A Risk Worth Taking

by Brynn Kelly

  “But you said yourself it’s not likely to be reported stolen until tomorrow.” She sat straighter. “Or maybe could we take a train?”

  “Know how many surveillance cameras they put in train stations? You’re on too many radars for that.”

  “Jamie...where is all this coming from?”

  “What do you mean? I thought you liked thinking things through.”

  “I do. But I’m the risk-averse one, not y—” She chewed on the corner of a fingernail. “I have an idea.”

  “An instinctive one, I hope.”

  “Strictly logical.” She set the phone browser to invisible and did a web search. “One thing about Big Brother—whenever he’s watching, you can be sure an army of anarchists and libertarians is staring right back.” After a minute she showed him the screen, smiling. “You see? I have complete faith in other people’s lack of faith in authority.”

  He glanced at it. “A map?”

  “Showing all the fixed ANPR cameras in the UK. Thousands of them.”

  “ANPR?”

  “Automatic number plate recognition.”

  “You’re such a revolutionary, Samira.”

  “Believe me, I didn’t used to be. And I don’t like it. When all this is over, I shall go back to being the woman who drives a mile under the speed limit, takes out her trash a day early and overpays her taxes.”

  “You’re an exemplary citizen. Give me a look at that map?” She held it in front of him. “This is a circuitous route. It’s basically England to Scotland via Alaska. Is there no other way to make it look like we’re in Edinburgh?”

  “No.” She drew away the phone. “It’s the simplest way to end this.” Hang on. Why was she the one trying to talk him into this? “Jamie, I’m sensing reluctance.”

  “No, it’s just...it’s a long way.”

  “You don’t want to go to Scotland.” She lowered her tone to teasing. “Worried about bumping into someone you know?”

  “No more so than in London.”

  His voice and expression had gone grim. Thunder from a blue sky. She really had touched a nerve—but why?

  “You’re worried about something,” she ventured.

  “Not a care in the world.”

  Like hell. “Jamie,” she said, gently, “none of this is what I want to do, either. I just want for everyone to be safe, and unfortunately, that’s been left up to me.”

  He nodded, his expression remaining dark. What was going on under there? “And me.”

  “I...can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re here with me. I can’t do this without you—I wouldn’t be doing it without you.”

  Silence. “So we drive to Scotland in a stolen car, evading police and killer goons,” he said, eventually, a little too loud, a little too cheerfully. “Then break into the secure files of a leader of the free world, steal mysterious documents and transmit them across the world without being caught by web spy software—or anything or anyone else. What are we waiting for?”

  Suddenly, he threw the car into a U-turn. The newspaper he’d bought slid off the dash onto her feet. She clutched her door handle, looking around breathlessly. No police. No Peugeot.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Going to Scotland. We were heading south.”

  “Oh. Good... I guess.”

  “We must be the most reluctant defenders of truth and justice the world has ever seen.”

  She laughed. “I was secretly hoping you’d tell me my plan was terrible and we should just go and hide.” Hiding out with Jamie. A cozy cottage somewhere, like in France. Nothing to do but...

  No.

  “It’s a good plan. I just...” He shook his head, a movement so slight she could have imagined it. “It’s a good plan.”

  As they drove, she picked up the newspaper and flicked through it. A later edition than the one she’d seen at St Pancras. “Oh my God, I’m on page three.” She slapped the paper with the back of her hand. “Page three! How the hell is any of this happening?”

  “What does it say?”

  She sped-read, fighting nausea. “The authorities know I’m in the UK. The US wants to extradite me.”

  “They’ll have to catch you first.”

  “There’s some lobby group arguing that I’m a political asylum seeker. They’re calling me a whistle-blower...literally talking about me in the same sentence as Snowden and Deep Throat. It wasn’t me who blew that whistle.”

  “You would have though, if you’d come across the same information your fiancé had.”

  “No, I don’t believe I would.”

  “I do.”

  He did? “If I hadn’t been forced into this situation, I’d never have chosen it.”

  “You would have gotten that info out but maybe you would have been more care—” His eyebrows dived together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that your fiancé—”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re right—he wasn’t careful.” She smoothed the newspaper. “But it wasn’t just his carelessness that got him killed.”

  A pause. “You mean your phone call, the one they tracked?”

  “He took a risk but he might have pulled it off if I hadn’t gotten scared. My fear for his life had him killed. How ironic is that?”

  “He knew what he was getting into. He knew the risks. I bet he’d be gutted to think you were blaming yourself.”

  Jamie covered her nearest hand with his and squeezed, filling her chest with something between warmth and an ache. Underneath their hands the newspaper rustled. Her eyes pricked. What was going on here? That night in France had been lust and desire, impulsive, to say the least. But this was attraction of a whole other kind. And was she ready for it?

  She cleared her throat and shook out the paper, forcing him to release her. Ready? Her life was a mess. She was a mess. “I refuse to feel sorry for myself, not when I...” She stared ahead, sensing his gaze on her. “I will not feel sorry for myself. So please don’t feel sorry for me, because that...” Because that makes me want to melt into you and believe every word you say and take the comfort you offer—and so much more. “I would never have chosen this situation,” she repeated.

