A Risk Worth Taking

Aye, he’d always had a thing for the smartest woman in the room. They made his brain light up, among other parts, they made life interesting, they got him in trouble—good trouble and bad trouble. Next time he ran away to join a mercenary force he’d check first that it was unisex. Not that five years ago he’d had the luxury of options.

Samira retrieved her mirrored sunglasses from the floor and jammed them on under her cap.

“Are those sunglasses or hubcaps?” he said, shrugging on his bomber jacket. He left it unzipped for quicker access to his Glock.

A laugh, white teeth against plum lips and brown skin. He could almost feel a click in his brain as the reward center—the nucleus accumbens—lit up and the dopamine released. The rat getting the cheese. He frowned. Weird. That feeling—the warm, sweet buzz in his veins. It was the sensation he used to get when...

“You’re looking at me strangely,” she said, dabbing her nose and chin as if expecting to find the remains of breakfast.

He directed his gaze out the window, swallowing. The evidence might not pass peer review, but there it was, clear as an fMRI scan. The day he and Samira had given in to their insane attraction had left its mark on his brain, laid down a pathway of memories that were right this second tugging at him to seek that pleasure again, promising that if he just drew her to him and...

Resist.

“We’re nearly there,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Let’s swap rucksacks. Mine’s lighter.”

They rolled into the ambulance bay and pulled up alongside two other identical Mercs. Andy was home free. Now for Samira. The sooner Jamie got her to safety and left town, the better for all involved. Giving in to impulse was not something he did, not anymore.

“Cheers, pal,” Jamie called as he reached for the door handle.

“My pleasure,” Andy replied, sounding like he’d stepped in dog shit. “And do me a favor, James?”

“A favor? Thought we were even and you wanted to keep it that way.”

“Never contact me again.”

“Ah, still so fickle, Andy.” He pulled Samira’s rucksack on. “Okay, Samira. Stick close and let me do the talking.”

A glint of white on the road alongside drew his eye. His hand froze on the handle. The Peugeot, slowing, the blond guy looking from Merc to Merc. Shite.

“Jamie?” Samira had followed his gaze. Her breath shuddered. Crap. A panic attack now could be the death of them both.

The car rolled past and pulled up on the roadside, the passenger door swinging open before the wheels stopped. The angles of the parked Mercs would protect them from view but only for a few seconds.

Jamie pushed open the rear door and grabbed her hand. It was icy. “Out. Quick.” He slammed the door behind them and drew her to his side, his right hand hovering over his weapon. They skirted the bonnet of another Merc, dodged a paramedic holding a crying, struggling toddler and scooted in through the first of a double set of mirrored glass doors. They backpedaled a second while the second set opened. Behind them the blond goon’s head bobbed across the forecourt. Andy drove straight at him, forcing him to lurch backward, briefly cutting him off. They were definitely even.

Inside, the waiting room had been upgraded to something resembling a posh airport lounge. In the middle was a circular reception desk in a bubble of light. Jamie adjusted his path, scanning the faces of the staff.

“Jamie,” Samira whispered, tightening the straps of the rucksack on her back, “there’s a woman staring swords right at you.”

So there was. A tall, trim figure in a white shirt, a tablet in her hands, leaning back against the reception desk, looking noticeably less accommodating than the junior doctor he remembered. As they approached, he glanced behind. Beyond the mirrored glass, Blondie was checking the back of an ambulance.

“Looking well, Harriet,” he said.

“That’s because you’re no longer around.” Her gaze dropped to where his hand joined Samira’s and then rose to Samira’s face. What was that—pity? Whatever happened to jealousy? She clutched the tablet like it was a ballistic chest plate. “I assume you want something.”

“I need to borrow your security pass, just for five minutes. And quite quickly.”

She raised thin eyebrows. “And that doesn’t sound at all dodgy.”

“We’re passing straight through—I won’t touch a thing, I promise. There’s a guy following us. We have to lose him.”

“Is he a cop?”

“No.”

“What did you do to him? Maybe I should let him catch up.”

“Harriet...” He sharpened his tone. She needed to think he still posed a threat.

“You know I could lose my job? I’ve only just recovered from the last time we—” She glanced at Samira. “Traded favors.”

“Only if somebody finds out. And you know I don’t share secrets.”

