Fuel for Fire

by Julie Ann Walker

  “You said that already.”

  “The truth bears repeating!”

  Acting completely dejected—and having way more fun than he’d had in a long time—he sighed. “Fine. Have it your way.”

  Handing over her clothes, he watched her pick out her bra and panties. Seeing her shimmy into them had him growling in earnest. And without conscious thought, he advanced on her.

  “No. No, no!” Up went her finger again—her delightful, biteable finger. This time, she added a wag. “Back up three steps, sir. And once you’ve finished doing that, I suggest you put that thing away.” She made a vague motion toward his dick, which had regained its former glory. The condom was once more stretched tight around him. “Liable to put someone’s eye out,” she muttered under her breath.

  He laughed. Really laughed. And, man, it felt good. Alas, since his fun was over—for now—he looked around for some place to dispose of the used condom.

  Chelsea, ever polite, pulled a new roll of paper towels from the shelves and handed him a square. “There’s a trash can behind you in the corner.” She pointed over his shoulder.

  He turned to see she was right. When he swung back, he thought he saw something drift across her face. A fleeting shadow. But then she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, and when her expression was visible once again, she was all smiley lips and twinkly eyes.

  Still, he had seen something, hadn’t he? However brief it had been?

  His mind turned it over as he disposed of the condom and dressed. But before he could question her about it, she put her hand on the door handle and asked, “Ready to face the firing squad?”

  “Is that what we’re calling them?”

  “You think it’s an unfair description?”

  Knowing the Black Knights? “Not at all.”

  She pushed open the door, revealing the trio parked outside. Ace, Emily, and Christian stood in the middle of the kitchen. They formed a neat line, and when Dagan and Chelsea emerged from the pantry, they began clapping.

  Chelsea blushed to the roots of her hair. But in typical, smart-ass Chelsea-style, she didn’t let them get the best of her. Instead, she took a theatrical bow complete with rolling hand gesture.

  Her upthrust ass in those jeans had Dagan’s brains leaking out of his ears. Which was why he forgot about the shadow that had passed over her face and the fact that she needed to tell him something.

  Chapter 29

  “Okay, okay.” Chelsea patted the air after standing from her bow. She retrieved her glasses from the kitchen counter. Not that she really wanted to see the tormenting looks on the faces of her coworkers. “You’ve had your fun. Now cut the crap.”

  “Aw, look at them.” Ace threw an arm around Emily’s shoulders. “Our babies are all grown up and finally getting jiggy with it. I’ve been hoping and praying for this day for so long. Brings a tear to the ol’ eye, doesn’t it?” He mimed wiping away a tear.

  “It does,” Emily agreed, grinning like a fool. “My only question is why the pantry? Unless…” She glanced behind Chelsea and Dagan at the open pantry door. “Is there whipped cream in there? Chocolate syrup? If so, I can completely understand—”

  “We weren’t in the pantry,” Dagan interrupted. “At least, not originally.”

  Chelsea turned and widened her eyes. Her expression screamed Ix-nay on the etails-day!

  He ignored her. “Before you guys stomped in like a herd of elephants, we were here in the kitchen.” When he pointed to the counter—their counter—Chelsea prayed the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

  “Remind me not to prepare food in here until the whole place has been sanitized.” Ace’s lip curled.

  “Speaking of food,” Dagan said, brow furrowed, “I thought you guys were supposed to bring us something to eat. I see no to-go bags.”

  “We left the bar in a bit of a hurry.” Christian had the grace to look guilty. “A run-in with a mean drunk. Nothing major. But still, sorry to leave you in the lurch. If it’s any consolation, the fish and chips would have been a soggy mess by the time we got them here.”

  “Guess it’s cereal for us,” Dagan lamented.

  “Or tuna salad,” Chelsea allowed.

  They looked at each other, grimaced, and said in unison, “Cereal.”

  “Brilliant,” Christian declared. “And while you’re having a bowl, we’ll catch you up on what we know.”

