A Risk Worth Taking

by Brynn Kelly

  “It’s just...” she said. “I don’t think my instinct will help us figure out what’s become of Charlotte.”

  “Okay, so let’s try something. Without thinking about it, answer this question straightaway. Is Charlotte alive?”

  “How can the speed at which I answer produce a more accurate result?”

  “Humor me. Is Charlotte alive?”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “No, don’t think. Don’t weigh up the pros and cons. Just answer—is Charlotte alive?”

  “This is stup—”

  “Don’t think. Answer.” Those eyes drilled into hers like an interrogation lamp but his voice remained even. “There’s an answer in your head, isn’t there? It popped up straightaway, but now you’re testing it, second-guessing it. Just tell me—what was that initial response?”

  “That she’s alive. But that’s just...wishful thinking. There’s no way my brain could have picked up on anything that would enable me to answer that question accurately.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “What medical school did you even go to?”

  “One that taught me that science knows next to nothing about the human brain. Humor me, Samira. You know this woman well, right?”

  “I used to.”

  “People don’t ch...” He let out a harsh breath.

  “Change?”

  “Aye,” he said, forcefully. “Assume she’s still that woman. Quick-fire answers. Here we go... Is Charlotte working for Hyland?”

  “Ah...”

  “No thinking, Samira. What answer popped into your head?”

  “That she’s not working for Hyland but—”

  “No buts, not yet. Plenty of time for buts later.”

  God, don’t mention butts.

  “Let your subconscious answer the questions,” he continued. “The postcard—was it her handwriting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she write the suicide note?” He checked his mirrors.

  She snapped her head around, her pulse speeding up. Nothing. “Dear God, would you stop doing that!”

  He looked at her, jaw dropped. “What am I doing?”

  “Checking your mirrors all the time!”

  “Was I? Just something I do when I drive, I guess. You want me to stop changing gear, too?”

  She pressed a palm over her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just—”

  “You’re worried. That’s okay. Your instinct is pricking, like a cat with raised hackles.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just...” She slapped her hand on her thigh.

  “Who wrote the note, Samira?” he said, gently.

  “Charlotte wrote it.” She almost shouted. It felt like a pressure valve in her chest was blocked and about to explode. “And the postcard.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  She threw up her hands. “How would I know?”

  “You just pictured her, right? When I asked that, you pictured her. What was she doing in that picture?”

  Samira thumbed the soft cotton of her scarf. “Alone in a room. Scared.”

  “What else is in this room?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a...bedroom.”

  “Any computer there?”

  “No. She’s hugging her knees. She has dark circles under her eyes, like her makeup’s smudged.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s really not. I’m not psychic, Jamie. I’m just a worrier, a pessimist. I’ve watched too much TV. This is stupid.”

  “If you were a pessimist, you’d be convinced she was dead. I’m not saying you’re a psychic. I don’t believe in that stuff but I believe we all could pay more attention to our brains.” He slowed for a roundabout. They’d reached the industrial outskirts of a town. The rain had started up again, flat splatters on the windscreen. “Let’s unpack all that. Why do you believe—not think, believe—that she hasn’t committed suicide?”

  “The information she had—like you said, she had something to live for. When she gets passionate about something, she doesn’t let up. It doesn’t fit. She wouldn’t just give up like that.”

  “And why do you believe she’s not working for Hyland?”

  “Because I know her. But that’s just naive, yes?”

  “Not at all. It’s rare that somebody we know and trust that deeply will...betray us. When people do betray us, we usually find that the warning signs have been there all along and we’ve simply ignored them because we haven’t wanted to believe it.” Again his tone seemed weighted with something. Sorrow? Regret? “You get that niggling feeling. Just like the patient getting the ‘shock’ diagnosis.”

  She stared at the wipers. Left, right, left, right, left, right... “And it’s also because all her electronic equipment had gone—everything. If she was working for them, if they trusted her, why would they need to take her Xbox, her security cameras, her modem...?”

  “Good—that’s dead right.”

  Left, right, left, right. “Which also means she must have some evidence they’re trying to pinpoint. The postcard couldn’t have been just Hyland’s trick to lure me out.”

  “And her handwriting?”

  “I must have seen it somewhere, sometime—in a birthday card maybe. It just seems right. And, of course, the avatars she mentioned in her postcard—only the three of us would know those.” She grimaced. “The two of us.”

  “The room you saw her in, where did that come from?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Let’s break it down. The lack of computers...?”

  “Hyland’s men had been in her flat. She hasn’t been on social media. If she’d given up on me coming to get the evidence, she would have found another way to release it. She wouldn’t rest.”

  “And yet, in your mind picture, she was doing nothing.”

  “Oh my God, so she has been captured?” Samira stared at Jamie, then recoiled. “I can’t believe I’m starting to believe this.”

  “So far it’s totally believable, whether you’re thinking logically or instinctively. Your instinct just got there a lot quicker and had to wait for logic to catch up.”

  She opened her mouth to argue but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Next question. Is there a niggle in your brain—is your brain trying to tell you something more? Do you have a feeling you’re missing something?”