Her mouth tightened, a pucker of smoker’s fissures. They both knew he had her at “secrets.” Blondie was nearing the automatic doors.

“Seriously, we’re in a bit of a hurry,” he said. “I don’t have time to explain.”

“Good. I don’t want to hear it.”

She exhaled in disgust and swiveled. They followed her around the circular desk until they were shielded from view of the entrance. He squeezed Samira’s hand, which hadn’t defrosted one degree. Harriet swiped at a security check and pushed a door open, ushering them into a deserted hallway—leading to the acute ward, if that hadn’t changed. The door swished closed and the lock clicked. He pulled Samira away from a window set into the door.

Harriet hugged the tablet again. “Did you ever stop running, James, this whole time?”

“Nope. That’s why I’m so square-jawed and fit.”

“Oh, please don’t think I’m going to go all weak-kneed from one smile. I’m immune to you. I’ve developed antibodies against the virus that is James Armstrong. We’re even now, right?”

He held out his palm. “Card.”

“Which gate are you heading to?”

“We’ll go out the west staff entrance to the Thames Path.”

She yanked her lanyard over her ponytail and shoved it into his hand. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Straight through. Keep it out of sight. Don’t talk to anyone.”

He closed his fingers around it. “Didn’t plan to.”

“Mariya’s charge nurse in the Princess Alice wing today. Leave it with her—no one else. I take it you remember her.”

Mariya. His luck was holding. “I do, as a matter of fact.”

“Don’t let the bosses see you, and for God’s sake, restrain yourself from operating on anyone on your way through. We can all do without your ‘help.’”

“Ah, you know me so well, Harriet.”

“To my eternal regret.” She drummed trimmed fingernails on the back of the tablet. “This makes us even, right?”

“Guess so.”

“Good. I look forward to never seeing you again.”

“Nice catching up, Harriet. And you might want to call the cops to pick up the tall blond guy who has just walked into the A&E. Blue jeans, brown leather jacket. He has a gun.”

She swore, raising a palm, dismissively. “Oh God. It never ends with you, does it?”

“I’m serious, about the guy.”

“Just. Go.”

The department’s renovations evidently hadn’t progressed further than the waiting area. A two-star hotel with a gleaming false advertisement of a lobby. He pulled Samira into a dingy corridor toward radiology, the hospital layout coming back to him like a blueprint overlaid onto his vision. His life had forged a new path but the corridors hadn’t. Still the same industrial-strength disinfectants failing to mask the stench of urine and decay. No number of interior-design consultants could disguise that. Still the same artificial lighting, so white it made even the healthy look gray and sick. Hell, it probably made people sick. And no matter what chirpy color hospitals painted their walls, how did it always end up some shade of mucus?

Beside him, Samira looked like an incognito movie star on a surprise visit to cheer up sick children. He realized he was still holding her hand. Ah, well, couldn’t hurt. Physical contact—proven to produce oxytocin, lower blood pressure and reduce stress and anxiety. Ergo, ward off panic attacks.

And just you keep kidding yourself it’s for her benefit.

At the double doors into the back of cardiology, he scanned Harriet’s card over the reader. The light went red and it bleeped. Damn. He’d assumed she’d have access everywhere. They must have tightened security. He’d have to reconfigure his route.

The doors opened and a tall bald guy in a short-sleeved white shirt and bow tie strode out, speaking to a staff nurse in a Belfast accent. Crap. Jamie spun to the handwashing station and bent over it as they passed. Samira took the hint and blocked the side view. That smarmy idiot had made consultant? God help the good people of South London. And the only excuse for a bow tie on a Sunday was if you’d got lucky at a black-tie do the night before.

Jamie caught the door before it closed, and ushered Samira through, reluctantly dropping her hand. Best to look like colleagues catching up with paperwork on their day off.

“You know this place well,” Samira said, quietly. “From when you were a paramedic?”

“Aye,” he said, a mite too eagerly, “that’s why I brought us here.”

Their enemy couldn’t watch every exit from the ever-spreading octopus of a complex. And the exit he planned to use was so obscure that only the longest-serving staff smokers knew about it—or, in his case, those who wanted to come and go without being observed or clocked. The sooner they got away, the less chance of being surrounded. Once out, they’d catch the first black cab or bus they saw. Melt into London.