  Dagan ducked back into the pantry. He held out a box labeled “Shreddies.” One would naturally assume that meant shredded wheat. But no. The picture on the box looked more like Chex.

  Chelsea shook her head.

  His next offering was Frosties, which—hallelujah!—were apparently the UK version of Frosted Flakes. There was even good ol’ Tony the Tiger on the box. She nodded, and he got down two bowls from the cupboard. She did her bit by grabbing the milk from the fridge.

  Christian, Ace, and Emily had taken seats around the small kitchen table. Chelsea joined them, but Dagan chose to stand. He leaned back against the countertop—their countertop—cereal bowl in one hand, spoon in the other.

  “All right.” He nodded, spooning Frosted Flakes—correction: Frosties—into his mouth. “Proceed.”

  “I got a call from Ozzie on the way home,” Christian relayed. “He’s made some headway on the data, but it’s still slow going. Also, Angel has managed to locate his…uh…shall we call him friend?…in Le Touquet. You know, the one with the submarine?” Chelsea was still trying to wrap her mind around that one. “He’s agreed to take you across the Channel, Chels. ETA is eighteen hundred.”

  “So that means we have”—Emily consulted the glowing numbers on the microwave—“a little less than an hour to sit around twiddling our dicks.”

  Ace leaned over the table as if to get a gander at Emily’s crotch. “Something you’d like to share with the rest of us, luv?”

  Emily thumped him on the shoulder. “It’s an expression.”

  A little less than an hour, Chelsea thought, her stomach dropping like she was riding one of the Khaleesi’s dragons in a steep dive. That was plenty of time to tell Dagan what she needed to tell him. Too much time, in fact. Because…then what? Sit there and look at him while the disillusionment on his face slowly turned to disgust that would eventually morph into hate?

  The thought had her shoving her half-eaten bowl of Frosties away. She couldn’t take another bite.

  Chapter 30

  “Oy! What’re you doing there?”

  Steven hung his head and muttered a curse before quickly gathering his wits and fiddling with the laces on his shoe. He had been sure he had seen…

  But no. Christian Watson was dead, right? After he’d left the SAS, he’d vanished without a trace, which everyone assumed meant he’d met a bitter end. And that meant the tall, dark-haired bloke who had sauntered into Rusty Parker’s house was nothing more than a look-alike. A phantom from Steven’s past come to bite him on the ass when he least expected it or, for that matter, needed it.

  “Hey, you!” the young man in the baseball cap cocked at a rakish angle called again. Baggy jeans, bad skin, and patchy facial hair put him anywhere from sixteen to twenty. “I asked what you’re doing there!”

  And by there, the little shite meant crouched beside the Vauxhall Corsa parked across the street from Parker’s townhouse.

  “New shoes.” Steven shrugged and offered the kid a wan smile. “The bloody laces won’t stay tied. Seems I’m kneeling to redo them every other block.”

  The young man’s expression softened. “Try double knots,” he offered, fishing in his trousers for a set of keys. Once he found them, he pressed a button and the car chirped to life, its lights flashing.

  After showily double knotting his laces, Steven stood and moved away from the car, careful to keep an eye on the house across the way. He could see nothing through the shutte
red windows. The louvers were open, but it would take getting up close and personal with the property to see in.

  “Sorry I yelled at you, mate,” the kid said. “But I’ve had my rims nicked once already. I’m not looking to replace them again. They cost a bloody fortune.”

  Steven glanced at the rims under discussion. They sparkled in the light of the setting sun, looking like something a rapper would put on his tricked-out Cadillac, not something that belonged on a lime-green hatchback.

  “Bad luck, that,” he commiserated, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and trying to look unthreatening.

  “Mmm.” The kid nodded. “Well, I’m off to the market. Mum’s screaming mad that Dad didn’t replace the milk after he had the last of it this morning. She’s to bake fresh biscuits for some party at my baby sister’s school tomorrow.”

  “Mums. What would we do without them, eh?”

