SIX

THE HOUSE WAS a 1950s semi, its white paint starting to fade. An Astra van was parked on the short gravel driveway. It stood on the outskirts of Pembridge, a village of five hundred people about ten miles north of Hereford, close to Shobdon private airfield. From the seat of his Porsche, Matt could see the kids’ clothes on the washing line, fluttering in the wind blowing down from the Welsh hillsides. Judging by the size of the two romper suits, he’d guess they were about four and two.

Suburban family life, thought Matt. It suits some men, but not me. After I collect the two million, Gill and I are going to live somewhere hot and glamorous.

He stepped out of the Boxster, stretching his legs as he walked around the vehicle. In the distance he could see Cooksley walking down the lane, a newspaper and a pint of milk under his arm. A dog was with him, a Collie, barking and running ahead. The man’s head was bowed, looking at the ground, following the curves of the pavement. His shoulders were sagging, and his eyes looked weary.

‘Good to see you last night,’ called Matt.

Cooksley looked up. ‘You too, mate.’

Matt followed him into the house and accepted the offer of a cup of coffee. Sarah was spooning some milky porridge into the mouth of Danny, the younger of the two boys. Callum was running around waving a Monsters Inc toy. ‘You a man,’ he said, thrusting a green one-eyed Mikey into Matt’s hands.

A smell of nappies and food filled the kitchen and the floor was covered with brightly coloured lumps of plastic. Sarah Cooksley looked tired and hassled, her eyes drooped and lines of exhaustion collected around her face. She had been a beauty when he had first seen her one night in a bar in Hereford. Matt had tried to chat her up himself, but she had thinned him out. It was a surprise when she started going out with Cooksley – she was obviously drawn to the silent, brooding type. Two years had passed since Matt had seen Sarah, but it could have been ten: her long brown hair had been cut into a short bob, her eyes had lost their sparkle and her skin its shine. She was still a beauty, Matt decided, but a troubled one. He knew nothing of her life, but he could tell it was a struggle. Daily existence was grinding her down.

‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she said, kissing Matt on the cheek. ‘How’s Gill?’

‘She’s fine,’ Matt replied with a stab of guilt. ‘Still in Marbella.’

Matt took the coffee Sarah made him, spent a few minutes play-fighting with Callum, then looked up towards Cooksley. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

A path led away from the back of the house into the hills. The border between England and Wales lay somewhere close to here, stretching across the peaceful contours of the landscape. A few sheep were grazing in the fields. A light rain was falling, and Matt pulled the collar of his overcoat high up around his neck. The two men walked in silence. Matt wanted to put a safe distance between himself and the house before he began.

The things we are going to discuss are not for the wife and kids to hear.

He climbed over a stone wall, glad to have the chance to flex his muscles. He had drunk a skinful of beer the night before, and he had felt it when he’d woken up. The air would do him good, and so would the exercise.

‘Things aren’t OK, are they, Joe?’ he said.

Cooksley, he knew, was a man of few words, and most of those had only one syllable. He looked up at Matt, the surprise written on to his face. ‘Who told you?’

‘Five,’ Matt answered.

Cooksley walked on, staring at the ground. ‘We’re out of that game, Matt,’ he said. ‘Our time is served.’

Matt shook his head. ‘I’m back.’ He turned to look at his friend. In Cooksley’s eyes he could see something he had never seen before, not even in the treacherous, bandit-infested mountains of Kosovo: fear. ‘They’ve told me to recruit four men,’ he continued. ‘Men who need money, who’ll take a chance if they have to.’

‘Bastards,’ muttered Cooksley. ‘I knew Five kept tabs on us all, but I didn’t realise they had access to our medical records.’

‘What is it, Joe? Are you ill?’

Cooksley walked on, striding across the open field. ‘It’s Callum and Danny, they have cystic fibrosis.’

Matt stopped in his tracks. ‘Christ, I’m sorry. Is there anything you can do?’

‘The doctors don’t reckon so,’ said Cooksley. ‘It’s incurable. Both of them are going to die.’ He paused, looking down into the mud. ‘Sarah’s cracking up, I don’t know how much longer she can stand it.’ He looked around. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Matt. Think of the worst torture you can imagine, then multiply it by ten. And you still wouldn’t even be close.’