  He turned onto a shopping street. What did they call it here—the high street? “Plenty of things. But I don’t know what I don’t know, do I?”

  “Don’t force it. Let it come when it’s ready. Be open to it but don’t go searching for it.”

  “You’re sounding like a TV medium.”

  He laughed, deep and sexy. Which did things to her. Dear God, if she let instinct have its way...

  He pulled into an angle park near a Boots. She’d swear she could smell the blood from his wound, sharp and iron-like.

  “Won’t be a sec,” he said.

  Even in the few minutes he was gone, anxiety constricted her chest. It hadn’t taken her long to get used to having company. Turned out even she had a limit for being alone—and she’d always been fine by herself. Preferred it, most of the time. The only child of diplomats didn’t get much choice. In her first fifteen years she’d lived in six countries. Tough on a kid who took a long time to make friends. By the time she’d reached boarding school in Rome, then college in LA and university in Rhode Island, she’d thirsted for time alone like Charlotte had craved parties. If anyone should have been able to survive a year as a hermit...

  But before the last year she’d always had a computer and, inside it, her constructed world—the virtual friends who felt closer than the people around her, the communities as tangible as concrete-and-timber villages. Even hiding behind an avatar she’d had a more defined identit
y online than off.

  Without even her virtual world, enforced solitude had turned into less sanctuary and more punishment. Going to bed alone each night knowing you’d wake up alone, with no one to talk to tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, virtually or in person... With nothing and no one to interrupt your thoughts they meandered to crazy places, like the swells of the Southern Ocean endlessly circling the globe without landmasses to temper them. And the currents and tides had inevitably led back to Jamie, to that night, to the week leading up to it, to harmless fantasies about where they might meet again.

  Which no longer seemed harmless.

  Jamie returned with a paper shopping bag, a newspaper and a polar blast. “There was a car park back there, overlooking a wood,” he said, heaving the door shut. “On a day like today I don’t think many people will be out hiking. We can park up while I sort this out.”

  The “wood” turned out to be a stand of amber and gold trees in the seam of a valley, flanked by green fields. Or were they “meadows” here? In the distance a squat stone farmhouse sat on a plateau, coated with a green creeper as if trying to camouflage itself. Tiny cattle dotted the hills behind. Like in Tuscany, her brain could appreciate the beauty but not her heart.

  A thought pulled at her, again. What? Is your brain trying to tell you something? Her poor brain was being tugged in all directions. Her brain, her heart, her instinct, other parts...

  No, those parts were all being pulled in one direction.

  She turned to the back seat, where Jamie was spreading a medical arsenal onto the red raincoat—sealed packets of scissors, tweezers, wipes, pills, syringes, vials...

  “You got all that from the drugstore?”

  “I bought some supplies through Andy as well, via an old...contact. This is not all over-the-counter stuff.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Asks the woman with the stolen car and fake passport.”

  “I didn’t steal the car.”

  “I don’t think you can claim I kidnapped you, if that’s your plan.”

  “Technically you did kidnap me. There were witnesses.”

  He laughed and went to pull off his torn sweater, having discarded his other layers. “Shite,” he said, the sweater muffling his voice. “Can you come over into the back seat with me and help get this over my head?”

  Come over into the back seat with me. Under different circumstances that would be very appealing.

  After awkward maneuvers the sweater came free. The scarf ripped clear of the wound with a sucking tear, and blood bubbled up in its wake. He pressed the fabric back onto it, screwing up his face.

  “It’ll feel better once it’s cleaned out,” he growled. Was he trying to convince her, or himself? After a few deep inhalations, he pulled away the scarf, revealing a pulpy, bloody gash in the dip where his shoulder muscles met his arm muscles.

  “Yikes,” she said.

  “It’s nothing.”

  His tattoo was hazed with blood. Four words in a vintage cursive font. She remembered tracing the swirling letters, his skin goose pimpling under her finger. His skin had felt taut, a little dry. She’d kissed it...

  “I think you might lose a few letters from your tattoo,” she said.

  “That’d be appropriate.”

  “‘Je ne regrette rien,’” she read, haltingly. “‘No regrets,’ yes?”

  He gave a rueful grin. “‘I have no regrets.’”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Wishful thinking. I should have gone with ‘Karma est une salope.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “‘Karma’s a bitch.’”

  She laughed, which just seemed to set off the nerves in her stomach. What was she nervous about—their predicament, his wound or being in the back seat with a shirtless Jamie?

  “Samira... I hope you don’t have regrets about that day we...?” He spoke in a rush, as if he’d been holding the words back awhile.

  Her stomach hollowed but she at least owed him the respect of an explanation. “Maybe I wasn’t ready, mentally. At the time I thought I was, but afterward... It was...overwhelming, in a way I hadn’t expected.”

  Was she ready now? How would she know? Not that he was asking.

  “I hope...” he said, his eyes narrowing. “I hope you didn’t feel pressured, by me. You were grieving. I shouldn’t have started it, that day by the river.”

  Started it. By taking her hand, drawing her to him, cupping her cheeks...