It’d be quicker if they could cut through the courtyard to the Princess Alice wing, rather than navigate the horseshoe of corridors and departments encircling it, but they needed air cover. Back at St Pancras he’d got a reasonable look at the ground enemy. Four men, three women, including Blondie and his driver. He’d committed their faces to memory—though an amped-up mercenary should be easy to spot among the glassy-eyed zombies who haunted the hospital on a Sunday morning. Then again, Samira stood out, too, in style alone.

She looked healthier than when his train had pulled out of the Gare de Blois, leaving her standing motionless on a deserted platform, staring after his carriage. In his mind’s eye, she’d been there ever since—until he’d spotted her at St Pancras. A little curvier, her face less gaunt, her hair longer. Perhaps grief had started to release its stranglehold.

In that week they’d spent together, unwrapping her had become a game—one he’d taken too far too fast, and paid the price. Every now and then he’d succeeded in drawing out a piece of the real Samira. Like a rat in a lab, he’d learned to steer the conversation to subjects that would engage or amuse her or—when that didn’t work—enrage her. When he’d played it right and lit her up, he’d lit up, too—and not much accomplished that these days. Boy, had she lit up. Her eyes sparked, her spine straightened, breath quickened, voice sharpened. Even her skin seemed to change, turning mahogany like a flame was warming it from beneath. Watching that was the reward for his persistence. He’d like to see that side of her again. Maybe he should have sucked up his pride and tried harder to convince her to let him stay. A year together in hiding. Nothing to do but—

Stop. Nothing to do but hit on a grieving woman under the pretense of protecting her? Nothing to do but give her a chance to get to know and loathe the real him? To give in to his impulses and let them control him? She’d made the right call, for both of them.

The best he could do for her now was help to complete her whistle-blower fiancé’s mission. Seeing her find peace would be his only reward.

At the cardiology reception desk, a nurse was handing a form to a bear of a man clutching a brown paper bag. “Do you not have anyone who could pick you up?” she said. Her lilac scrubs marked her as an agency nurse, not a permanent employee.

“The ferry’s fine,” the bear replied. “Pretty much door to door. And no bloody traffic.”

“You’ve just had a heart attack. You really should have someone to—”

“Will the NHS pay for a black cab?”

“No, that’s not in—”

“Thought not.”

Another security door loomed, into neurology. Would Harriet have access there?

“Yes, that was the fascinating thing,” Jamie said to Samira in an imperious public-school English accent. He gave the nurse a cursory nod as they passed, and hovered Harriet’s card over the sensor. “The MRI clearly showed an isodense intramedullary spinal cord tumor at C3 but it’d been misdiagnosed as a glioma, would you believe?” Red light on the sensor. Damn.

“Excuse me,” he said to the nurse in his best impatient-yet-condescendingly-polite consultant tone. “Terribly sorry, but would you mind...?” He gestured to the card reader, shrugging in a would-you-believe-it’s-still-not-working way, and turned back to Samira. “Bloody thing. I did ask Charlie to order me a new card. What was I saying...?”

“The glioma...” Samira said, her head bowed as if deep in concentration. Or prayer. Heck, he’d take any help they could get.

In his peripheral vision, he registered the nurse scrambling to the door, still arguing over her shoulder with the patient. With a bomber jacket and rucksack, Jamie didn’t look doctorish, but perhaps he could pull off aging consultant trying to pass for cool young hipster. “Ah, yes, so naturally I recommended we use immunostaining to rule out a neuronal tumor, and you can imagine Caroline’s reaction...”

He kept up the monologue as the nurse scanned her card and opened the door. He walked through with a distracted nod of thanks, Samira murmuring in sympathy with his fictitious neurological predicament. The door clunked shut. He trailed off a few meters down the corridor.

“Nearly there,” he said to Samira. “You holding up?”

“Awo,” she said, looking at him with more respect than he deserved—the way people used to look at him back when he wore scrubs and a stethoscope. He’d got off on that look a little too much. But, hey, if his bullshit made Samira confident, he wasn’t about to burst her bubble.

