Authors: Mandy Baggot
Autumn watched as her mother reached for Autumn’s glass of wine and drank down the contents.
“Five minutes, Mother. I want to discuss something personal. I can’t have it leaked to the press.” If she got her mother on her own, away from work for a brief second, maybe there was a chance. Perhaps she’d do the right thing.
“Autumn, I trust my staff, and you should, too.” Alison’s tone was less than convincing.
“Fine, have it your way!”
Nathan stood up, grabbed Alison, and, hauling her up off her chair, put his gun to her temple.
“Drop your weapons and put your hands above your head, or I’ll shoot her!” he ordered the two security officers.
There were screams from the other diners, shouts of “gun.” People began to react. Some ran for the door, others slipped down low in their seats. The maitre d’ reached for the phone.
“Let her go and drop your weapon!” one of Alison’s aids yelled in response, his gun drawn.
“On the floor with the gun or we’ll take you out,” the other ordered.
“Nathan, something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but this is wrong,” Autumn told him.
Nathan’s hand tightened around Alison’s neck. “We discussed this, Autumn,” he reminded her.
“I know but...” She saw him hesitate, only for a moment, but that moment was there. “Please
, Nathan, something’s different.”
“This is ridiculous,” Alison exclaimed. “I employed you! I demand you release me at once!”
“Put the weapon down and release her! Do it now!”
“Nathan,” Autumn tried again.
He seemed to be thinking. When he thought, his forehead creased, his eyes narrowed, his cheek twitched. It was as if he was mulling over what she was saying to him. She didn’t know if she was right or not, but there was a feeling that, whatever her mother’s involvement in the situation, it wasn’t the whole story.
“Listen, just stand down. I need some time,” Alison said, her voice hoarse.
“We can’t let you do that, Foreign Secretary.”
“I order you to stand down. You can follow orders
, can’t you? Stand down,” Alison repeated.
The two guards looked to each other, as if wanting confirmation of what to do. Very slowly and reluctantly
, they lowered their guns and replaced them in their holsters.
The initial shock
ed reaction from the diners had changed into a tense near-silence as every pair of eyes were trained on Autumn and Nathan’s table.
“Nathan, please,” Autumn begged. She looked at his hand, tight around her mother’s neck, the metal of the barrel of his gun pressed against her mother’s too-tight brow. Despite how sickened she felt about what her mother had been doing, something was telling her to give her a chance to explain. That perhaps she didn’t have a completely black soul.
“Nathan,” she said, this time even softer.
He turned to face her, his expression at first unreadable. Then she saw it in his eyes. Saw that flicker of belief.
He dropped his weapon. “Get your purse. We’re taking her back to the house.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Tawanda!” Nathan yelled as he opened the front door. He guided a pale, convulsing Alison Raine down the hall.
“I’ll go and see where she is,” Autumn offered, striding ahead.
“No, you don’t! You hold up the Foreign Secretary. I’ll go.”
Alison steadied herself against the wall then doubled up and vomited on the carpet.
Autumn held on to her mother’s waist. “It’s okay, Mother, I’ll get you a drink in a minute,” she said kindly.
“It’s the car…or maybe the boat,” Alison spluttered, trying to take a breath.
“I know,” Autumn answered.
Her mother suffered from terrible travel sickness, and it hadn’t helped that Nathan had driven back from the port like a lunatic. Alison looked weak, not a state Autumn was used to seeing her in, but nothing seemed usual with her. Autumn had a gut feeling, but whether that was completely correct was yet to be clarified.
“Oh my, child!” Tawanda rushed down the hallway and scooped Autumn up into her arms.
“I’m fine, Tawanda. We’re fine. Tawanda, this is my mother, Alison.”
The expression on Tawanda’s face turned from one of joy that Autumn was back unharmed, to a look that could have cut stone. The woman folded her arms over her ample bosom and locked her eyes on Alison.
“Where is Mr. Nathan?” Tawanda asked.
“He went to look for you and check the house before we came right in.”
“Could I have a glass of water?” Alison croaked.
