A Risk Worth Taking

by Brynn Kelly

  Jamie slid his hands to her upper arms. “It seems too much of a coincidence that she would kill herself right now. She had a raison d’être. Maybe she’s just gone into hiding.”

  Samira looked up, blinking. A child’s drawing was taped to the fridge—purple house, rolling green hills, yellow field dotted with red poppies, blue sky... As she stared, it blurred. “Awo, maybe that’s it.”

  Jamie squeezed her arms and released her, then opened a drawer in the kitchen cabinet, followed by another. “Let’s look around, see if we can figure anything out, see if we can find this evidence. You’ve been here before—does anything look out of place?”

  “It’s been a couple of years but it looks much the same down here.” She starting flicking through notices and bills on a pinboard. Two years. Before Latif died, before her life imploded, before Jamie. She’d come to London with her parents for the funeral of a duke. While they’d paid diplomatic calls one afternoon, she’d begged off to play “Cosmos” with Charlotte. They’d giggled like they were back at university.

  “I’m not seeing any handwriting,” Jamie said.

  “She’d do everything on a screen—shopping lists, to-do lists, diary... I’ll be surprised if we even find a pen.”

  Jamie slid the last drawer closed. “There’s some printer paper here but otherwise no stationery at all. So where’s the pen she wrote the note with?”

  Samira examined the top of the note. “And this—it’s not printer paper. It was ripped from a pad. Where’s the pad? Where’s the packet of envelopes? You don’t just buy one envelope—you can’t. And why a note on paper, anyway, left where no one would find it for who knows how long? This is Charlotte. She’d be more likely to post on social media.”

  “Maybe she has. Unless she didn’t want anybody to find it for a day or so.”

  “So she’d schedule it in advance.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Really? Where have you been the last...?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh. Don’t answer that. We need to check her social med—”

  A door slammed. She froze, tension trickling up her chest. Footsteps, voices. Jamie flattened against the wall beside the front window and peered out. “Just the neighbors leaving,” he whispered.

  Upstairs, Samira found a box with a few highlighters and pens—colored, sparkly, for birthday cards, maybe—but nothing that matched the ink on the note. No notepaper. No envelopes. No thick dossier of evidence.

  The staircase clanged as Jamie climbed it. “This woman sure is a minimalist. I guess you’d have to be, to live in a shoebox.”

  He got down on hands and knees and peered under the bed. “Did she play baseball?”

  “No. Why?”

  He drew out an aluminum bat and stood, swinging it. “Shite, it’s a heavy beast. She went to university with you, right? Could it be a souvenir from the States?”

  “Unlikely. The only sport she follows is English football.” She nodded at a yellow shirt with a black collar hanging from a hook. “She’s mad for it.”

  He ran a hand down the bat. “No scratches, no scuffs, no dirt. Never been used. Is she a hefty kind of a lass?”

  “She’s tiny. Why?”

  “Because it’s almost as if she’s gone into a sports shop and bought the heaviest thing she could find.”

  Thunder cracked, followed almost immediately by pelting rain.

  “For protection?” Samira said. “But if she went into hiding, why not take it with her? Too big?”

  He ducked into the bathroom, chewing his lip. “Her toothbrush is here. Also something you’d take if you were going into hiding—if you had enough time to pack. Can you see anything else interesting?”

  Samira pointed to two monitors on a tiny desk in a corner. Behind them was a rectangle traced in dust, like a box had been removed recently. “It’s not so much what’s here but what’s not. Where are her laptops? Last I was here, she had two—a Mac for work, a PC for gaming. And two phones—one for work, one personal. Plus her tower workstation, her iPad, her Android tablet, her Kindle... She has every device known to man, and none of them are here. Not even the Xbox. No flash drives, no hard drives, no server, no modem that I can see. And no chargers, either. That’s a lot of luggage. If you were committing suicide, why take all of that? And why would you need the chargers?”