  His mother’s own sweet face flashed through his mind. Even after the stroke, she was still a beautiful woman. Her unlined face full of the grace and kindness she had shown him growing up. If she knew what he was doing, she would—

  He ripped the thought out of his mind and tossed it away like a cancer.

  “I’ll tell you what I would do.” The kid’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “I’d stay out late every night getting pissed.”

  Steven laughed. “Well, there’s that, I suppose.”

  “Right. Later, then.” The kid waved, hopped into his eye-bleeding monstrosity of a car, and quickly drove away.

  Steven glanced left and right down the quiet street. A few blocks up the way, Morrison and his driver sat in the black SUV. Steven could feel the old man’s eyes on him, boring into him, even though the tinted windows reflected nothing but the deepest, darkest black.

  “Nothing for it,” he muttered to himself, pulling up the collar on his mac. To Americans, that word meant a brand of computer; to Brits, it was a kind of trench coat. Then he tugged the brim of his black wool newsboy cap low on his brow. Careful to keep his chin down, his eyes on the ground, he crossed the street.

  Getting close to Parker’s house was easy. The three-story structure sat on the sidewalk, a set of whitewashed steps leading up to the front door. Getting a gander into the first-floor windows was another matter entirely. It required that Steven belly up to the house and rise on tiptoes.

  And that won’t be conspicuous at all, he thought sourly.

  With another look around at the merry golden glow in the windows of the houses, he hoped the neighborhood’s residents were too busy preparing dinner to take notice of a Peeping Tom. Blowing out a breath, he grabbed a windowsill and did a quick up-and-down peek-a-roo. Nothing but comfortable furniture, deeply polished floors, and a big flat-screen TV that sparked an ember of envy.

  Fecking hell. The empty room meant he had to check the next window.

  Trying to keep up casual pretenses was impossible. So he hurried around the front steps and over to the only other first-floor window. Bingo! A low murmur of voices hummed from behind the glass. The conversation was too muffled to make out, but no matter. He wasn’t there as a spy. He was there to ascertain whether Chelsea Duvall and her merry band of masked men—and hopefully the thumb drive—were on the premises.

  Up and down he went again. But this time, the downward motion took him all the way into a crouch. Fear and confusion made his heart beat out a rabbit-fast rhythm.

  It was Christian Watson he had seen. The Christian Watson. Not that he had ever met the man in person, but he had seen Watson’s picture plenty of times. The man was famous inside the ranks of the SAS. He was supposedly one of the greatest officers to ever wear the Special Air Services sand-colored beret. Tough. Ruthless. Brilliant—although there was some speculation that he’d been part of that bad business in Iraq known as the Kirkuk Police Station Incident. Regardless, he was…assumed dead!

  Holy shit! What’s he doing mucking about in all this?

  Steven’s mind buzzed around possibilities like a bee in a garden. A poisonous garden. Because every reason he could imagine for why and how Watson would be there was worse than the one before it, and—

  The rumble of a car muffler in need of repair snagged his attention mid-thought. Even though the sun had set, it threw ambient pink and purple light into the sky. It was enough to show the approaching vehicle was a pickup truck. The kind of hulking monstrosity that ate petrol by the liter. The kind of thing Rusty Parker drove.

  You can take the man out of America, but you can’t take the American out of the man, Steven thought bitterly, quickly pushing away from the house and heading up the block toward the waiting SUV.

  His adrenaline-filled veins urged him to hurry. But training and self-control kept him at a steady pace. He was careful to pass Morrison and his driver and continue up the block. Only after he heard the truck’s big engine quietly ticking as it cooled, and the squeak of the front door to the house, did he turn around and start back toward Morrison’s vehicle.

  He hopped into the backseat, and the old man wasted no time demanding, “Well? Is she in there?”

  Steven nodded, his mind still racing.

  “Go get her, then. Get that bloody thumb drive and be done with it.”

  It was difficult to keep the incredulity from his face, but Steven managed it. Or, at least, he hoped he did. “And how would you suggest I do that? There is only one of me, and there are five of…no, correction…there are six of them.”