Matt started walking again, pushing on through the field. ‘If there was any treatment you’d get it on the National Health, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t need extra money?’

He could hear Cooksley taking a deep breath, turning something over in his mind. ‘There’s a doctor in California called Peter Beelah. He’s working on a gene therapy. It’s completely experimental, and unregulated. Some people think you shouldn’t even mess around with genetics. But if it’s our only chance, we’ll take it. The boys would have to be there for a year, getting treatment every day.’

‘How much does it cost?’

‘Half a million dollars,’ he replied. ‘Bugger it, Matt, I’m just an ex-soldier. I sell mobile phone accessories for some crappy little firm in Hereford. I’m making eighteen bloody grand a year, plus commission. But there never is any commission, because the product’s rubbish and I’m a rubbish salesman. Where the hell am I ever supposed to get that kind of money?’

‘I’m not here to sell you anything,’ said Matt. ‘You are your own man, and you make your own choices.’ He started climbing over the wall they had reached, holding out an arm to help his friend across. He could tell from the way Joe held himself that he was desperate to hear more.

‘It’s one mission,’ he continued. ‘It will be illegal, and off the books, but we’ll have help from Five, and there will never be any charges. It will take about a month. At the end, the pay-off will be more than enough to take care of both kids.’

Cooksley laughed bitterly. ‘Where do I sign?’

Matt rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

‘If it would save my boys, I’d walk through hell,’ said Cooksley sharply. ‘With a smile on my face.’

Matt stepped into the dark room. A chink of light was shining through a half broken pane of glass, but there was nothing else to illuminate his path. He walked over a beer bottle, and an empty pizza carton. Kneeling down, he shook Reid on the shoulder. ‘Wake up, man,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

Reid sat bolt upright, his expression angry, his fists clenched as if he were about to throw a punch. Instinctively Matt ducked away: he’d felt one of Reid’s blows on his jaw before – they’d fallen out over a girl – and he’d promised himself never to take another one. He had a punch that would rock Mike Tyson.

Reid looked at Matt, blinked, then grinned. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Cooksley told me where to find you,’ Matt replied. ‘He said you’d be kipping down here for a couple of nights. Clean yourself up and let’s go get some food. I want to talk to you.’

Reid struggled up from the mattress and walked towards the bathroom. He was still wearing the jeans and the sweatshirt he’d had on the night before, and Matt could still smell the beer on his breath. Matt looked around the room. He’d known some guys to doss down in some rough looking places for a few nights when they needed to and not let it get to them. But this was a hovel. A small house about five miles from the village, set amid a group of three agricultural buildings, it belonged to a farmer who owned apple estates along the Welsh borders. At harvest time, farmers like that bring in cheap labour to pick the fruit. This was where the labourers would sleep. There was one sofa, two mattresses on the floor, and what only the most optimistic estate agent could call a kitchen – a sink, a kettle and an electric ring encrusted with old baked beans. Paper was hanging loose from the walls, the single uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling was broken, and a bucket in the corner was collecting the water that dripped through the roof. What Reid was doing here, Matt had no idea. But he could see why he was on Alison’s list.

Dressed in a fresh pair of chinos, with his chin shaved and his hair combed, Reid didn’t look particularly successful or prosperous, but at least he didn’t look like a tramp. They drove in silence back to Hereford, parked the car, and headed towards Ascari’s Café on West Street. Reid had hand-rolled a pair of cigarettes in the car and now he lit one, putting the other in his pocket. It was already nearly noon, but Ascari’s served breakfast all day and it was the best fry-up in town. Greasy, protein-rich food was what they both needed. It would settle their minds, and then they could talk.

What’s happened? Matt asked himself as they walked through the street. She’d been working as a waitress by night and studying to be a beautician during the day when Reid met her, and Matt had first met her at a squadron Christmas party. Way out of your league, they’d told Reid. This was a woman who didn’t need to study beauty, she was already there. But, Matt admitted later, they were jealous as well. Jane was the best-looking woman any of them had ever been out with. Tall, with dark hair and strong cheekbones, she held herself like a princess. Reid had fallen hard, and never so much as looked at another girl after that. So what’s happened? Matt wondered. Reid and Jane lived just down the road from Cooksley in Pembridge. They had a lovely house, two kids, Eddie and Chloe. Matt had been with him in Bosnia when Eddie was born, and he’d never seen anyone so happy. When he got the camcorder film from Jane of Eddie taking his first steps, he risked being RTUd by breaking into a UN warehouse to steal the batteries to get the camcorder working. He risked his career just to watch a baby waddling across the floor.