“I will find Mr. Nathan,” Tawanda responded then disappeared up the hallway.
“Who is that woman?” Alison asked as she began to regain a little color.
“She’s a friend.”
“What is going on here, Autumn?”
“What? You’re asking
me
what’s going on? Mother, Nathan is going to question you, and you need to tell him the truth, or else—”
“Or else what?”
“I don’t know, but it won’t be good. He’s a professional. He’s very talented at his job.”
“Am I supposed to be scared?”
“Mother, stop this! You need to tell us exactly what’s going on. I saw how you looked tonight. I want to hear the truth.”
Alison shook her head and despite Autumn’s attempts, she wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Taking the Foreign Secretary and bringing her to the house hadn’t been the plan at all, but with her security detail there, she was never going to open up. It would have been lie after lie, spinning a tale, denying accountability for anything and everything, a complete waste of time.
But it was Autumn’s reaction to her mother that had made him alter the plan. She really believed that there was more to this story than what he’d been told by his contacts at Section 7. Despite despising the woman, she had believed enough to want to give her a chance. Her plea had been heartfelt, and he’d reacted to that. Right or wrong, it was done now.
He spun his gun around on the table as Alison and Autumn looked on. Tawanda was making hot chocolate in the kitchen, and no one had spoken since they had congregated over in the lounge.
“All right, I’ve had enough of this silence shit, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. I know that you’ve been selling secrets to the terrorist organization As-Wana, and I know that you’re behind this plot to kidnap Autumn,” Nathan stated.
Autumn put her fingers to her mouth and began to chew the edges. One...two...three...four…five.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Alison replied, her professional face almost completely restored.
“Mother, is it true? Have you been selling information to terrorists?” Autumn questioned.
Tears formed in her eyes as her anxious look was met by one hard and practiced.
“Is that what
you
think, too?” Alison asked her daughter.
“Nathan said that—”
“And you believe him. You believe someone you’ve known a few days,” Alison said with a tut of annoyance.
“Pack up the attempt to play on the emotions and get to the truth,
” Nathan interjected. “I want to know it all.”
Alison straightened her skirt and crossed one leg over the other. “You seem to have a lot of faith in your colleagues at Section 7, Mr. Regan. Have you never doubted the information they’ve given you?”
Autumn looked to Nathan, saw him swallow.
“There are many things going on behind those doors back in London. The truth gets blurred so much, no one knows what’s real and what’s a lie,” Alison continued.
Autumn turned to her mother. She was back to being calm, collected, and under control. Maybe she’d made a mistake. Maybe her mother had played her again.
Nathan picked up the gun and held it fixed in his hand. “If you don’t open up, right here, right now, I’ll kill you,” he threatened.
Alison let out a loud titter of laughter, and in the kitchen, Tawanda slammed down the kettle.
In one stride, Nathan was at Alison’s side. He pulled back her head, clenched her hair in his fist
, and put the barrel of the weapon against the side of her head. “Stop fucking me around or I’ll end this. You’re nothing to me, and you’re nothing to Autumn.” Nathan wrenched Alison’s head back even farther. “You’re a liar and the world’s worst mother, and if that isn’t enough, you’re a traitor to your own country!”
Alison let out a yelp. Autumn stood up and moved to Nathan’s side.
“Autumn, it isn’t true,” Alison pleaded.
“You talk to
me
, not her!”
“It isn’t true! I’m not a traitor. I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that.”
“I don’t believe you, Mother,” Autumn responded, her face pale and her lips tight.
How she had misjudged her. There was nothing in her heart, no love, no compassion for anyone or anything, just selfishness
, and a desire for career recognition—whoever she worked for.
“Autumn, it’s true! Mr. Regan, please,” Alison begged.
“Please what?”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
“No, she won’t,” Autumn answered back.
“Autumn.”
“She’s been a liar all her life. She doesn’t know how to do anything else. She’s hollow and emotionless, and I’ll never know what my father saw in her.” Autumn’s lips formed a snarl.
“He understands what I have to do,” Alison said, weeping.
