“Not quite yet. We bought ourselves a seven-minute lead but we’ll have to use it wisely.”
Her stomach dropped. “Only seven?”
“Should be enough. The streets are quieter this side of the Thames, on a Sunday. Once we get some miles between us and grab a black cab—out of view of the CCTV cameras—we’ll be gold. And my friend here will be on his way, indistinguishable from all the other ambulances working central London. As far as our enemy is concerned, we’ll have donned invisibility cloaks.”
She swallowed. “I’m glad you’re coming with me.”
He fished in his backpack and pulled out a pale green sweater. “Why not? Could be fun. And the Legion is nipping my hide about my unused leave, so...”
“This is not my thing, this James Bond stuff.”
“To be fair, it’s not mine either. I’m a medic.”
“You’re a soldier, too.”
“Sure, but I try to do as little fighting as possible. I prefer fixing people to shooting them. Sometimes these days I end up doing both. Just making work for myself because that’s the secret to job satisfaction, right—digging holes and filling them in?”
She couldn’t help smiling. He really was her polar opposite. Still, a man composed enough to make jokes while fleeing bad guys was a man she wanted on her team.
“James,” she said, trying the name on for size.
As he shrugged the sweater on, a frown crossed his face. It was gone by the time his head emerged from the neckline. The joker in him, the charmer, the flirt—that part was a Jamie. But the hidden part that made his eyes look twice the age of the rest of him—that shouldered too many secrets for a Jamie. That was the James. Serious and aloof, with shifting depths.
“I haven’t heard you being called anything but Doc.” He hadn’t told her his real name until they’d kissed, that day by the river—and even then it didn’t come with a surname.
“It’s been a long time since I got called anything else.”
“What does your family call you?”
That flash of darkness. “All sorts of interesting names, I imagine.”
“But what do they call you to your face?”
“Probably the same things they’d call me behind my back, which is why I’m not game to find out.”
She couldn’t imagine anyone disliking him. She mentally replayed their first meeting in Ethiopia—when he’d arrived with his commando team to rescue Flynn from terrorists, and ended up rescuing Samira—their escape to Europe, their week in France. Had he told her nothing about his family? She would have remembered. “You’re not in contact with them?”
The side of his mouth twitched—and not in jest. “Haven’t seen them for three years.”
A dull thudding beat the sky above. His forehead creased.
“Ah, James?” The driver leaned forward, squinting up through the windscreen. “You know any good reason for a military helicopter to be circling us?”
Jamie swore under his breath.
“I’m thinking we might need your plan B after all, mate,” the driver said.
By the look on Jamie’s face, Samira guessed he didn’t have one.
JAMIE SCRAMBLED ONTO the front passenger seat and peered up. The helo was an MH-6 Little Bird—not here for sightseeing. Shite. Must have been on standby. Hired from a local military contractor? Hyland had to be desperate to throw that kind of resource at Samira.
He clapped a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “Change of plans. Go straight to Saint Jude’s A&E, on blue. Make it look like a real emergency.”
“It will be unless you take your hand off me.” Andy flicked on the siren.
“And radio into the hospital. See if anybody I’d know is on duty.”
“You mean someone you have dirt on?”
“Preferably.”
“Great. So I just casually ask, ‘Oh, and is there anyone there who’s been fucked over by James Armstrong?’ and see how many dozens of hands go up?”
Shut it, Andy. Not in front of her. “Maybe a touch more subtle.” He gave Andy’s shoulder a double pat and pushed back between the seats. Andy got on the radio, the siren wailing.
Jamie had been gone five years. Most of his med school and hospital friends—not that they would use the word friends anymore, if they ever had—would have moved on, moved up. Even if they hadn’t forgiven him, they’d surely have forgotten.
Samira was staring at the roof of the ambulance as if she had X-ray vision. “On blue?” She lowered her wide brown eyes to meet his gaze.
“Lights on, top speed.”
She clicked her seat belt on. “You’re planning to outrun a helicopter?”
“Just the vehicles they’ll be directing. When you’re the bug about to go under the boot, best you can do is slip between the floorboards. Even they wouldn’t risk opening fire on a London Ambulance, not this close to Westminster, no matter how deep their contacts go here. They’ll want to keep it relatively low-key. We can play that to our advantage.” If the enemy knew the city, the Peugeot would already be backtracking to London Bridge to cross the Thames rather than waiting for the drawbridge.
“Vehicles. There are more than one?”
The ambulance swerved. He clutched an overhead handrail.
“Jamie, don’t think you have to keep anything from me, because of the...because of earlier. It’s the surprises that throw me.”
Her knuckles blanched where they gripped the seat belt. But she was right. She was tougher than her panic attacks might suggest. “I counted three cars when I was setting up to pull you out. We should assume there are more.” He made a point of keeping his tone casual and confident, like he had it all under control. And he did so far. More or less.
“I thought we were avoiding the hospital?”
“Just passing through. The place is a maze. We’ll lose them there and come up with another plan to get to your friend’s place.” He dropped volume and nodded toward Andy, who was straining to decipher the voice at the other end of the radio. “To the authorities, to Hyland, this all has to look authentic for Andy’s sake, like a real response to a nine-nine-nine call, like you just cleverly hoodwinked the system.”
“So he’s an innocent pawn?”
“A pawn, aye. Innocent, no.”
