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“You will not be that lucky.”
CHAPTER 43
CLOVER
Iarrived in Wexford around three a.m. I’d gotten a few hours of sleep on the train, curled up inside Kellen’s jacket under a table where no one would see me. Without Damien around, I realized just how vulnerable I was. How defenseless. My only weapon was the backpack Kate had given me, refilled with some food and bottled water from Nora.
When the train had pulled into Wexford Station, I’d been too terrified to come out from my hiding spot. I knew the Navy crewmen docked in that harbor had drone footage of Damien and me. They knew we’d killed two of their men, and now, I was back with absolutely zero protection. But something Damien had said the last time we were there gave me courage. It was when the battleship in the harbor had started blasting bugle music …
“They play that before lights out. A few patrolmen will have the night shift, but the rest will be tucked away inside the ship until sunup.”
I was safe until sunup.
Avoiding all streetlights and keeping to the shadows, I crept along the roads Damien and I had taken together, retracing every step until I was standing at the bakery’s back door, which, thankfully, still had a broken lock. There was no way I would have been able to knock loud enough to wake them up without attracting the attention of a drone in the process.
When I tiptoed into the seating area, my throat tightened, and my eyes burned as I remembered Damien chasing me behind the counter where he’d kissed me and fed me pastries. It had felt like a glimpse into the real him—the boy I would have met if we’d been given normal lives. Playful. Sexy. Giving. But the sweetness of that memory faded when I got to the part where I’d freaked out and recoiled from his touch.
I didn’t know if Damien had ever seen a normal version of me. Everything I did or said was tainted by trauma. Maybe in our next lives, we could just be … us.
Whatever that was.
The second I placed my foot on the bottom stair, a creak echoed through the entire building. I’d forgotten about the squeaky floor, but maybe that would work in my favor. Give them some warning that I was here before I just appeared in their bedroom like a ghost.
“Kate? Jack?” I called out in my quietest voice. “It’s me … Clover.”
Even over the noises coming from the floorboards beneath me, I swore I heard additional creaking coming from somewhere else in the house.
“Jack?” I whisper-shouted. “Kate?”
Emerging into the sitting room, I glanced around the first floor, which was illuminated from the streetlamps lining the harbor. No sign of anyone, but I heard what sounded like footsteps coming from a room with a closed door on the opposite side of the room.
“It’s me, Clover,” I said again, a little louder this time, as I crept toward what I assumed was their bedroom door.
Every third or fourth step squeaked. As I reached out my hand to knock, the door flew open, and my startled yelp was silenced by a gun to my forehead.
“Clo?” Jack whisper-shouted, lowering her weapon and clutching her heart with her free hand. “Jesus Christ, woman. You ever heard of knockin’?”
“I was about to,” I gasped, my own hand over my own racing heart. “I’m sorry.”
“Clover?” Kate emerged from the darkness behind Jack and only made eye contact with me for a fleeting moment before glancing behind me into the sitting room and kitchen.
I knew exactly who she was looking for.
“Damien’s not here,” I admitted, feeling my chin buckle as I fought back tears. “He … he surrendered to the Russians, and I need your help to get him back.”
“He what?” Kate gasped.
“That’s a fuckin’ suicide mission,” Jack scoffed. “Why the hell would a coupla old ladies help you with that?”
I glanced from Jack to Kate and gently removed the photograph from Kellen’s jacket pocket.
Handing it to Kate, I watched her expression morph from concerned to completely gutted.
“Because,” I replied, “I think he’s your son.”
Sitting on Kate’s blue velvet couch in the dark, I explained everything as Jack made tea and baked muffins and paced the floor and asked skeptical questions … and Kate just stared at the coffee table with her fingertips pressed to her lips and silent tears streaming down her face.
“So, you’re tellin’ us that the man who was here two days ago is walkin’ around with her son’s reincarnated soul inside of him … and you expect us to believe that shite?”