Autumn turned away and shook her head.
“This is your last chance,” Nathan threatened. He released the safety on the weapon.
Autumn turned back, her eyes wide. Suddenly, her chest felt tight, and her legs turned to liquid. She stumbled and grabbed hold of Nathan to stop herself from tumbling to the floor.
Tawanda hurried toward her and held her up. “What’s wrong, child?” she asked.
“She said ‘understands’,” Autumn said through trembling lips.
“What, child?”
“She said ‘he
understands
what I have to do’. She should have said ‘
understood
’. Why didn’t she say ‘understood’?” Autumn directed her eyes at Alison.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Nathan said. “I’m going to count to five then—”
“She needs to know the truth, and I will tell her.” Alison looked up at Nathan. “And you—all of it.”
“You can’t do that,” Nathan warned.
“It’s the only thing I
can
do. Now, put that gun down and get Autumn a martini, please.”
No one moved, and Autumn felt like she was standing on the edge of a mountain, waiting for that one piece of information that was going to send her out and over the rocks.
“Mr. Nathan, what is going on here?” Tawanda wanted to know.
“Get Autumn a drink,” he ordered then tossed the gun onto the sideboard and ran his hands through his hair.
“There isn’t an easy way to say this, and no matter how I wrap the words up to soften the blow, I know it won’t.” Alison reached for her daughter’s hand. “You have to understand that I had important reasons to keep it from you, reasons I hope you’ll understand. Autumn, I—”
“What is it?” Autumn stated through clamped teeth, desperate to hold herself together.
“Your father,” Nathan stated. “He didn’t die. He’s alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
There was sand in her nostrils
, and it speckled her lips. Her mouth tasted of bile, and she had scratches up her forearms. Her eyes were still tightly closed against the rapidly approaching night, because if she opened them, she’d have to deal with the information she’d been given. She couldn’t. Not with something so monumental, something that had affected her whole life. Her father, who left one day and never came back. The man she remembered so fondly, loved so strongly, wasn’t dead. He was alive, had always been so. She’d been fed a series of lies in the name of protection.
Right now, she wanted to walk into the lake and just
keep on walking until something made sense. Nothing had in the last half hour, and she couldn’t envisage that changing.
She sucked in a lung full of air and scrunched her eyes up tight again. One...two...three...four…five.
He watched her out the window, to make sure she was safe. She’d only walked five paces off the deck before she first collapsed on the sand, thumping it with her fists, crying out, screaming, then silencing herself to stillness. Now she was half walking, half stumbling to the left of the house, toward the dunes that banked up high and gave some protection from the wind.
Tawanda approached the door. “I should go to her. It’s getting dark
,” she said.
“No,” Nathan said immediately.
“If anyone is going, it’s me,” Alison spoke as she dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a tissue.
“You’ve got to be joking. You’re the person she hates most in the world right now. And no one is going. She needs time to deal with it,” he stated.
Alison looked at her watch. “We don’t have time. We need to decide what to do.”
“We can give her the night.”
“I need to make contact with Section 7. If I don’t the—”
“Call them,” Nathan ordered. “Tell them your contact with As-Wana is meeting you tomorrow. We’ll have made a decision by then.”
Alison rose from her seat. “Fine, I’ll do it now.”
“Use my phone, not yours,” he said, taking it from his pocket and handing it to her.
Alison looked first at Nathan, then at Tawanda. “You do believe what I’ve told you, don’t you?” she asked.
Nathan pressed the cell into her hand. “I don’t want to take any chances.”
She felt cold and numb, like someone had replaced her insides with crushed ice. Her father was alive. Alive! All these years she had mourned him, and all this time, he was living and breathing and existing under the same sky. And her mother had known. Her mother—the woman who had told her he had died and had wept as she broke the news—had lied. For what? To protect a secret branch of MI5 and their intel? To protect her father? To protect herself? To protect Autumn?
She hadn’t understood half of what her mother had said after Nathan delivered the news. He had known, too, and that knowledge did more than smart. He had known her father was alive all along, the man who had made her trust him. He had been lying to her from the minute they’d met. They’d spoken about her father. He knew just how much he meant to her, yet he had said nothing.
