He gives me a dressing down that would reduce a greener soldier to tears. I’m a disgrace to my country, disgrace to my rank, disgrace to my family. He doesn’t even know if I have a family. He moves on to threaten me with a court-martial. He’ll strip my rank and put me in jail.
“Yes, sir,” I say when he takes a breath.
Then he gets to the good stuff.
He’ll have me killed. He’ll have me disappeared. No one will find the body. One of the privates widens his eyes. Surprise. That means he’s new to this detail. Which means he’d be the first person I’d attack if I wanted to take Jefferson down.
I don’t. At least not until I find out whether he’s a danger to Holly.
“I built you up from nothing,” he says, spit flying from his mouth. “You were worthless, you were nobody, and I picked you out of the dregs and made you into someone.”
“Yes, sir.” He’s not wrong. The mission at the Louvre was his first test of my abilities. The rest of my career has been spent outside France. When we heard about an arms deal going down in Paris involving diamonds, it made sense to bring me back in. I had some old contacts here. As far as they know, I’m a punk kid from the US with an eye for shiny stones.
Jefferson narrows his pale, watery eyes. Everything about him is pale—his skin, his hair. He looks like a washed-out version of someone. “Tell me what happened.”
At the beginning I can be completely honest. “As my last drop reported, I infiltrated Adam’s operation as the person to handle the diamonds. They were selling guns to Africa and being paid in diamonds, which would need to be sold for cash in order to split the money.”
“Go on.”
“We hit a snag when we were visiting a contact of mine in Stalingrad. Adam insisted on coming with me, I think because he still doubted my loyalty. I was spotted by someone who knew me from my last mission in Paris.”
“A Frenchman?”
“No, actually. An American. A travel Instagrammer.”
“A what?”
“A civilian,” I say, casting a quick glance at the privates by his side. I don’t know whether he’s already revealed how little he cares about the lives of random civilians.
“His name?”
“London Frank. She approached me separately and asked for money in exchange for silence. I think she believes I’m involved in another museum heist.”
“So you neutralized the threat.”
I didn’t kill her. “I paid her.”
He grunts. “Go on.”
“Adam found out and thought I was skimming profits from the operation. He had his men lock me up. They tortured me for information.” One of the private’s does a fast blink. The cigar burns are visible on my neck even when I’m fully clothed. The man must be new. It makes me want to wrap him in cotton and send him back to his mother, if he has one.
“Then I get a call from you saying you’re in Paris. And for me to come. You summoned me, boy. No one summons me.”
I refrain from pointing out that he did, in fact, come. “They kidnapped a woman. Another American.” This is where the truth becomes dicey. If Jefferson knows that Holly’s connected to London, to the diamonds, he’ll demand custody of her. “I think Adam liked her, but I couldn’t let her get beaten or raped. So we escaped through the countryside and came here.”
“Let me get this straight, North. It was your mission to stop the sale of guns to a hostile country and to take custody of those diamonds for the US government. And now you’re telling me you left without doing either of those things.”
“Yes, sir.”
He’s back to being red in the face. Idly I wonder how close he is to a heart attack. It would simplify matters if he would only drop dead. “I assume you have a plan for completing your mission, or you will face my wrath.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that is?”
“He wants the girl, sir. I have her.”
“You’ll use her as bait. When does this operation take place?”
I would never use Holly as bait. I want her as far away from this mess as possible, but I need for Jefferson to believe I’m cooperating. “Adam is injured. His main contact for the arms exchange is dead. I killed him before I left. He needs to sell the diamonds.”
“You’re my best man, North. I won’t lie to you, because you’re too smart not to realize it yourself. But that doesn’t mean you’re irreplaceable.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to fuck this girl they put in the cell with you? Don’t deny it. I can smell the sex on you. I can see it in your eyes. I didn’t hold on to a weapon like you without understanding how it works. You want to fuck someone, that’s fine. You think anyone’s going to believe her? No. You do what you need to do, but you damn well complete the mission.”
Sometimes I wonder how we ever believed ourselves to be the good guys. Was I ever so disillusioned as to believe we were on the side of right? “Yes, sir.”
“The arms deal may have already gone south. I can stop that on the other end if I have to. But the diamonds are here in Paris. It’s our job to retrieve them using whatever means necessary. They’re evidence, understand? They’re essential. Your mission isn’t over until you have them.”
Spoils of war. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Holly
Charlie studied the swooping graph on the sheet. Calculus, it was called. As an ordinary child, she needed to learn how the world worked. She was not born knowing. She was not born being able to manipulate it. There was something written in the margin of her textbook. Numbers. Notes. She traced the handwriting with her pencil hovering over the page. It felt less lonely to know that someone had held this same book and learned this same math language.
She hopped down from the chair, which was too tall. And crossed the room to the window, which was also too tall. If she pushed up on her toes, she could see over the sill to the empty road. “They aren’t coming back, Charl,” she whispered.
She climbed the chair again and turned the page of her textbook. More swooping graphs and long formulas. More notes handwritten in the margins.
And the words, I know how to make magic.
A car door interrupts my writing, and I cross the suite to see Elijah emerge from a black SUV. He doesn’t glance up to see me, only strides into the front door. I imagine him greeting Carson, who will tell him we had a quiet dinner of bread and cheese while he was gone.
Footsteps climb the stairs, and I run to meet Elijah.
He looks more tired than when he left, but I imagine anyone would be after a twelve-hour day. There are lines on his face, shadows in his hazel green-gold eyes.
“Are you okay?”
A small smile curves his lips. “I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine,” I say a little too brightly, glossing over the fact that I bit my nails, paced the room, and peppered poor Carson with questions about his life for way too long. I’m basically bursting with emotion right now. “Did you find out anything about my sister?”
“Not yet, but I should have answers from my contacts online.” He grabs his laptop from the coffee table and settles on the sofa. I curl up beside him, marveling at how natural this feels. The way it would be if a boyfriend and girlfriend were looking up movie times. Instead we’re looking up who might have harmed or kidnapped my sister, but still.