AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah,” I said as I felt the ring against my skin. “Me too.”
110
Once I felt about 60% human, I figured it was time to meet the other person on my itinerary.
I didn’t want to waste any more time, so I went directly to the MI6 building.
From far away, MI6 headquarters looked like a combination of a medieval fortress, a glass skyscraper, and a multi-tiered cake. But from the ground level, when you couldn’t see any of the ornamental flourishes several stories above your head, it looked like any other fancy office building.
I didn’t even bother going into the lobby; I just stood directly in front of one of the surveillance cameras outside and held up a piece of paper with ‘Alistair Webb’ written on it in black sharpie. I stared at the camera for about 15 seconds, then turned and walked away.
I went to the café, where this whole mess had started, and waited 20 minutes until Alistair finally arrived.
He was not happy to see me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snarled as he walked up to me.
“Good, you got my message.”
I’d figured that by calling him out on camera, the news would eventually reach him.
Guess I’d been right.
“Yes, I got your ‘message,’” he snapped. “I repeat: what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was in town. I’m closing the books on everything that happened, so I thought we should have a little chat.”
Alistair looked furious, but he sat down opposite me. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to see your face when I asked you a question.”
“Which is?”
“What the fuck happened in Italy?”
He relaxed a little, but he still looked dour. “Bad fucking luck is what happened.”
“Why did that cop stop me?”
“A mansion in Lake Como got hit while the owner was away. The staff found a couple of Picassos and Rembrandts missing the next morning. When they checked the security footage, the man’s face couldn’t be seen – but a little bit of hair peeked out of his mask, and they could tell he was blond. The servants notified the police, who were ordered to stop every car going in or out of Lake Como and compare the drivers against a mugshot of the prime suspect.”
“If they couldn’t see the burglar, how did they even have a mugshot?”
“He’d been caught in Lake Como eight years ago after a similar robbery.”
“I looked nothing like the guy in the photograph.”
“You were both blond,” Alistair said drily. “To an Italian who sees dark-haired men all day long, you were close enough.”
“And that’s it?” I asked angrily.
“If you’re asking if you were set up, or if there was a mole, or van der Linden somehow arranged it – no. None of that. It was just bad fucking luck.”
I peered into his face long and hard – and decided I believed him.
Which sucked. Because I would have loved to have gotten revenge for everything that had been taken from me…
Like the woman I loved.