Ahead, at a nurse’s station, a woman in pale blue scrubs leaned over a clipboard. From a patient bay to his left a TV droned. Few patients would be unlucky enough to remain under observation over the weekend. His chest tightened in the same cocktail of nerves and adrenaline he’d felt the first time he’d walked in here as a senior house officer on his first rotation, knowing that people were relying on him to get out of here alive. He, Jamie Armstrong, who’d been playing schoolboy rugby not that long before.

Really, he should be living that Irish numbskull’s life by now. Wife and little kids. Heavily mortgaged semidetached Victorian villa in Ealing. Sweaty-palmed first-year doctors gazing at him with fear and adoration. He could send money to his sister and her kids, rather than emptying his military pay packet into the crevasse of his mother’s private nursing-home upkeep. His dad might still be alive if he’d been there to recognize the danger signs instead of ankle-deep in mud or dust in Mali or Afghanistan or Guyana. Or maybe the old man’s heart wouldn’t have given out in the first place.

Not now, Dad.

They strode silently through the east and north wings, the circuitous route zapping his nerves. Finally, he pushed open the doors into the west wing. A curvy blonde in red scrubs looked up from the reception desk, her green eyes widening.

He nodded. “Mariya.”

“Doctor Armstr... I mean—”

“James,” he said, quickly.

“What are you doing h—?”

“Give this to Harriet, would you?” He slapped the pass on the counter. “And only Harriet. You didn’t see me.”

Mariya screwed up her face. “Does...this mean we’re square?”

“You’re returning an ID pass. As favors go, it’s not a biggie.”

“I’ll have to walk to the other side of the building.”

He pointed to a fitness monitor on her wrist. “It’ll keep up your steps. Besides, that hardly makes up for...” In his peripheral vision he caught Samira tipping her head, assessing the conversation. “Whatever. We’re square.”

“And I won’t ever have to see—?”

“No, you won’t,” he snapped.

Did she have to look so relieved?

He opened an unassuming side door onto the smoker’s porch, ignoring the ALARM WILL SOUND sign. He’d been gone only five years—it probably hadn’t been fixed. By the smell of it, the staff still weren’t respecting the smoke-free rules. Same broken brick to hold the door open while they sucked in the very poison they lectured patients about. He shoved it into position, in case their exit was compromised. Drizzle tapped on the mildewed corrugated plastic awning.

“Where next?” Samira said.

“See that wee gate in the wall, across the car park? It leads to the Thames Path. Easily the most obscure of the hospital’s exits.” Over the solid stone, the broad gray river rolled south. Across it, the houses of parliament and Big Ben were coated in a hazy gold film. Once on the Thames Path they could cross to Westminster. Or, better still, follow the current south to Lambeth Bridge, to avoid doubling back past the hospital walls.

“Do you think they’ll be watching it?”

“Anything’s possible, but they’ll prioritize the other twenty or so exits. They wouldn’t have a big resource out there, at any rate. Come here. Your hair is showing.”

He tucked a black lock under her wig and pulled down her cap. Under the sunglasses, about the only visible parts of her were her chin and nose, already pinking up in the cold air. He resisted the urge to touch.

“Perfect,” he said.

“Peerrrfect,” she repeated, to herself.

“Are you mimicking my accent, Samira?”

She bit one corner of her lip. “Sorry, it’s just...”

“Indecipherable, I know. Sometimes even I have trouble understanding myself. I wonder if we could...borrow another coat for you. The enemy will have seen you in that one. Or maybe you could take it off? What do you have on underneath?”

“A black dress. I have another coat, in my backpack. It’s thinner, but...”

A thumping noise. “Shite, the chopper.” He pushed her back inside. “Change the coat, just in case...” He raised his voice. “You have a brolly, Mariya?”

“Course I do,” she said, in an are-you-still-here voice.

“Can I borrow it?”

“Borrow, as in...?”

“As in, I probably won’t be passing back this way but I’ll think of you every time it rains.”

“I thought we were square.”

“I’m unsquaring us.” He held out a hand. “Come on. It’s just a fucking umbrella.”

“Fine.” She whacked it into his palm. “Whatever. I’ll just catch pneumonia.”

“A small price, Mariya. Lovely catching up.” He nodded sharply and turned. “Wow.” Samira was belting a bright blue coat that wrapped up her curves like a Christmas present. But not one with your name on it.