  “Why, indeed?”

  “Whereas if you were Hyland and you’d discovered Charlotte was harvesting information, wouldn’t you want her devices?” She thudded the knuckles of one hand into her other palm. “Hang on. She had security—cameras, alarms...”

  She ran downstairs, the staircase wobbling. “The alarm sensor was there.” She pointed to a corner of the ceiling. “It must have been ripped down—look.” Flecks of plaster and paint lay on the otherwise pristine floorboards below.

  “There was no security camera on the doorstep,” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs. “I checked.”

  “She definitely had one.”

  “Well, then. I think suicide is the least likely of the possibilities, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure how much of a relief that is. Going into hiding also seems unlikely. But what’s the alternative—that Hyland had her killed and this is a cover-up? I’d rather not believe that, either.”

  “Maybe she staged the suicide to hide from Hyland? And took her gear to keep it from him.”

  “If so, the notepaper and pen and envelopes would be here, wouldn’t they? And the bat wouldn’t.” She stared unseeing at the drawing on the fridge. “What do we do—call the police, anonymously? Someone should be looking for her. How about her family? They should be told—or maybe they already know something. Perhaps we could ask them?”

  “At any rate, we should probably ge—”

  A clunk. Frowning, he drew his finger to his lips and crept to the window.

  “We need to go,” he half whispered, half mouthed.

  A silhouette darkened the front door. Even through the glass she recognized the blond hair. God.

  “Up,” he mouthed, pointing.

  She widened her eyes. What good would that do?

  He gestured again, urgently.

  “The window is barred,” she whispered.

  “I know. Go! Quick!”

  Shaking her head, she ran, cringing as her boots clanged on each step. Jamie followed her into the bedroom and picked up the baseball bat. He reached underneath his jacket and pulled out a gun.

  “Here,” he said, pulling back the top of the weapon and releasing it with a clunk. He handed it to her.

  “You don’t expect me to use that?” she hissed.

  He tapped along the internal wall, behind the bedhead. It made a hollow sound. “Ever used a camera?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “It’s pretty much the same.” He stepped back and raised the bat. Thunder rumbled. “Point and shoot—but not at me. Camera shy, you know.”

  Downstairs, a sliding noise—a key in a lock. They had a key? What did that mean for the theories of what had become of her?

  The front door squealed open. Jamie charged at an internal wall. It caved but held. Shouts, downstairs. He swung again and light appeared through a crack. A clatter. A boot on the bottom stair. She swiveled, gun shaking in her hands, as Jamie again raised the bat. With her gloves on she couldn’t even be sure where the trigger was. Should she take them off? How much force would it need? If she twitched, would it go off? She’d fired plenty of guns in games but hadn’t touched a real one. A smash, behind her. She jumped and the gun exploded, knocking her back, an echoing crack popping her hearing. She dropped the weapon and it skidded to a halt at the top of the staircase. Shit.

  She equalized her ears. It sounded like she was underwater. The footsteps seemed to have stalled. Urgent voices, downstairs. Jamie kic
ked down a sheet of plywood, making a portal into the neighbor’s living room. Next thing she was being shoved through, his hand on her back.

  “The gun!” she whispered. She couldn’t even hear herself.

  “Leave it.”

  The staircase clanged. She ran ahead through the living room and started down a flight of stairs, her surroundings narrowing to sage wallpaper and framed photos. At least three voices behind them—two men and a woman. Multiple feet. A gunshot cracked. Samira’s throat closed. At the bottom of the stairs, an opaque glass door opened into a yard of overgrown grass, enclosed by a high brick wall. God, her sense of direction was skewed—she’d expected to be back at the road.

  Jamie leaped onto a rusty grill beside a crumbling part of the wall, looked over the top and held out a hand to her, his eyes narrowed against the driving rain. As he launched her over the wall she caught a glimpse of movement at the door they’d come through. The blond guy. She landed on a spiky bush. Another gunshot—or was it thunder?—and Jamie thudded onto a lawn beside her, on his feet, knees bent, still holding the bat. He pulled her up.

