says quietly, joining me. “Where the hell are the guns?”
I step toward one of the containers and lightly tap the wall, looking back at him. “Always expect the worst.”
“Jesus,” he breathes, putting his cigarette out and immediately lighting another.
My phone rings, and I pull it out. “What?” I mutter down the line to Ringo.
“Why the hell has Volodya’s boat just chugged past me with no jet skis?”
I head to the shack, pulling down the zip of my wetsuit. “FBI stopped by.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“Was anyone gonna tell me?” Ringo asks, full of annoyance. “I’ve been bobbing up and down on this broken piece of crap for hours. So far, I’ve caught a dead octopus, a pair of panties, a license plate, and a shark. A fucking shark.”
I stop yanking my wetsuit down my body and dump my arse on a bench in the changing room. And I laugh, a proper belly laugh, my head thrown back.
“Fuck you, Danny,” Ringo mutters, the sound of an engine spitting in the background. “You asshole. And now the fucking boat won’t start. Fuck!” There’s a loud bang, forcing me to pull my mobile from my ear. “The engine just blew up,” Ringo says flatly. “The fucking engine just fucking blew the fuck up.”
I’m off again, laughing, my amusement doing a damn fine job of dousing down the anger burning my gut. “I’ll call the Coast Guard.”
“What’s going on?” Brad asks, eyeing up my amused form.
“Ringo’s had a productive fishing trip,” I howl, pressing my hands into my knees to help me up. “And the engine just blew up.”
Brad snatches the phone from me on a frown that suggests he’s truly worried about me. He should be. I’m feeling a bit unhinged, but if I don’t laugh, I’m likely to go on a killing spree.
Brad tells Ringo that someone is on the way to rescue him while I strip out of my wetsuit. He hangs up and stares at me. “So what the fuck do we do n—” He pivots toward the door when we hear the sound of tires crunching the gravel, followed by a voice.
We look at each other. “Spittle,” Brad and I mutter in unison, heading outside as he hands me my phone. I take the steps down from the cabin, my bare feet crunching into the gravel.
Spittle looks me up and down. “Having a slumber party?” he quips as I shift my bare feet on the cutting stones.
“What the fucking hell just happened?” I ask.
“They got a tipoff,” he mutters, walking past us to the shack. “You got any beers in this place?”
After a quick confused and worried look thrown at each other, Brad and I follow him in, Brad going straight to the beer fridge and pulling out three bottles, twisting off the caps. “A tipoff?” he asks, setting one bottle in front of Spittle and handing me another.
Spittle takes a long, and what looks like a much-needed slurp, and drops it back to the table with a thud, breathing in. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I couldn’t fucking stop them. I don’t know what’s going down with you and the Russians. I’ve made it my business not to make it my business, if you know what I mean.” That’s fucking bullshit. Spittle knows exactly what I deal in, the bent fuck. He casts serious eyes to me. “You have a mole.”
My bottle pauses at my lips. “What?”
Reaching into his inside pocket, he pulls something out and tosses it on the table like he’s glad to be rid of it. I move in, looking down at the photographs.
“Motherfucker,” Brad breathes, slamming his bottle on the table.
I’m deathly still. A statue. But my insides are blowing up, all kinds of manic shit happening. My heart feels like it could be making a bid for freedom, ramming down the walls of my chest. An atomic bomb feels like it could have gone off in my veins. My eyes can see more clearly than they’ve seen before.
My arse drops to a chair and my numb hand reaches for the pictures, dragging them toward me until the images are blinding me. Rose is coming down the steps of a jet, a man behind her. I don’t recognize him. “Who’s that?”
“That, my friend, is Nox Dimitri.”
My eyes fly up, and Brad curses under his breath. “Dimitri?” Flashbacks bombard me, my head pounding. I see Pops take out Marius Dimitri. I see me, just a boy, take out his son. I look at Brad, my