So what’s he doing sleeping in a farm labourers’ barn five miles from his family? How do our lives get so tangled up?

A plate of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, black pudding and chips landed in front of him. Matt pitched some ketchup on the side of the plate, and loaded the first forkful of sausage into his mouth. ‘You’ve got a lovely wife, and two nice kids,’ he said. ‘What are you doing kipping down in a place like that?’

‘Sometimes the breaks go with you, sometimes against you.’

‘But Jane, the kids – you haven’t split with them have you?’

Reid put down the fork, a piece of bacon still hanging from it. ‘Leave Jane? Are you joking?’ He paused, put the food into his mouth and chewed slowly. ‘Sometimes I think I love her too much.’

For a moment Matt found himself thinking about Gill, wondering what she might be doing.

‘So, this loving her too much,’ he said, ‘you express it by walking a couple of miles down the road and sleeping in a hovel? Christ, we should have let the Kosovans finish you off when they had the chance.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Tell me then.’

‘I lost my job,’ said Reid. ‘I had some work bodyguarding a French guy, paid quite well. I lost that, and we ran up some debts. Then I got some work for some South Africans, but they buggered off without paying me, so that was even worse. We were getting more and more behind with the mortgage, taking out loans just to pay for the kids’ shoes. Then I get a job looking after a Columbian guy in London, but it fell through after two days. I haven’t worked for a month, and I haven’t earned any proper money for six months.’

We’re all the same, thought Matt. Trying to keep some woman happy. We just have different ways of going about it.

‘You told Jane you still had the job, and you were dossing down in the barn, right?’

‘You know the kind of woman Jane is,’ Reid said. He turned to his cup of tea, stirring in two sugars. ‘She’s a princess. She expects a man to be able to go out and earn a living and support her and the kids. I can’t go home and look her in the eye and say that I’m not able to do that.’

Matt didn’t know what to say. ‘Sooner or later, you’ve got to level with her.’

Reid shrugged. ‘Maybe something will turn up,’ he said sourly.

Matt paused. ‘It just did,’ he said.

Reid looked up towards him, a question-mark in his eyes.

‘There’s a job,’ said Matt, lowering his tone. ‘For Five. Off the books, unofficial, but we get training and gear. At the end, a big pay-off.’

Matt watched him closely. He had seen Reid in many different situations: under fire, showing incredible bravery and determination; in a funk of cold fear when he lost his nerve; drunk out of his brain on cheap beer; sighing over pictures of his children on a cold, lonely and distant battlefield. But he had never seen the look he saw in his eyes now: hope, mixed with relief. ‘How much?’

We listen in different ways. Some of us want to know who we hit. Some of us how dangerous it is. And some of us just want to know how much.

‘Enough,’ said Matt. ‘You could get your princess a new tiara, yourself a new car, and still never have to work again.’

‘And you’re in charge?’

Matt shook his head. ‘Five are in charge,’ he replied. ‘They just started with me.’

Reid took his hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket, slipped it between his lips, and searched around for a light. ‘One question,’ he said. ‘Who handles the money? I don’t mind doing a job for Five, but I wouldn’t want their thieving hands on my cash.’

Matt nodded. ‘A friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Five don’t know it yet, but we bring along our own boy for that end of the deal.’

Reid drained the last of his mug of tea, glanced towards the window, then looked back at Matt. ‘Well, if it’s good enough for you … I can’t face going back to Jane and telling her we might lose the house. Christ, we might have to go and live at her mum’s.’

You look at people you grew up with, the first thing you notice is how they’ve aged, Matt realised as he shook Damien by the hand. Then it hits you. If they’ve aged, so have you. ‘You’re looking good,’ said Matt.

‘You too,’ said Damien.

