by Brynn Kelly
She laughed. They fell silent, Samira frowning at the long wash of the Thames. Battersea loomed from the gloom like a redbrick battleship.
“Jamie,” she began, after a time, “there’s something I don’t understand... Well, there are many things, but...all those people—the paramedic, the doctor, the nurse. They didn’t think much of you.”
Yikes. Everyone has secrets.
“I’m very widely misunderstood.” This was his invitation to come clean. But that’d mean seeing the respect die in her eyes. And he liked those eyes—the way her pupils flicked to one corner when she was thinking, the way they studied him from under thick jet-black lashes, the way the scarf made them sexy and smoky, somehow. Aye, he liked them a little too much. He could keep the disappointment from them for another few...what? Hours? Days? How long would it take to retrieve this evidence and figure out a way to deliver it to the United States? Then he would return to his futureless job and those eyes would once more be a pleasant memory to get him through deployments.
“The women,” she ventured, “they are ex-girlfriends?”
“Hell no.” If only hearts were all he’d messed with. “We were all young and wild together, that was all.”
“You were a doctor there, weren’t you? Not a paramedic.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“That nurse... Maria...”
“Mariya.”
“She called you ‘Doctor.’ And you knew your way around...”
Would it matter in the end how much she knew? “I was a paramedic first, while in med school. Doctor later.”
She turned in her seat. “Wow, really?”
Impressed. Ah, he missed that reaction. “Yeah, I pretty much didn’t sleep in my twenties.”
“Neither did I, but I wasn’t saving lives. You never mentioned that.”
“Didn’t I?” he said, lightly.
That awe in her voice... He might not technically be lying but he was still a fraud. The ego boost he’d once got from telling people he was a doctor had long ago been replaced by the weight of expectation of the obvious next question. Why did you leave? The best thing about the Legion? If you didn’t volunteer information, people knew better than to ask. He’d told only his immediate commanding officers the whole wretched story, including Angelito and Flynn. They had to know the risk he posed, his triggers, the warning signs.
The other good thing about the Legion was that you quickly learned to deflect flak.
“What were you doing instead of sleeping?” he said. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Spending more time on computers than was healthy.”
“Wild.”
“For a brief, beautiful period, I was the world champion of ‘Cosmos,’ back when it was at its height. And when I say brief, I mean it lasted about three minutes one night, around four a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I considered adding it to my résumé.” She leaned back in her seat, more relaxed than he’d seen her all day.
“‘Cosmos’? That’s old school.”
“It’s addictive, that’s what it is. Well, all games are, aren’t they? That’s the point. Gaming, social media, sugar... So much to get addicted to these days.”
Jesus, did she have to come straight back to that? “Indeed. We’re breeding a generation of addicts, all looking for a lazy buzz. Half the recruits to the Legion sign up because they think it’ll be all ‘Soldier of Fortune.’”
“With no consequences?”
“No consequences, no tics, no fucking tinea—and an undo button. Luckily they’re the ones who don’t get through selection.”
“So paramedic, doctor...soldier? That’s an unusual career path.”
“Oh, I don’t know. All fueled by adrenaline, all about reacting quickly to a bad situation before it gets worse. And I’m a medic, so...”
“Was it so bad, working at the hospital?”
“No. I liked it.”
“But something went wrong.”
He coasted to a stop at a red light, behind a moped. How were they talking about him again? “I got bored. Wanted to try something new.”
“No.”
“No?” Shite. Most people shook their heads and left it at that.
“Med school is what—five years, minimum? Plus clinical experience. That’s a lot of effort to walk away from.”
Like he needed the reminder.
“And you were good at it.” A statement, not a question.
“Now, why would you think that? You just heard three of my former colleagues tell me to piss off forever.”
“Awo, but that was personal—which I also don’t understand. You seem so...”
He raised his eyebrows. He’d learned to give her time to finish her sentences. She liked to process things, as if she were thinking in Amharic and translating it to English before she spoke, like when he first started speaking French, before he started thinking in French, too. But she’d probably been speaking English her whole life. Maybe she just wasn’t comfortable thinking aloud. Or was too wise to.
“...so...” she said.
Patience.
“...nice.”
“Really? After all that? Ouch.”
She laughed. “There’s nothing at all wrong with being nice. But I’ve seen you in action. The way you helped me through that panic attack, the way you saved that guy’s life, the way you took on that goon... You’re calm, you’re efficient, you’re...”
She pressed her gloved hands to her cheeks. He could swear her skin was turning that delicious mahogany.
“I bet you had a good rapport with your patients,” she continued. “That alone...”
The moped ahead moved off, forcing him to take his gaze from her.
She cleared her throat. “A good rapport alone gives people faith, and faith is a powerful thing. And you are obviously intelligent. You were good at it, weren’t you?”
He shrugged.
“You’re allowed to admit it. You were a good doctor, a good paramedic and now you’re a good medic. Yes?”
“I guess.”