“I can change my footwear, too,” she said.

“Sure.”

She unzipped her boots and slid on a pair of heels to match the coat, over her black stockings. He imagined himself slipping the shoes off in the nearest hotel bedroom. Rolling the stockings down, slowly. Running his hands back up her legs to—

“Jamie?”

“Sorry, what?”

She’d been speaking? Mariya caught his eye, raising her eyebrows. Samira retied her purple scarf with a convoluted series of twists, then pulled on cream leather gloves.

The scarf—it was the one he’d bought her, the one that made her eyes breathtaking. “La couleur de minuit,” he murmured, clenching the umbrella in both hands so as not to reach out and touch the fabric.

“The color of midnight,” she whispered, her mouth softening. Just the way it had that day beside the river in the moment his self-control had deserted him.

He cleared his throat. “They’ll have seen your rucksack. We’ll pack your things into mine,” he said, loosening the straps to expand his pack. “There’s plenty of room.”

A few minutes later they stepped outside. He tucked in a label jutting from her coat collar. On her nape, above the scarf, a sliver of skin goose pimpled. Don’t go doing that to me now. He opened the umbrella.

“Jesus, I’ve seen dinner plates bigger than this,” he said, looking up. “Can you hold it while I keep an eye out?” He swung her to his left, anchored his arm around her waist and pulled their hips flush, gratified by her tiny gasp. “We’ll walk to that gate, nice and smooth.”

They set off, awkwardly, given their height difference, Jamie hunching to fit under the umbrella. It always took a while for a couple to settle into a stride. Not that he remembered what it was like to be in a relationship where you strolled arm in arm. And not that he and Samira were a couple or ever would be—he’d broken enough hearts attempting a regular life, and hers was scarred enough already. Even through her coat he could feel her suppleness, his fingers moving as her hips swayed. Wasn’t often he missed relationships...

He pushed open the gate into a northwesterly blast and ushered Samira out. The bear with the paper bag lumbered past, head bent against the drizzle, breath labored, face as gray as the pavement. A jogger approached from the other direction. The path was otherwise deserted. As the gate locked behind them, Jamie coaxed Samira around to head south. They were channeled in by the wall but a canopy of trees still clinging to amber leaves provided air cover, and the shower gave them an excuse to huddle close and walk fast. A cluster of tourists in raincoats rounded a bend, some taking photos of Westminster. He clutched her tighter, skirting to one side of them. Fat drops of rain unleashed, blurring everything into gray.

A stout dark-haired man pushed through the tourists, scanning from person to person, hand inside his coat. Shit. One of the goons who’d been waiting for Samira’s train. He’d paid no heed to Jamie at the station but he’d know Samira’s face.

Jamie angled her to face him, planted a hand on each of her cheeks and drew her close, laughing as if she’d whispered something suggestive. As he sensed the enemy glancing their way, he lowered his head and did the only logical thing. He kissed her.

She went rigid.

Don’t pull away. Trust me. Between his hands and his lips, he was covering the only identifiable part of her. All the guy would see was a brunette in heels and a blue coat.

She took the hint and relaxed against him, pulling the umbrella low over their heads and sliding her free hand under his bomber jacket to the side of his waist. He bore down to stop from flinching. Oh man, he shouldn’t be getting a full-body reaction from that but there it was, as strong as a year ago—the nerves firing from his lips to his toes and back up...

The tourists passed and he released her lips, keeping his hands in place and touching his forehead to hers while taking a read from the corner of his eye—and catching his breath because...damn. The goon had moved away with the group, toward Westminster Bridge. The bear was lumbering the other way. Jamie dropped his hands.

“Oh my God,” Samira breathed.

“I’m sorry. There was a guy, from the station. It was the only thing I could think of.”

“Eshi. I mean, don’t apolog—” She touched her lips with two fingers. He yearned to do the same. “It’s fine.”

Fine.

Fine.

Fine wasn’t the reaction he normally shot for when he kissed a woman. Goddamn, those lips were just as smooth as he remembered. And insistent. And he’d remembered her a lot since—

Movement, to the south. The bear had tripped and was falling like a tree. No, not a trip—he was clutching his chest. He landed with a smack, his arm bouncing lifelessly on flagstones.