  “Oh, it started for me well before that,” she said.

  He smiled. A genuinely unguarded moment that made her want to melt into the seat. She knew exactly the moment it started—when she’d first seen him hiding out in the alleyway outside her grandmother’s guesthouse. She didn’t believe in love at first sight, but...

  Love. Why had that word come to mind? It wasn’t that, not then. Not now. It was...intrigue at first sight, a curiosity that kept growing. Was still growing. She’d grabbed his elbow, pulled him inside, hid him and Flynn as their enemy searched. That Jamie had been the dead serious one. The soldier. The protector. Within thirty minutes she’d met the joker, the medic, the loyal friend...

  She was still meeting new Jamies. Which one had she first fallen for, and when?

  She swallowed. “I’m a grown woman, Jamie. I was just as eager as...”

  “You certainly were.”

  Her nerves bubbled into an abrupt laugh. “Well...it’s history, so...”

  “Aye,” he said, with a swift nod. “History.”

  He grabbed the packet of alcohol wipes. She folded her legs underneath her, on the seat beside him. It was a relief to have at least broached the subject, but it felt less a resolution than a cease-fire. Like in France, he’d taken the out a little too easily, a little too quickly.

  So maybe he hadn’t been ready, either, for reasons that prowled the darker alcoves of his mind—and his past, as she was learning. Still wasn’t ready.

  While he concentrated on cleaning the wound, she let her gaze stray. What was that American term—“eye candy”? He was definitely eye candy. All muscle, no fat—but not puffed up like a bodybuilder. The shapely shoulders of a sprinter or swimmer, his smooth light skin interrupted by scars and freckles and hair and tan lines. She remembered running a finger from the side of his neck down to his knuckles—coarse on his throat where it bordered his stubble, smooth through the collarbone and in the dip below, a little rougher over the peeling skin of his shoulder, gliding down the swell of his bicep to the hair of his veined forearms. She’d bumped over the watch at his wrist and he’d captured her hand in his, warm and rough and dry and reassuring.

  And that reassuring hand had just unwrapped a syringe.

  “Jamie, you’re not expecting me to inject you...?”

  “I can manage it. A little local, because I’m a wimp.”

  He was a wimp? She turned back to the other scenery, trying to zone out the rustling noises. The windows were steaming up.

  “Safe to look,” he said, after a few minutes. “But I am going to need your help. Ever done any sewing?”

  “What?” She swiveled. “I couldn’t!”

  “I can’t stitch myself up.”

  “No, honestly, you don’t want me anywhere near you with a needle.”

  “You’ll be surprised what you can do. Easy as sewing on a button.”

  “Do that often, do you?”

  “Buttons, hems, patches... My tailoring skills are in big demand in my team. You’d be surprised what price you can name for clothing repairs in the middle of the desert.”

  “Stop trying to make this sound everyday.”

  “I’m joking about the sewing,” he said, chuckling, opening another packet. The tweezers. “I’ll use suture strips. Stitches can wait.”

  “You bastard.”

  “
You’ll have to help me with those but it shouldn’t be too bad—just like applying sticky tape. Once you’ve had a close look at a wound it’s never as daunting as you first thought. And I’ll also need your help to make sure I get everything out. Whatever’s in there, my body’s not happy about it. Every time I knock it, it does more damage.” He nodded at a tube of hand sanitizer. “Use that, first.”

  They settled into silence as they worked. Like he’d said, it was easier once she was familiar with the wound, but her stomach refused to settle. Lucky she’d hardly eaten in the past twenty-four hours.

  “God, this is really not my thing,” she said, as she tugged out a particularly stubborn piece of metal, unleashing a rivulet of blood that he caught with balled-up gauze.

  “It’s not many people’s thing. We’re nearly done.”

  She rubbed the window with her elbow, smearing the green fields.

  Wait—green fields, rolling hills...

  “Shit,” she said. The thought that’d been tugging at her brain... “Shit!”

  “What?” He ducked to peer through the smudge in the condensation. “What’s out there?”

  “Nothing. It’s what was on the fridge at Charlotte’s, what was on her social media.”

  He frowned. “That kid’s picture?”

  “The date of that post—it was the same as the suicide note, yes?”

  A vehicle engine approached. A blue strobe flashed, and a car pulled up alongside in a haze of white and blue and yellow.

  “Oh God,” Samira said. “The police.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SAMIRA THREW JAMIE’S coat over the medical supplies between them—the stolen coat, over the illegal supplies. Exhibits A and B. Or were they up to M and N by now?

  “Maybe the car’s been reported,” she whispered.

  A car door opened. A radio sounded and cut out.

  “Let’s hope it’s too soon for that,” Jamie said, shoving a syringe under the coat.

  “What do we do now? This is not going to look good. They’re going to ask questions. I wasn’t brought up to lie to police.”

  He bit his lower lip. “We do what they expect two people to be doing in the back seat of a car with the windows steamed up.” He reached over, grabbed her waist and effortlessly hoisted her over the charcoal coat and astride his lap, running his fingers up her outer thighs to hitch her dress.