Her turn to wait for him to continue. She’d be disappointed. Aye, he could be good—the best—but only under the right circumstances, with the right artificial help.
“So why did you really walk away from it—the hospital?”
“Maybe I was just walking to something else.”
“Maybe,” she said, evidently not feeling it.
His chest felt weighted. He’d rather be flirting. Or dodging real bullets.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... It’s a painful topic, yes?”
He swung the steering wheel, turning onto the approach to Putney Bridge. Not too much more of this. “Yes.”
“So now you’re a doctor who carries a gun.”
A reprieve, of sorts. “Aye, more hypocritical than Hippocratic.”
“Have you shot many pe—? I’m sorry—is that a bad question to ask a soldier? It’s just... I can’t see you doing that.”
“It’s what everybody wants to know and never asks. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve not had many situations where I’ve had to fire, and I’ve only served five years. Mostly we protect people—against raiders, terrorists, militias... Our enemies tend to be cowards who don’t attack platoons of armed, trained soldiers. Usually they just wait until we’re ordered to leave, which they know will happen sooner or later, wait until those people are vulnerable again.”
“That must be gutting.”
“It is.”
“How long will you remain there?”
“I’ve just re-upped for another five years.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
He shrugged. Happiness was no longer something he sought. Escape and distraction were enough. When he’d lost his job and flown to Paris to enlist, five years
had seemed an eternity, but it’d passed quickly. As would the next five, and the five after that, and the five after that, until real life had passed him by. What had he imagined, back when he’d walked through the gates at Fort de Nugent outside Paris? That after five years he’d slide back into normal life, without boundaries and rules and officers and his commando team? Leaving the Legion should be like leaving prison, with day release, then parole, then probation. If anything, the thought of free will made him more anxious now than when he’d enlisted—all that choice and personal responsibility. In the Legion, somebody always had his back—was paid to have his back. And he was answerable to his commanding officer not just one shift at a time but 24/7. In real life who would stop him from stepping on a land mine—real or figurative? And if anybody tried, would he heed the warning?
He slowed as they crossed the bridge and entered the thicker traffic of the high street. Samira had stilled, studying him but giving him space to think, as he had for her. Or perhaps she was just reading his mind again.
“Do you miss it?” she said, eventually. “The hospital?”
“With friends like those?”
She sighed. “Must be exhausting to always have to find a joke to suit the occasion.”
“Sometimes I’m so funny I have to go and have a lie down.”
She groaned, quietly. “Those people—there was respect there, too. They did what you asked, even though they seemed a little...reluctant.”
Reluctant? An understatement. And it was less about respect and more about fear that he’d spill some very damning secrets, which was far more than Samira needed to know. He turned off the high street into a lane flanked by brick terraced houses. “Ah, that’s my curse. People always seem to follow my lead when usually they shouldn’t.”
“I can see why they follow you.”
“You can?”
“You seem so together, so competent.”
“People quickly learn they’ve followed the wrong guy, often to their lasting regret. I have a knack for dragging people into trouble. Consider yourself warned.”
“What kind of trouble did you drag those people into—Mariya and the others?”
“Nothing I didn’t also get them out of.”
“Is that why they all owed you favors—because you got them out of the trouble you dragged them into?”
Holy freaking hell. And this was why he didn’t talk about his past. One sucking great black hole of trouble, especially with a perceptive woman like Samira. He shouldn’t have taken her into the hospital. Those were favors he’d never intended to call upon.
Deflect. “We’re nearly there.” At least the conversation seemed to have settled her anxiety. He’d put up with a lot of discomfort for that. He checked his mirrors and surroundings for the thousandth time since they’d left Westminster.
“Well,” she said, “this time you were the one dragged in. And I was dragged in myself. So we’re blameless, yes?”
“Totally.” Letting him off the hook, at last.
“Do you miss being a doctor?”
And right back on. He blew out a breath. Did he miss it? He tried never to think about the past. It only opened the door to regret—a door he’d bolted and padlocked and welded and parked an articulated lorry against.
She was so violently twisting her scarf in her gloved hands it was in danger of ripping. Best he kept talking, kept her mind off what they were doing and who was hunting them. He could take the hit to his pride.
“I miss some things,” he conceded. “I liked the uneasy energy of the ambulance shift, knowing that every time a job came in you could be thrown into anything from a stroke to a chain-saw accident. I liked the way that sparked up my brain and I liked the adrenaline. I could literally feel it in my heart and my veins. That’s why I gravitated to emergency medicine, before going into neurology. Every time those automatic doors open you can be thrown into a challenge with life-or-death consequences.”
She shuddered. “My idea of hell. I can’t even think on my feet, let alone operate on someone.”
“Oh, I loved it. That’s what I miss—the mental challenge, the speed.” Jesus, don’t say “speed.” “You’re cycling through ailments and procedures in your head, trying to remember the textbooks, the practicals, that one time you assisted on a procedure kind of like the one you’re wrist-deep in, while the consultants are yelling at you, trying to catch you out, and the monitors are beeping, and there’s this patient in front of you who could well die if you make the wrong decision.” Just the thought made his stomach flip.