  “So call the local constable.” Morrison flapped his hand through the air in that way that made Steven want to throttle him. “Tell them about the APW, and let them apprehend her and turn her over to Scotland Yard. Then we’ll get her.”

  “These local authorities aren’t equipped to deal with the men in that house,” Steven said, his tone brooking no argument. “Those bastards are well-trained, which means they know all about escape and evasion.” Especially Christian Watson. “They’ll find a way to outmaneuver the backwater police force here. Mark my words. And then they’ll know we’re on their trail. Our element of surprise will be lost.”

  Morrison narrowed his eyes, considering. Then he shrugged. “So then you know what to do.”

  “Yes.” Steven nodded and fished the phone from his trouser pocket.

  He hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d wanted to solve the problem himself. But now… Well, now he was forced to admit he needed help. With fingers he was disgusted to note were trembling, he dialed the number sure to have backup headed his way.

  Chapter 31

  Chelsea took her half-eaten Frosties to the sink, dumped the remains down the garbage disposal, and tried to screw up her courage while she placed her bowl in Rusty’s small European-sized dishwasher.

  Now that the agenda was set, the others had wandered into the living room to welcome Rusty home. She heard them filling him in on the new plan and thanking him for his hospitality. She knew she should probably go add her voice to theirs—Rusty Parker really had gone above and beyond—but she wasn’t sure how convincing she would sound. Not because she wasn’t grateful for all Rusty had done, but because she was wholly preoccupied by the fact that the time for the truth had come. Here in a few minutes, the sweet, seductive smile on Dagan’s face would turn hard and ashy.

  Hang tough, her father’s ghostly voice whispered through her head. It had been his go-to phrase anytime things got hard. It was so much simpler than This too shall pass or Life’s full of ups and downs or any of those other trite sayings that always sounded as if they’d fallen straight out of a dog’s ass.

  Hang tough, she coached herself. Do what has to be done.

  Bracing her hands on the edge of the countertop—their countertop—she closed her eyes and allowed herself a brief moment, just one more second to enjoy the fantasy that this could be the beginning of something. Then she quickly reminded herself that it was the beginning. Of. The. End.


  When she turned to face Dagan, her movements felt sluggish, as though she were wading through the Dead Marshes from The Two Towers. To her ears, her voice was a tiny, broken thing when she finally said, “Dagan?”

  Maybe it was her tone, maybe it was her face, or then again maybe it was the fact that Dagan Zoelner was no slouch when it came to reading people. Truly, when she considered it, she was surprised that after all these years, he hadn’t intuited that something was seriously wrong between them. But regardless, his expression sobered. “Chels? What is it, babe? What’s wrong?”

  If he kept using that endearment, she might lose her ever-loving mind.

  “I need to talk to you.” She glanced toward the living room where the others were gathered. Apparently, Ace had told a joke because everyone was laughing while Ace looked on, pleased with himself. What Chelsea wouldn’t give at that moment to trade places with any one of them. But she had made her bed all those years ago, and now it was time she lay in it.

  Hang tough.

  “In private,” she added. “Will you come upstairs with me?”

  The frown line deepened between Dagan’s sleek, dark eyebrows. “Of course.” He dumped the discolored milk from his bowl and added it to the dishwasher.

  She could feel him behind her like she could feel her own heart beating in her chest as she made her way to the stairs. It was as if he were part of her. Something fundamental, something crucial, something…she couldn’t live without.

  Well, we shall soon see if that’s true.

  “And just where do you two think you’re going?” Emily asked, a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  “To talk,” Dagan answered for them both. Chelsea was glad. She wasn’t sure she could speak around the Carolina pine–sized lump in her throat.

  “Oh, is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?” Emily asked.

  “Guest bedroom is the first door on your right after the landing,” Rusty told them after elbowing Emily.

  “Thanks,” Chelsea managed. Not brave enough to meet their eyes and see their amused looks, she turned and made her way up the stairs. Each tread felt like a climb up the Wall at the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms.