Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

I don’t bother telling him that this stop-off wasn’t Fleur’s idea or at her request. But I remember it from the conversations I witnessed back in London. I knew they’d already sent people to scout it when Casper first took her away. It was a risk I’m coming to wish I hadn’t taken now.

“Like I said, we have a plan,” I tell him, taking one of the bottles of water on the table as I sit down on the dusty sofa. “We’re sticking to it. Me and her.”

Lucian doesn’t make a sound, getting back to the book in his hand. I sit back and watch him, trying to focus on the plan as I go over it one more time in my head.

“It doesn’t matter what happens,” Casper says, still cleaning out the air vent above the bed. The bunker is cold and humid with the rainfall we’ve had. “Get her to my grandmother.”

“Your nan?” I laugh, throwing the screwdriver in my hand at him.

He catches it swiftly and goes about taking the cap off. I’m not sure why he’s being so anal about the fucking vent. It’s not like Fleur will be down here long enough that it will matter.

“They won’t fuck with her, and she’ll make sure Emily is on her side. The two of them love nothing more than asserting their power over shit.”

“Why are you doing this?” I traipse to the makeshift bed and sit, taking a look around the concrete box.

It reminds me of the days we spent in make do shelters listening out for attacks, missiles, and enemy brawn. I thought our time in Syria put all the shit in life into perspective. I wasn’t the poor kid whose mother charged by the hour, and whose father fucked anything with a pulse—I was lucky. Lucky that our flat wasn’t rattled by air strikes. Lucky that we had clean air and water. Food and clothes that would keep me warm in the cold and cool in the heat.

“Why are you still protecting my sister?” he counters as though he can hear my thoughts.

I thought I was fucking lucky until that night. All the blood in the world couldn’t have prepared me for that one fucking night in the middle of London. The nice, pretty part with clean pavements and pristine stonework. Perfectly painted lamps and railings. Rich, affluent, royal London. Seeped in innocent blood.

I pull in a deep breath, urging my heart to calm at the memory of the bloodbath, trying to swallow down the guilt cloying inside me.

“I need her to be safe,” he says, screwing the facia for the vent back into place. “They deserve to be free.”

“No one is ever really free. We both know that.” We’re both back on home soil, still as fucked up and twisted as ever. With more demons chasing us and ghosts in our closets than anyone might ever suspect. Desperately trying to make up for all the shit we did and didn’t do.

Casper stands in front of me, hands on his hips as though we’re having a tactical debrief.

“She’ll fight you at first. It’s who she is.” He smiles faintly before taking a deep breath. “Everything is ready. When you get to my grandmother, you give her this and she’ll know what to do.”

I recognise the rosary he pulls over his head. I always wondered why he carried it with him. It’s not like he’s a religious man.

“What does it mean?”

“Why all the questions?” He turns back towards the hatch, taking one last look around before he opens it and the frigid air engulfs us both. “You’ve never asked this many questions.”

I follow him out, the tightness in my chest falling leadenly to my gut. “This is different. It’s not a mission…”

“Except it is,” he snaps, turning to me with his brows drawn and haunted shadows flickering in his stare. “You keep her safe. You keep her alive.” He swallows, spinning to head back to the house. “And you get her to my grandmother before my daughter is born. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Pausing by the back door, he takes out his smokes, offering me one before he lights up.

“Cameron?” I ask.

“He has his own orders.”

“And you’re sure about this plan?”

It takes him a second too long to respond, a second long enough to show he cares more than he wants to admit to me and to himself.

“Don’t fuck it up.” Even then, it’s not an answer to my question.

Chapter 16

FLEUR