“You’re really not selling it to me.” She shuffled in her seat. “You must get adrenaline from your current job.”
“Yeah, but the buzzes don’t come very often. I’m a grunt who follows orders, and mostly it’s exercises and uneventful patrols. It’s not often you can do anything really impressive.”
“Impressive,” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the word and was trying it out. “Interesting choice of word.”
“How so?”
“You didn’t say rewarding, or satisfying. You said impressive. Like you’re doing it to get approval.”
Shite, she might claim not to think quickly but she sure thought deeply. “Maybe that’s it,” he said.
Approval, huh? You’re such a fuckin’ show-off, his sister had said nearly every day of their childhood. Luckily, these days he had less to show off about and nobody to show off to. Knowing cool stuff about weapons when you hung out with commandos didn’t get as much attention as wearing scrubs and answering to “Doctor.” Especially female attention.
“You must get to impress your colleagues, with your medical experience.”
“I’m mostly just dishing out diarrhea pills and hangover remedies. And if somebody catches a bullet there’s often not a lot you can do. Last year, right before I met you, I lost a teammate. All those years as a paramedic, in the hospital, in the field, and there was nothing I could do but hold on to him and tell him everything was fine while...” He rubbed a hand over his face. “How about you?” he said, quickly. “Do you miss your job?”
“Do I miss my job?” she said, rolling the thought around. “I miss living a normal, inconsequential life. I miss not being scared. I miss being free to be who I am and do what I want, though I’m not even sure who that person is anymore or what I want to do. But I’d like to find out.” She pursed her lips. “Take a right here. All this will be over very soon.”
Her tone kicked him in the chest. She was clinging to hope. It’d better be waiting for them.
They did a circuit of the neighborhood and parked a block away. It consisted mainly of renovated terraced houses with little rectangular gardens out back. An elderly man strode past, hands in pockets, tinny music squeaking from his earphones, and a few cars drove by but few others were about—nobody sitting in parked cars, no suspicious vans.
Charlotte’s address was on the ground floor of a brick Victorian mansion that’d been carved up into flats, and none too sympathetically, with mismatched doors and window frames and cheap wall panels. They crossed a rain-slicked concrete courtyard and Jamie lifted a knocker beside an opaque glass door. The dull thud reverberated through his cold hand. Nothing. Samira retied her scarf. Through the bubbled glass, he could make out a pile of mail on the floor below the letter slot. He knocked again, tried the doorknob. Deadlocked.
“Does she live alone?” he said.
“Awo.”
“Think she’d mind if we waited inside?”
“How are we supposed to—?”
He pulled a little leather case from his pocket and unzipped it.
“You’re breaking us in with a manicure set?”
“Not your average manicure set.” He slid out one of the lock-picking tools disguised among the scissors and tweezers and clippers. “A birthday gift from Holly. A joke present. I think.”
“You know how to use it?”
“I watched a video online.”
A few minutes later they stood in an impeccable living room that doubled as a kitchen and laundry, so small that a modest television filled almost an entire wall. Jamie sneaked up a wrought iron staircase to a bedroom with a closet-sized bathroom and a tiny barred window overlooking the road. In the neighboring flat a man and woman were talking. If they’d been speaking English, Jamie could have joined the conversation without raising his voice. The mansion had evidently been broken up before laws about soundproofing—and fire exits.
Back downstairs, Samira was studying an envelope on the kitchen counter, a few words written on it in blue ink.
“What’s that?” he said, joining her.
“‘To whom it may concern,’” she read.
“It might concern us.”
“Why would you leave a note saying that in your own house, unless...?” Her voice wavered. She went to pull off a glove. He touched her hand.
“Leave them on. Just a precaution.”
She nodded, tiny wrinkles webbing out from her pursed lips. The envelope wasn’t sealed. She pulled out a twice-folded sheet of thick notepaper. It trembled as she read.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed.
“A suicide note.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAMIRA FELT JAMIE’S hands grip her shoulders as she read the note aloud. “‘I’m sorry, I’m in over my head and I can’t bear to live like this anymore. You won’t find my body—no one should have to deal with that. Charlotte Liu.’ It’s dated three days ago. Three days.” By the time Samira had left Tuscany it was already too late.
“Do you think it’s legit?”
“I don’t know. Why would she have asked me to come here and not waited for me? But...the postcard was delayed. She couldn’t have been sure I’d receive it. Could she have given up? Maybe there was no evidence, maybe it was just a call for help for a woman who was planning to...”
“Is it her handwriting?” Jamie’s voice remained calm.
“Honestly, I can’t remember ever seeing her handwriting. We texted or messaged.” She pictured the postcard, with its looped Is and old-fashioned lowercase Ss. “But I think it’s the same writing as the postcard. Oh God, not Charlotte, too.”