  They were in another yard, smaller, backing onto a terraced brick house. A muffled scream. Inside, behind a glass sliding door, a woman leaped off a sofa and stared, hand over her mouth. Jamie pretty much threw Samira over the next wall into an identical yard, and then another wall, another yard, another wall, another yard, like some recurring nightmare. Footsteps and shouts seemed to close in from all directions. She tried to picture the block they’d walked around. Did the terraces go all the way to the end of the street? Were there any gaps between them?

  In yard number six—or five or seven or twenty—Jamie strode to the house. “Fuck this,” he muttered. Unlike the others they’d passed, this was unrenovated, with an old-fashioned door on one side, leading into a kitchen. A window revealed a living room. He pulled out his lock picker.

  “What if someone’s home?” she whispered, catching up.

  He pointed through the window. A crucifix, on a wall above a fireplace. “I’m taking a stab they’re at church.”

  He made quick work of the door. Once they were inside and Jamie confirmed no one was home, she allowed herself to release a full breath. A siren wailed. Oh God, police?

  “The cops won’t be sure what they’re looking for,” Jamie said, as she followed him along a hallway to the front of the house. “Like at the hospital. We just need to not look suspicious.”

  “That woman in the house—she got a good look at us.”

  Jamie strode into a living room, pressed his back against a wall next to a bay window and peered out into the street, rubbing his left shoulder like he’d injured it—which was highly likely given his spontaneous demolition job. Thunder cracked. “A police presence might help. Hyland’s goons won’t want the hassle of being arrested any more than we do.”

  She flattened against the wall beside him. “You say that like it’s a parking ticket, not breaking and entering and vandalism and prowling and—Oh my God, I fired a gun.” Her hands still trembled.

  “Which stalled them just long enough for us to get away. It was smart.”

  “It was a mistake. And I lost your gun.”

  “It wasn’t my gun. It was the goon’s, from the hospital.” He pulled his hand from his shoulder. It was coated in blood. His jacket sleeve was shredded.

  “Jamie. You’ve been shot.”

  “Just a flesh wound. A ricochet, I think.”

  A siren crescendoed and cut out. Several more approached.

  “Sounds like they’re surrounding the block,” she said.

  “Aye. We’d better get out before they bring in the ARVs. If they’d had reports of shots fired, they won’t muck around.”

  “ARVs?”

  “Armed response vehicles. And they’ll bring dogs.”

  “So we’re just going to stroll to our stolen government car?”

  He grinned. “That’s the plan.”

  “With a baseball bat and a gunshot wound?”

  “Maybe not with the baseball bat. Wait here a sec.” He left the room and returned a few minutes later with a khaki scarf and no bat. “That kid’s going to get a surprise when she next cleans out her wardrobe.” He checked the street again. “How do you feel about reverting to your natural hair color?”

  “What?”

  He walked into the hallway beside the front door and pulled a couple of overcoats from pegs. “The woman would have seen a nondescript white guy in a cap and bomber jacket, and a brunette in a blue coat.”

  Jamie was far from nondescript but she took his point, pulling off her wig and cap and finger-combing her black hair. She took a red raincoat from him and buttoned it over top of her blue one. He stripped to his tank and knotted the scarf around his upper arm, using his teeth to pull it tight. Once dressed, he shrugged into a charcoal overcoat, wincing as he eased it over his shoulder.

  He adjusted the coat lapels. He looked a little bulky but passable. “Now, do we look like the type of louts who would jump over walls and frighten law-abiding citizens?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever looked like that.”

  “Well, don’t look so terrified, then.”

  “I am terrified. And you have cap hair.” She reached up and mussed it. His head was warm and damp, the short hair surprisingly soft.