Matt glanced along the length of the bar. The Two Foxes was an average boozer, in a side street around the back of Camberwell High Street in south London. To anyone dropping in for a pint it looked like one of thousands of pubs tucked into every street of the city: faded Victorian coach lamps on the walls, thick, stained wood around the bar, beer mats on every table, and the same pair of old geezers nursing their glasses of stout and rolling their own. But to anyone in the know, it was an office – a place where the Walters family, and a few of the other south-London crime dynasties, came to carve up the spoils. Two men sipping on pints might well be arranging who could and couldn’t sell dope on the Brixton streets. Two guys at the bar sinking whiskies and sodas could well be arranging protection for the Albanians who shipped eastern European hookers into the massage parlours of south London. To the innocent, it was just another pub. To the regulars, it was as busy with deals as the trading floor of any City bank.

The SAS had been Matt’s escape from this part of town, and this kind of life. Crime had been Damien’s. The Army had given Matt respect and dignity, and the gangs had made Damien richer and better dressed than he would have been. He looked different to Gill – his hair was black, he was six inches taller, and his eyes were darker – but there was similarity in some of their gestures and mannerisms. You could tell instantly they were moulded from the same materials.

‘How’s business?’ said Matt.

‘Too much competition,’ said Damien. ‘Can’t keep the margins up. People think it’s a soft option, but it’s bloody hard graft.’

There had never been any secrets between Matt and Damien: there were no pretences about what Damien and his family did for a living. They had grown up together. Maybe when Matt was five or six he’d started noticing that Damien’s parents had a lot more money than his. Certainly after Matt’s father injured himself at the factory and couldn’t work again, somehow Damien always had the cash for new trainers, new records, and a new car when he was eighteen. But that had never been a barrier between them. All through their teenage years they had run through the streets together, getting into the same fights and chasing the same girls. The night before Matt left to join the Army he went round to Damien’s house, and his father spoke to him, told him he could have a better life and make more money working for one of his gangs. ‘That’s the life for a man who wants to fight,’ he could remember the old guy saying to him. ‘We look after our boys a lot better than the Army looks after theirs.’ And maybe, looking back on it fifteen years later, he was right.

‘And you?’ said Damien.

‘OK,’ replied Matt. ‘Gill sends her love.’

‘Tell her to ring mum,’ said Damien.

Inside, Matt was squirming. On the drive back from Hereford he had called Damien, telling him he was in town and suggesting they get a beer. He still hadn’t spoken to Gill since the split. She obviously hadn’t told her family. If she had, he suspected Damien would be furious with him. Gill may have moved to Spain because she wanted to put some distance between herself and her family – she didn’t approve of the way they made their money – but she was still blood.

‘I’m swapping trades,’ said Matt. ‘Mine for yours.’

Damien looked up at him. Even though he was the same age as Matt, he looked younger. Most people would guess he was twenty-nine, thirty. He spent half his life at sea, and sailed his own small dinghy every weekend off the Essex coast, which gave his skin a thick, weatherbeaten appearance. His teens and his twenties he had spent on the smuggling runs between Holland and the Essex marshes. He’d take a boat over to Rotterdam, pick up some gear, and be back by dawn. That made him both an expert sailor, and a man who knew all that could be known about navigating at night.

Damien had thick black hair, swept back over his head, clear blue eyes, and strong shoulders that sloped away from his neck. It was in the way he laughed that Matt could see bits of Gill in him: he always started giggling right at the start of one of his own jokes, and Gill did the same thing.

‘Aren’t things OK at the Last Trumpet? Last time anyone looked at the books it seemed to be making a bit of money.’

Matt shrugged. ‘The bar is fine,’ he replied. ‘It’s just not making the kind of money I need to get myself out of the jam I’m in.’ He paused, letting the alcohol fill his veins. ‘I’ve lost a bundle dabbling in shares, and I need to get it back quickly.’

‘And you want to rob it?’

‘Listen, between you and me, I’ve been tapped up by Five for a job,’ said Matt. ‘It’s just parting some money from some very nasty boys so they can’t do anything bad with it. The twist is, we get to keep the loot at the end. It’s a private job, not Regiment.’ He looked at Damien. ‘Listen, at the end of the job we might have a lot of valuable stuff. But hot. What’s your advice?’

