My own feet stumble forward out of gathered momentum, but I manage a desperate glance over my shoulder to search the crowd. The cone of light from the helicopter continues to dance over faces, but none are recognizable. No blue eyes or short, jaggedly cut hair in desperate need of a trim. No Queen Mary pullover in dire need of a wash. No Peter.
Don’t think the worst. Don’t you dare think the worst.
Easier said than done, especially when screams erupt around me and my back dampens with water. The ground turns slick beneath my shoes, and I know my fate seconds before I hear the horn.
I go down in a sea of scrabbling hands and slipping feet, sucked under thrashing bodies all fighting for survival.
Terror clamps around my heart like a restricting vice, and then I hear nothing.
Not the yelling.
Not the whirring helicopter up above.
Just . . .
Nothing.
6
Saxon
I reach down, grabbing the man by the threads of his shirt, and turn him over onto his back.
Under the moonlit sky, his face appears ashen. Blood pools beneath his right nostril. His upper lip is busted, his left cheek sliced open—a gift from another bloke’s fist, I imagine—and it takes me less than three seconds to catalog the rest of him.
Blue tracksuit. Black trainers with untied shoelaces and blood spattered across the toes.
Seems I’m not the only one with my sights set on Alfie Barker tonight.
All around me, the protest at Buckingham Palace is a cacophony of chaos. The air crackles with tension—fear at its most formidable. And as I slip my thumb over my target’s throat, I can’t help but wonder if Queen Margaret is watching tonight’s festivities.
We told her to stay away, to remain hidden.
If I were a betting man, though, I’d place every last quid I have that she’s perched in one of the palace’s windows, unable to tear her gaze away from the frenzy.
Because that’s what this is. A frenzy. A mob.
And there’s no stopping it.
With one palm hovering over Barker’s throat, I use my free hand to search his pockets. A stick of chewing gum. A fiver. A purse stuffed full of identification cards. Multiple. All with different home addresses and different surnames though the picture remains the same and the first name never changes. Burner IDs. Shoving the wallet into my trousers, I make quick work of moving to his next pocket.
The throat beneath my palm gasps for air. I feel the withdrawal, the innate desperation, in the split second that it takes for him to exclaim, “Get away from me! Who the fuck do you think you—”
The rest of his sentence ends with the heel of my hand pressing into his larynx. He gurgles immediately, his fingers grasping my wrist to tug fruitlessly for release. When I don’t ease up on the pressure, and instead continue searching for the mobile he’s carrying, his knees hike up in a futile attempt to kick me away.
In the light of day, someone might care about this man dying. In the dark of night, though, secrets are kept with infinite care. No one steps in to help. No one shoves at my frame to push me off. No one gives a damn. Everyone is too busy saving themselves.
“Please,” he grunts, squirming from the chest down, “please don’t kill me.”
I lean over him, digging my knee into his abdomen until he folds like an accordion. “Where is it?”
He swallows under my grip. Claws his nails over my wrist, my forearm. Yanks so hard on my sleeve that my hood falls from my head. “What? Where is what?”
“Come now, Alfie,” I say, my tone eerily pleasant, “a man like you visiting the palace so late after hours? The Guard won’t let you through those front gates, which means we both know what you planned to do.” I drop another centimeter, until my mouth hovers by his ear and I can hear his every unsteady intake of breath. “Killing a queen in real life doesn’t work the way it does in film. In this life,” I murmur, applying enough pressure on his throat that his lungs inflate with need, “traitors are caught.”
Then dealt with.
But I need that goddamn phone first.
It took Damien only minutes to crack the mobile that Queen Margaret brought by Guy’s flat, before remotely putting a tracker on Barker’s phone. My younger brother is a genius. Had he been born in any other life but this one, I have no doubt that he would have wound up creating new technologies that people around the world could enjoy. New computer software, maybe. Something with artificial intelligence. Only, he’s not in that world—he’s stuck in this one, just like the rest of us—and so Holyrood is the only entity that reaps the benefits of Damien being the most brilliant person in any given room.
Hacking phones is child’s play for him.
Just as intimidation is for me.
Alfie Barker, older brother to the stable hand who tried to kill the queen last week, thrashes around beneath my weight. The queen was right about one thing: it hadn’t been the stable hand’s idea to orchestrate an assassination in the middle of her garden, in broad daylight. No, it was Barker’s.
Beneath my palm, I feel his Adam’s apple bob. Fear widens his gaze and his struggle gains renewed strength. “Please, please—”
Abruptly, his body goes slack.
His eyes roll into the back of his head.
Fingers fall limply from my wrist to the pavement.
I check the man’s pulse. Feel it flutter beneath my fingers. Not dead—not that I expected he would be. It takes more than ten seconds to strangle a person, and I’ve no interest in squeezing the life out of anyone who’ll prove more useful alive than dead.
“Priest!”
At the Scottish-accented voice rising above the cries of the protesters, I glance over my shoulder to see Hamish angling his way toward me. He palms an innocent bystander, pushing them out of his trajectory, until he’s standing an arm’s length away.
Close enough to speak but not close enough to imply that we know each other.
I cut the Holyrood agent another swift glance. Emblazoned across his chest are the words, I Stand With The People.
“It’s my protest shirt. Works like a bloody charm,” he says, plucking at the fabric when he notices the direction of my gaze. “Figured it’s best that I blend in with the crowd.”
One of us has to, and with my face, I’m more likely to take a turn in these people’s nightmares than look like a knight in shining armor. Drawing my hood up over my head, I take advantage of Barker being temporarily dead to the world and finish my pat down.
“Ye find it?” Hamish asks out of the corner of his mouth. “Because I’m still having flashbacks to that cavity search we did. Ye think you’ve done it all until ye’re bare-fisting a man the size of a mountain. Who the feck shoves a—”
“Enough.”
My brother-in-arms promptly shuts up.
A second later, I’m yanking up Barker’s joggers at the ankle and thanking a God I don’t believe in when I spot his phone tucked into his right tube sock. Not as stealthy as he probably imagined the hiding place would be.
I toss the mobile to Hamish. “Take this to Damien.”
Hamish’s stare drops to the man still comatose on the pavement. “Any preference on where I dump him?”