This was going to be their third flight in less than six hours, and Caspian felt every hour of it in his bones as he stepped into the brightly lit cabin of the Boeing 777-300ER. While Caspian wasn’t usually a fan of a 2-3-2 configuration in a business class cabin, it would work perfectly fine this time around since he’d be seated in a window seat next to Liesel and didn’t mind not having direct access to the aisle.
Thanks to Samantha Ranger, their escape from Mallorca had been a clean one. Ranger had arranged for a private jet to take them to Algiers—which was a short seventy-five-minute hop from Mallorca—just before 11 p.m. Though they were both exhausted, neither he nor Liesel had managed to get any shut-eye on the short leg. In Algiers, they had blended in among regular travelers and switched to commercial air, catching the last direct flight to Istanbul. Caspian had used the freshly SSU-issued passports Ranger’s people had left for them in the private jet to book two economy tickets to Turkey’s capital. Once in Istanbul, Caspian had bought two business class tickets to JFK. While it was Ranger who was footing the bill, Caspian would have had no issue spending his own money for the business class fare. He needed the rest, and an eleven-hourflight in a cramped economy seat wasn’t how he was going to get it. He intended to eat, down a whiskey, and then pass out until final descent.
Caspian slid into 7A. Though he was grateful for the lie-flat seat, row 7 was the final one before the economy section and was adjacent to the galley and lavatories, which meant there would be more foot traffic than he had hoped. He might need a second whiskey to get to sleep. Next to him in 7B, Liesel took her seat, her face as pale as he’d ever seen it. He didn’t need to ask her how she was doing. He knew. She was shattered.
Who wouldn’t be?
Her sister had died right in front of her, and that made Caspian’s stomach twist in knots. Their time in Port de Sóller was supposed to be the perfect Mediterranean vacation, the one they’d both been craving. Instead, it had turned into a nightmare. As Elias, Caspian had been through war zones, pulled off hits in urban centers and back-alley shitholes, but somehow, Port de Sóller, that little seaside paradise he’d chosen for their vacation, had turned into one of the most dangerous places he had visited.
Caspian felt his thoughts spiral, and too tired to force them away, they brought up questions he didn’t care to answer. What if it had been Liesel who had caught the bullet in the chest? What if she’d been the one gasping her last breath on the terrace? The mental images made him feel sick.
Onyx had trained him as a singleton operator. As Elias, he’d been a ghost, a scalpel wielded by the most clandestine hand of the US government.
And he had worked alone. For a reason.
It had taken some time for Caspian to admit it, but having Liesel in the field with him distracted him.
“Romantic partners are emotional weights you don’t need,” one of his Onyx instructors had once told him.
Liesel was capable—brilliant, even—but she hadn’t been through the same hellish training pipeline he had. She hadn’t spent endless months learning how to kill with a ballpoint pen or how to disappear in a foreign city without a trace and with no logistical support. She was a spy, a damn good one for sure, but she wasn’t a killer.
Still, she had saved his life in Bordeaux, hadn’t she? Liesel was smart, fearless, and resourceful in ways that constantly surprised him. And yet, no matter how capable she was, Caspian couldn’t deny the shift in his mental state when she was with him. Some part of his usually razor-sharp focus diverted to her well-being. Not because he didn’t trust her, but because he loved her. And that love came with weight. He knew she loved him, too, but last night, that weight had felt heavier. They had made love the way they always did, as if the world outside their room didn’t exist, but this time something in her had felt ... absent. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but to him, it had felt as if she had needed the closeness, the escape, but not him. Not fully, anyway. And it had left a hollow space in his chest.
And now, although he didn’t know what it was yet, he could feel something bigger, something dangerous, coming their way. It had started in Tanzania. The operative he’d killed had mouthed words that had been haunting him since.
People like me . . . we are . . . everywhere.
He had seen the conviction in her eyes and heard it in her voice. She’d been fighting for something she had truly believed in. But what? And then, in Port de Sóller, he had heard almost the exact same words coming out of Sofie’s mouth. In her dying breath, Sofie hadn’t told her sister that she loved her; no, she’d used her last few precious words to warn her.
They are everywhere.
Caspian reclined his seat and rubbed his eyes, fatigue pulling at every muscle. He would have to become Elias again. The real one. Theone with thirty-four sanctioned kills. The detached, cold, and focused one. But to do that, he needed to be alone.
That was going to be a problem, he knew. Liesel wouldn’t step aside easily. Not after watching her sister being murdered.
Should I talk to Ranger about it? Could she help me convince Liesel to take a step back?
Truth was, he had no idea if Ranger would even green-light an operation to suss out who was behind Sofie’s killing. The Tanzanian operation had been an SSU job, so if Caspian could link the events that had happened in Mallorca to the ones in Tanzania, there was a chance Ranger would say yes. In his mind, the threads were unmistakably connected. The operative in Tanzania had worked with North Korea, but she’d made it clear her employers had flexible allegiances.
And now, this thing—whatever it was—had swallowed up Sofie and placed targets on his and Liesel’s backs.
He sighed, his mind spinning. He didn’t even know if he wanted the meal service and the whiskeys anymore. Maybe he should just skip everything and try to sleep.
“Two glasses of white wine, then I think I’ll go right to sleep,” Liesel said, her eyes red and puffy.
A flight attendant appeared to Liesel’s right, balancing a tray of predeparture drinks.
“I have sparkling water, champagne, and orange juice,” she said.
“Definitely the champagne for me,” Liesel said.
Caspian hesitated, then said, “One of each, please.”
The flight attendant raised an eyebrow, then offered a tight smile and placed the drinks on his tray table. “We’re taking off soon, so I’ll circle back in about ten minutes to pick up the glasses,” she said.
Caspian took a sip of water, then his eyes were drawn to a flicker of blue lights coming from outside the window. Three emergency vehicles were moving quickly along the tarmac.
He frowned.