Damien whistled, running a hand through his hair. ‘The trick with robbing is to make sure you’re nicking from the right people,’ he said. ‘That’s why people rob banks, insurance companies. You just get a few middle management types riled up, and they don’t scare anybody. It’s like having some bunny rabbits chasing after you. But who are you nicking from, Matt, and what are they going to think?’

‘I can’t say, not yet,’ Matt replied. ‘I can look after myself. The money is worth it.’

‘OK, so long as you know what you’re getting into, that’s all.’

‘I know,’ said Matt. ‘It’s how I fence the money that bothers me.’

‘How much?’

‘I can’t say yet,’ answered Matt. ‘But unless it was the Bank of England, more than you’d find in any bank.’

‘Then you want to make sure you keep hold of the money yourself,’ said Damien. ‘Don’t let Five go near it. Any job you do, it’s not getting the money that’s the problem. It’s getting rid of it, and splitting it up.’

‘Could you help?’

‘Since Dad died business hasn’t been so great,’ said Damien. ‘The gangs, they’re like a corporation. You have to prove yourself a coming man. You have to bring in some big deals.’ He glanced through the pub, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I could use something big. In this line of work, you’re only as tough as your last hit.’

Matt nodded to the barman for a refill. ‘You are my oldest and best friend,’ he said. ‘If anything happened to you I’d never forgive myself.’

‘Dangerous?’ said Damien, his face cracking into a laugh. ‘You know that Camberwell breeds the hardest villains in the world.’

The flat was on the twelfth floor of Chelsea Harbour, a luxurious development of apartments, shops, restaurants and a hotel overlooking the Thames on a curve of the river where Chelsea starts to turn into Fulham. Matt stood in the lift and glanced down at his watch. Eleven-fifteen. Late.

Maybe I should have bought her some flowers.

He felt uncomfortable walking through the lobby. He could see some of the high-class Chelsea girls and their banker boyfriends looking at him suspiciously. Who let the security guard in? they were thinking. The Porsche fitted in with the other hundred-grand vehicles in the car park, but Matt was wearing jeans, sweatshirt and a waxed green jacket – fine for a Regimental reunion but out of place amid the marble and gilt of this lobby.

Who cares? Another month, maybe I’ll buy a flat here myself.

He pressed the buzzer. Alison was wearing a red silk kimono when she opened the door. In the background he could hear a George Michael CD playing on the hi-fi. Those thirtysomething birds, they love old Georgie, Matt reflected as he stepped into the apartment. He hits all the right notes.

An elegant expanse of leg was exposed as Alison walked across the polished pine floorboards towards the kitchen. ‘I thought you might be hungry,’ she said, looking back at him. ‘So I made you something.’

Matt slung his jacket over the sofa. The apartment was plusher than he would have expected. It had polished wood floors, spotlights inset into a white ceiling, and black wooden Oriental furniture – stuff Matt had last seen in the antique shops of Hong Kong. On the back wall was a huge 1950s modernist painting, covering twenty feet by ten.

The civil service is paying better these days.

‘I’m starving,’ he shouted towards the kitchen.

A huge window made up one wall, and Matt looked out over the snarling traffic and noise of south London, its lights twinkling back at him. If I look closely, Matt thought, I can probably see the council tower where Mum and Dad lived. That was on the twelfth floor as well.

‘It’s ready,’ she called back.

The kitchen was made out of polished granite and stainless steel. The units and appliances looked like the kind of machines girls drool over, but they meant nothing to Matt: he preferred cooking over an open camp fire. She was leaning over the hob, a flame turned up high underneath a wok. Matt could smell prawns, garlic, chillis, ginger and noodles. ‘Get some wine,’ she said, pointing towards the fridge.

Matt pulled a Chablis from the rack of bottles, uncorked it, and placed two glasses on the table. ‘It went well,’ he said. ‘Reid and Cooksley have signed up. They don’t know what the mission is yet, so maybe they’ll back out. But they’re brave men, and by Christ they need the money.’

Alison put the steaming wok down on the table, laying two plates and some chopsticks at its side. ‘I knew you could do it,’ she said, running her fingers through his hair. ‘That’s why I chose you.’

‘There’s another guy as well,’ said Matt. ‘Damien Walters. His family runs with the gangs in south London. He’ll come on the job, and take care of the fencing for us.’

Alison swallowed the food in her mouth, looking directly at Matt. ‘Your future brother-in-law?’