  “Samira,” Jamie said, in that gentle tone that did her in, every time. “There is no shame in fear. Fear is meant to keep you alive—like when you escaped Hyland in Italy. That’s its purpose.”

  “I thought you said that was instinct?”

  “There’s no stronger instinct than fear. It’s okay to listen to your fear—just don’t let it make all your decisions for you.”

  “But my instinct always comes back to fear. It always tells me to cower. Like at the train station—my brain was telling me to go and help you but fear kept me in place.”

  “And your instinct was correct. You hid and I was fine.”

  “But my instinct is always going to be to hide, to run.”

  “And at the spur of the moment those are usually very wise decisions. It’s when your conscious brain tells you to fear that you should question it. When you talk yourself into fear. When you tell yourself ‘I’m a fearful person’ so often that it influences your decisions—a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve seen the way you fire up at the thought of injustice. You would have found a way to blow the whistle. Maybe you would have done it in such a way that protected yourself—which is a good thing—but you would have done it.”

  She blinked. Wow. “You’ve really thought about this.”

  “Not really.” He shifted in his seat. “I’m just thinking aloud. I make most things up as I go along and for some reason people tend to believe my bollocks, which is handy in the medical profession. And, hey, you’ve probably figured out that my big life decisions haven’t always worked out so well. I’m the doc who tells you not to smoke, then dashes out for a fag between patients.”

&nbs
p; And the self-deprecating joker was back. Which was okay. She liked the joker. She liked all parts of him—the philosopher, the action man, the protector, the mystery man who lurked somewhere underneath and between. She liked altogether too much of him.

  “I think you need to give yourself more credit,” she said, her voice suddenly husky. “What’s that saying about swallowing your own medicine?”

  “Giving myself too much credit kind of created the fundamental problem that is Caporal James Armstrong. And I think the saying you’re looking for is ‘Practice what you preach.’ In my experience it’s far easier to preach.”

  He pulled to a halt at a red light and turned in his seat, fixing his gaze on her—that look that made her feel like the only woman in the world. His eyes narrowed, lines hatching in the creases. He reached a hand across—to her cheek, this time—and brushed something away. A second’s pause, then he pushed his fingers through her hair and cradled the back of her head, coaxed her toward him and planted a kiss on her forehead. The ache in her chest started up again.

  She went to pull away, then stopped. The fear, right now—it was in her conscious brain. Every other part of her brain—and body—wanted her to tip her head back, glide a hand to the back of his neck, touch her lips to his.

  It’s okay to listen to your fear—just don’t let it make all your decisions for you.

  Yes. Yes, this decision was all hers.

  She tipped her head back. His frowning gaze held hers a second before dropping to her mouth. Like it was inevitable, like it’d happened between them a thousand times, he tilted his head and their lips met. Her fear vanished. In its wake she could feel her nerves firing up, trace their path to her brain as she softened into him, feel her heart pump faster, feel the blood quicken in her veins.

  History?

  Like hell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A HORN BLASTED, behind them. Samira jumped, breaking contact, as Jamie scrambled for the gearshift. Not a police car, just a blue van. The traffic light was green. She pressed her hand against her chest, the heartbeats like seismic aftershocks. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

  Jamie accelerated, staring resolutely ahead, his breath as ragged as hers.

  This thing between them—it no longer existed purely as a guilty secret. It had taken form again, like a bubble of gas around them. A thrilling, frightening, euphoric, suffocating drug.

  She slid her hand up to her hot throat. And she couldn’t let it continue. Her brain had enough to cope with—it couldn’t be healthy to dump a heap more uncertainty into it.

  “Jamie, you should know... I’m still not ready for... I can’t go there.” Was that even the reason? He might be good at making things up as he went along, but she needed to go away for an hour or two to process this. They’d kissed. For real. Not like on the Thames Path, on the street in Putney, the feint for the police officer, not even like France. This last one was barely more than a touch but every part of her knew it was real. It changed everything.

  It changes nothing.

  “I know you’re not ready,” he said. That catch in his voice—it was the same one she’d heard in France after she’d insisted he leave. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “We shouldn’t have. It wasn’t on you. I was just as... Let’s forget about it.” Forget about that? The sweet buzz in her chest, the promise of a future in that one light touch? In France she hadn’t felt that promise. That was resolutely a one-night stand—not that she’d had a lot of experience in such things. She’d been a one-man woman for so long.

  “Aye,” he said.

  She waited.

  Aye? That was it? No passionate argument about letting instinct decide, about rejecting fear? Once again he’d relented altogether too easily. Just like in France. The speed at which he’d packed his few belongings that morning...

  And she should be grateful he’d relented—then and now. Maybe in a few years, after she’d rebuilt her life, she’d be ready to share it with someone—someone less reluctant than Jamie—but first she had to put all of this behind her. Starting with not being on a wanted poster.

  Yes, focus on that. Focus on the problems she could rationalize and take practical steps to overcome. Jamie did not fit that category.

  She pulled the goon’s money from her coat and counted it. “Jamie, how much cash do you have?”