  Frowning, he pulled a twig from her hair. Their faces were so close she could feel the heat from his skin. Or was that just her skin? Either way, it was altogether too intimate. He grabbed her waist, spinning her so they were nestled side by side, looking into a hall mirror. “You see? A perfectly ordinary couple out for a stroll.”

  Peerrrfectly. “I look like I haven’t slept for two days.”

  “So we’re a perfectly ordinary couple on honeymoon.”

  A laugh escaped her throat. If only.

  No. Not if only.

  He grabbed a multicolored golf umbrella from beside the front door. “A baseball bat in exchange for two coats and an umbrella. Doesn’t seem fair, but then, we are trying to save the free world.” He found her waist again. “Ready, darling?”

  “No.”

  “Try looking at me like you’re in love. That’s, like, the opposite of terrified.”

  She swallowed, her face warming. “The idea of being in love again is pretty terrifying.”

  The corners of his mouth flicked into a sexy uptick. “See, that’s better already.” He planted a quick kiss on her lips. She gasped. He blinked, like it’d taken him by surprise, too.

  “Aye,” he said, sounding winded. “That worked. That’s what I’m going to do every time you get that guilt-ridden-slash-terrified look on your face.” He scooted to the window and peeked out, then returned. “After you,” he said, opening the door.

  As they stepped out he unfurled the umbrella. He winced, and swapped it into his right hand.

  “You’re in pain,” she said.

  “Nothing serious. We need to prioritize getting away.”

  They kept a steady pace, the umbrella pulled low against the drizzle, his arm strong around her waist. Her heart pounded—because of the goons or the police or Jamie? She felt a magnetic pull to him, right under her ribs. And having him flush against her hip made her feel...grounded. Safe. How ironic was that, given the circumstances?

  She counted four police officers in high-vis yellow jackets, going door to door. As they passed a brick terrace, an officer jogged down the concrete steps from its front door.

  “Excuse me?” the woman said. “Ma’am? Sir?”

  Jamie tightened his grip around Samira. A let me do the talking grip.

  “Something going on?” Jamie said, in an English accent, nodding at the nearest police car. “I heard the sirens.”

  “We’ve had reports of shots fired, of intruders running through the backs of these properties.”


  “Gunshots? Here? You’re joking? Jesus, I heard thunder but...gunshots?”

  “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing at all, sorry. Hope you get to the bottom of it.”

  The officer rejoined her partner and they tried another door. A woman answered—the woman who’d seen them. Samira pulled the umbrella lower.

  “What if she gives a description of us?” she whispered. “What if she spots us?”

  “Walk faster.” Sweat had popped across Jamie’s brow. She reached up and wiped it with her raincoat sleeve, which just smeared it.

  “Now you’re the one who looks terrified,” she said.

  “Maybe you’d better kiss me.” The joke couldn’t hide his graying complexion. “I think the adrenaline ran out.”

  She wasn’t sure how he managed to navigate them to the car—with all the parallel rows of terraced houses, she couldn’t be sure which street they were in—but they made it, just as the sun broke through the clouds.

  “They let themselves in with a key,” Samira said, as he unlocked the doors. “What does that mean?”

  He was silent a beat too long. “Shall we try her mobile phone? It’s not like we’re stealth anymore—they seem to know why we’re here.”

  “I don’t know her number.”

  “How about her work number? Maybe she’s just sitting in the office and has no idea about any of this.” He pulled his phone from a pocket.

  “Oh, how I wish that were feasible.”

  “Worth a try though, right?”

  “Of course. She does work shifts, so she could be there on a Sunday. But we shouldn’t use that phone—we should protect your number. Does London still have phone booths?”

  They drove stiltingly through a few suburbs and parked outside a strip of shops—nail salon, dry cleaner, fish-and-chips shop... Sharp chemicals failed to kill the heavy, stale stench of grease.

  “Do you even know how to use one of these?” Jamie said as they approached a fat red phone box.