‘You know about him?’

‘I work for MI5, Matt,’ she replied. ‘Walters. Went to school with you, old pals. He’s gay, but discreet about it. It doesn’t stop him being a hard man when he needs to be. His father Eddie Walters was a big-time gangster, controlled a lot of the money in south London. Damien is struggling to play in the same league. I’m told he’s not quite cutting it, not yet. I hope you haven’t told him what we’re planning?’

‘Everybody needs a motive,’ Matt said quietly. ‘If they didn’t need the cash, they wouldn’t be up for this job. We need someone we can trust on the team, and he has the right skills. He can steer the boat for us, and he knows how to fence the money after we’ve taken it. I say he’s in.’

‘I don’t like it – it’s a conflict. You and he are going to be loyal to each other, not to the team. It could cause splits.’ Alison took a sip on her wine. ‘We won’t fence the money ourselves, but we can find a reliable person who can. You don’t need to be suspicious, Matt. Five will look after everything.’

‘Right, and nice girls don’t stay for breakfast,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve talked about it with Reid and Cooksley and they agree with me. If we don’t get control of the money, then we don’t want to do it.’

‘I was planning our own man,’ said Alison. ‘Ex-Special Boat Squad. Needs cash in a hurry. I think you should go and talk to him.’

Matt shook his head. ‘We want our own people.’

A smile flicked over Alison’s lips. ‘I’ve no objections,’ she replied carefully. ‘Like I said, once you get the money, it’s yours. We just want to make sure al-Qaeda don’t get it.’

Matt nodded. He noticed the way her kimono was slipping aside as she crossed her legs, revealing the soft tanned skin of her thigh. ‘Damien’s in, so that makes four,’ he said. ‘He knows about boats as well, so he covers that angle as well. But who’s the fifth guy?’

‘Ivan Rowe.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘In the morning,’ said Alison, putting her wine glass down on the table. ‘You are staying the night, aren’t you?’

Matt glanced again at her thigh, his gaze moving down her slender legs, down to her ankles and her feet. He looked back up slowly, his eyes roving across her body until he met hers. ‘Of course.’

A low double-bed with crisp white sheets and a black duvet sat in the centre of the bedroom. The side table was cluttered with make-up and hairbrushes, a couple of chick-lit novels and a thick, hardback biography of Field Marshal Montgomery. The wooden blinds were shut, hiding the lights beaming across the river.

Matt ran his hand up the inside of her leg. The silk of the kimono was charged with static. He kissed her hard on the lips, feeling her tongue jab back at him, as he pushed her down on to the bed. She yielded, softly at first, then with mounting urgency. He could feel her turning him over, surprised by the strength of her shoulder and arm muscles as she pushed him roughly down into the mattress. Her red fingernails were clawing into his chest, her lips brushing against the skin of his neck.

A woman who likes to take control.

Half an hour later he lay back on the pillow, the smooth skin of Alison’s cheek resting on his chest. He had noticed something in her eyes as they made love: passion, certainly, but an edge of anger, as if she were fighting him at the same time. He ran his hand along the curve of her spine, enjoying the way her flesh moved beneath his grip. Better than the first time, he reflected. Like a new gun, a woman always took time to get to know. You had to unlock her, find out which muscles to squeeze and what words to mutter in her ear.

‘I was glancing through your file,’ she said, her voice lazy and sleepy.

‘Old war stories,’ answered Matt. ‘They don’t mean much any more.’

‘I was reading about Janos Biktier. That was some mission.’

The Kosovan warlord, thought Matt. The guy Cooksley, Reid and I finished off. ‘Just work,’ he said.

‘His gang is still in business, though,’ said Alison. ‘And his son’s in charge now. Nikolai Biktier. Nasty piece of work.’

‘So what?’ said Matt.

‘Nothing worries you, does it? Not even the thought that one of those guys might come after you one day.’

Matt laughed. ‘Right now, a few crazy Serbs are the least of my worries,’ he said. ‘I owe half a million to a psychotic Russian gangster, and I’m out to steal thirty million from al-Qaeda. Why worry about a Serb?’

Alison buried her face into his skin, her eyes closing. ‘No fear,’ she said softly. ‘I like that in a man.’