  “Uh...” He patted his jeans pocket. “About five hundred quid. Flynn advised me to carry cash rather than use a card.” As he spoke, his voice recovered its usual energy. No doubt he was relieved to return to neutral subject matter, reset the clock. “Tess has turned us all into conspiracy theorists. What do you need?”

  “A laptop. I ditched mine a year ago and I can’t do this hack on a public computer.” She grabbed his phone from the console between the seats and swiped it. “You really should put a PIN on this.”

  “Until now I had nothing to hide. Well, nothing that you’d find on a phone.”

  She found the address of the closest electronics store and directed him there. “You’d better go in alone,” she said, as he found a park behind the building. She picked up his phone and typed a list of specifications into his notes app. “Here. And get a power bank. And a car charger. I’ll pay you back when I can exchange my euros. When I’m no longer wanted on both sides of the Atlantic.”

  He laughed.

  “I wasn’t making a joke.” She double-blinked. “Wow,” she breathed.

  “Samira?”

  “I keep having these ‘what the hell?’ moments. Even after the crazy couple of years I’ve had, my life keeps getting crazier. It’s like a permanent out-of-body experience. I really am a wanted woman.”

  He opened the car door, flashing a wry grin. “In more ways than one. Don’t worry. We’ll get you returned to your body soon.”

  In more ways than one. Spoken like his attraction to her was as reluctant as hers was.

  While he was out, Samira installed a virtual tunnel and secure browser to his phone that would mask their web activity. Ten minutes later they were back on the road, Samira connecting the computer with the charging equipment. Once it had enough juice, she set up his phone as a hot spot, installed the same tunnel and browser on the laptop, and downloaded “Cosmos” onto it. No new activity. What was she expecting? That Charlotte had left her current GPS coordinates? A note to announce it was all a big prank?

  Samira opened a web page. In the meantime, she’d have to pursue her own solution.

  “What’s that?” Jamie said, glancing at the screen.

  “The site I uploaded that goon’s phone data to.” She scrolled, a thrill rolling up her spine. This was more like it. Something she could control. “The connection was only a few days old. No texts or emails or browsing history but there are regular calls with several other cell phone numbers—most of them sequential to his number. The phones must have been bought together.”

  “Can you hack into them, or whatever it is you do?”

  “Phone companies are notoriously hard to infiltrate if you’re not the NSA or GCHQ or some other government spy agency,” she said. “But I can download a GPS mapping analysis tool and input the historical GPS data.”

  “So we’ll be able to see where he’s been?”

  “Which might or might not be any use.

  “This is interesting,” she said, after a few minutes. “He was in the vicinity of Charlotte’s house three days ago. And then he traveled south—not long after Charlotte’s social-media post.”

  “Could that be where they took her, assuming that’s what happened?”

  “Maybe. But he covered a big area. With nothing to triangulate against, the location data is too broad to be any use. We’d have to knock on doors in an entire London suburb.” She worked her knuckles into her back and arched.

  “Sore back?”

  “Always.”

 
; After an unproductive few minutes she sighed, closed the screen and stared out the window. They were back in the countryside, flanked by green hedges. “That’s about all I can do until we get closer to Hyland.” She yawned. The buzz from the kiss and the drama had lifted, sucking her remaining energy away with it. Even pretending the kiss hadn’t happened was exhausting—on top of pretending France hadn’t happened.

  “When’s the last time you had a proper sleep?” Jamie said.

  “I honestly can’t remember.” Yes, that was why her brain was so skittish. Lack of sleep was not conducive to rational thought—or resisting self-defeating impulses.

  “It’s a fair distance to Edinburgh without the motorways—seven hours or more if we’re to avoid all those cameras.” His eyes turned to hers, dull and sunken. His five o’clock shadow had tipped from sexy to haggard, though she still felt a pull in her belly under his gaze. Goddammit. “Get some sleep.”

  “You couldn’t have slept much, either.”

  “More than you, I’m guessing, and I’m used to it. I can nap later, while you’re doing your techie stuff.” He jerked his head toward the back seat. “Go.”

  She nodded, and climbed into the back. This way they didn’t have to talk about the rhino in the room. Awkward situations were best tackled by avoidance.

  As she curled up on the seat, her camel coat balled under her head, Jamie switched on the car radio. He cycled through a few stations and settled on an old Muse song, tapping the rhythm on the steering wheel. Rain tapped on the roof, and the wipers swished. A wave of warmth and security washed over her—the comfort she’d known as a child traveling with her parents, alone with her imagination in the back seat as they murmured a conversation years above her comprehension, her mother’s perfume blending with her father’s cologne like they’d bought his-and-hers fragrances.

  There was no separation between her parents’ professional and personal lives but it worked. Their conversations had no borders—work, politics, family, diplomatic gossip. They knew and understood everything about each other. Sure, they argued, but it was more competitive than cutting—each trying to outwit the other with pithy dissections of global issues. They rarely disagreed on anything of substance. They were on the same side. Maybe she’d subconsciously sought that for herself when she’d started looking for love. An ally in every respect—someone she understood, who understood her. Less yin and yang, more yang and yang.