips instead of my real name. The Angel of Death provokes fear. Griffin Anders… doesn’t.
I’d better be careful, or one of these days I’m going to turn my back on the name Griffin Anders forever.
Hadley is sitting at the kitchen table when I get back upstairs. I cross to the window and pull it open, and we both sigh in relief.
Hadley squints at me. “He’s a little…”
Weird? Unsettling? All of the above.
“Yeah,” I say. “Mason trusts him, though.”
“And you trust Mason.” At my nod, she asks, “How does that work? What if you trust the wrong person?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. We don’t really let people in. The only one of us who has had a solid relationship is Mason. And now Jackson, I guess. It’s all about collateral.”
She raises her eyebrow.
“One of Shade’s sons is with Zach,” I explain. “Reece wants to be a pilot. I think Zach is trying to break him into the smuggling scene in Chicago.”
She sucks in a breath. “And that means he’s going to help us? I’d think it would be the opposite—that Shade would be opposed to that lifestyle for his son.”
“It’s good money, and he’ll be able to fly.” I pause. “I get it. It’s his passion, just like Mason would be lost without his computer—”
“What are you passionate about?” she asks me.
I tilt my head to the side. “I—” Great question. “It used to be all things medical,” I say after a minute. “I loved trauma medicine.”
In the Navy, I followed the SEALs. Not close enough to impede on their missions, or really have any part in them, but I was there if something went south. There was nothing like the rush of saving the good guys. Getting my hands bloody. My mind worked to solve problems that leapt out of nowhere.
My efforts were applauded. I saved a lot of soldiers—a lot of missions, too. When we got home… I didn’t have a home. I could’ve returned to Bitterwood, but there was nothing there for me. Judge never adopted me. I wasn’t sure if they wanted me back.
So I didn’t go. Instead, Scorpion found me.
The six months of training opened my eyes to what the SEALs went through, and it solidified my love of the five guys on my crew. We became family. They embraced the side of me that was fascinated with injuries…
Fixing them and inflicting them.
That’s a fucking dark path to go down.
“You worked for a private company?” Hadley asks.
I nod. “Scorpion Industries. Military contractor, but they are private, too.”
Her eyes narrow. “Contracted to do what?”
“Whatever the military wanted them to do.” I shrug. “It was legal for the most part, but sometimes we worked outside of international law.”
“How are you not in prison?”
“That would mean getting caught.” I wink. “What about you? What are your hopes and dreams?”
She goes still. Her gaze drifts down to her fingers, where she tears at her nails. Finally, she smiles. “Law school.”
“Yeah?”
“Criminal law, specifically. I was working at the florist shop to save up money.” She sighs. “I was accepted to Columbia, but I had to defer because of the cost.”
I admire that she isn’t bitter about it, but it infuriates me that she’s had to put off her dream because of the price of tuition. “Defense or prosecution?”
She grins at me. “What do you think?”
I think you’re the strongest woman I know.
“Prosecution,” I guess.
Her smile slides off her face. “It doesn’t really matter now.”
I reach over and grab her hands. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to get through this.”
“This is a deadly disease. I’m being realistic. Maybe I should just poison myself and be done with it.”
Poison.
“I was called to a house to save someone who had been poisoned,” I tell her. “He ended up dying. His mouth foamed, and he convulsed under my hands. It’s such a tricky thing—so many ways the poison can play out in a body. Some shut down organs. Some cause neurological distress, cause seizures, bleeding. Others paralyze—your lungs would just stop working, your heart would stop beating.”
Her eyes are huge.
“You don’t want to go by poison,” I say.
My mind replaces the client with Hadley. An image of her seizing on the floor is all I can see for a moment.
I think I’ve freaked her out—but that’s the good side of me.
The bad side is the paid killer. The real Angel of Death, who enjoys digging answers out of people’s flesh. That’s who I keep locked up inside.
15
HADLEY
I squirm just inside the front door. It’s too hot to stay in here—sweat is breaking out across my body—but I’m terrified to go outside. What if Patrick is out there? What if he followed us here, and he’s just beyond the door with a gun?
“Ready?” Griffin asks.
We’ve been alternating between pacing and sitting at the small kitchen table in the back room for almost two hours, and Shade finally came up with two passports.
He gave Griffin a look that I couldn’t decipher, then went back downstairs. We took a few minutes to gather our things, and now I’m ready to bolt.
“Are we going straight to the train?”
“I thought you wanted to explore.” He takes my hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Just…” I can’t, for the life of me, think of a valid excuse. Not without telling him about Patrick. “What if I get another nosebleed?”
He pulls out a handkerchief from one of his pockets. “I came prepared,” he says, smiling at me. His hand squeezes mine. “We’ll be okay.” He checks his watch and groans. “It is late, though. Our train leaves in an hour.”
“An hour! We still need to get our bags.”
“Yes, we do. Okay.” He unlocks the door, and Shade reappears.
“Thanks, man,” Griffin says.
“You’re welcome.” Shade’s eyes flicker from his to mine. “Keep her safe,” he mutters to Griffin.
We step outside and both take a deep breath.
A cool breeze hits us. I look around, sidestepping into Griffin, but the street is deserted. It’s only a quick walk to a busier street, and Griffin hails a passing cab. From there, we speed toward his apartment—he has me wait in the car while he gets the bags, which nearly gives me a heart attack—and then we move onward to the train station.
We pull up to the giant building, and I’m sure I’m not hiding my shock well. I’ve never seen anything so grand—and that’s saying a lot, because I’ve been to Grand Central Station many times.
“Come on,” Griffin says, laughing.
He has both of our bags, holding them in one ha
nd like they’re nothing, and I let him lead me inside. It’s all impossibly old and new at the same time. Marble gleams everywhere. People crisscross in front of us. Everything is organized chaos, and I find myself enthralled with it.
“Does the train go straight to Paris?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, there’s a stop in Brussels. It’s an express train, though, so after that it’s a straight shot. We should be there in less than four hours.”
“Everything is a lot closer together here,” I say. “You can drive four hours in New York and still be in the same state.”
“True,” he says. “Here, we’re going through whole countries.”
“And the passports—”
“They’ll be clean.” He opens one. “Nice to meet you, Haley Williams. I’ve always been a fan of Paramore.” He chuckles, then flips to his ID and flashes it at me. “And I’m Graham Williams. Are we brother and sister, or husband and wife?”
I snort at his cocky grin. “We look nothing alike, so… Can’t say I never wanted a husband.”
He freezes. “Hadley.”
“Haley,” I correct. When he doesn’t respond, I elbow him. “You didn’t even get me a ring before tossing me into marriage. How barbaric.”
He hesitates. It seems like he’s going to go with my distraction. “My wife likes the caveman in me.” And then he tugs my hand, still captured in his, up to his lips.
“There’s no one around to act for,” I murmur.
“Maybe I just like touching you,” he counters, and my cheeks get hot. “Come on. We’re going to miss our train if we don’t hurry.”
The lobby, which is massive in its own regard, opens into the main train station. The walls are made of glass panels, and they curve in an arch high above our heads. There are rows and rows of trains.
Griffin peers at a sign for a moment, then leads me to one on the far left.
He hands a worker our tickets and passports, and the man glances over everything before handing it back. “First open car,” he tells us.
We walk down until another train employee stops us.