Her father had apparently been part of Section 7, too, a high-ranking soldier with an unrivaled technical knowledge of warfare and weapons. He was valuable to the British government, and that had made him even more so to terrorist organizations. One of his covers had been blown, and in a desperate attempt to keep him safe, his death had been faked, and he had been extracted. Only a select number of people were told where and who he was. Alison had had to break all contact. His death had to be very real.
But last month, her father had broken cover, gone AWOL, and no one knew where he was. Somehow, As-Wana had found out Rick O’Toole was alive, and their plan was to kidnap Autumn to draw him out of hiding, and, under threat of execution, gather all his intelligence to use against British forces.
Her mother’s role in all this hadn’t been selling secrets to the terrorists. It had been setting up her own daughter’s kidnapping under orders from Section 7. They wanted to take down main players in As-Wana and get Rick O’Toole back under the radar for his own security. Or so Alison had said. Autumn still wasn’t sure what or who to believe. So many people were telling her so many different things, it was blowing her mind.
She took another deep breath, drew in the scent of the lakeside, then inched open her eyes. She’d had them closed so long, it hurt to draw the lids up. She blinked slowly, reacting to the fading light as it invaded her pupils. Her eyeballs were sore from crying, and she couldn’t see properly. A shiver ran over her bare arms, and she pulled her knees up tighter.
“It’s getting cold. You should come inside,” Nathan spoke.
“Go away!”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
“Fuck off!” Autumn shrieked. “Do you understand that? I don’t want you anywhere near me. You lied! You knew my father was alive all this time. You knew!”
“I couldn’t tell you! I signed the Official Secrets Act, Autumn. Do you know what that means?”
“That’s a bullshit excuse. I mean, you’ve told me
now
, haven’t you? What’s going to happen? Will you be shot? Because if that’s what happens, I’d quite like to watch!”
“Autumn, I know you’re angry but—”
“Angry? You think ‘angry’ covers it do you?” She climbed to her feet and faced him. “She’s lied to me. You’ve lied to me. I suspect Tawanda knew, as well, so she’s lied to me. Then there’s Juan and Janey. Is there a person in my life that hasn’t bloody lied to me? What am I? Some sort of gullible idiot for expecting a bit of the truth every now and then?”
“I’ve been lied to, as well,” Nathan told her. “Section 7 has fed me a pack of lies since I took this job. They had to ensure Alison and As-Wana could coordinate your kidnap. She had to provide you with security to authenticate the threats
, and I was the man for the job. I’m expendable. I can’t be traced back to them. I don’t matter, and that’s fucking fine by me, but I wouldn’t compromise your safety. I put a fly in the ointment by bringing you here and enlisting Tawanda, Teo, Jazz, and their teams to help me. They didn’t count on me having half a brain and figuring out that something was off. But don’t think for a second that I knew the whole story.”
“I don’t care about the whole story, because I’ve heard so many, they’re all starting to merge into one big fairytale. I care that you lied to me. I care that you knew my father was alive and you didn’t tell me. I hate you for that!”
“Good, you should.”
She jerked, turned her head, looked over at him. “What?”
“You
should
hate me. I want you to.” He folded his hands behind his head and took a deep breath.
Autumn stared at him, trying to call up a response. He appeared tired. His eyes were dim, with dark shadows underneath. He looked to her, and she shook her head.
“Your mother’s staying with us tonight, but we need to decide what to do,” he stated.
“She can’t stay here! This is supposed to be a safe house. How can this be a safe house if the woman who’s coordinating my kidnap is sleeping under the same roof?”
“Don’t be too hard on her.”
“Don’t be too hard on her? What the Hell has happened to you? This morning, you wanted to shoot her!”
“You should calm down.”
“Calm down?
I
should calm down? No, I don’t think so.”
She was pacing now, up and down the sand, kicking at it as she went and counting under her breath.
“She was just following orders. Pretending to go rogue. Opening yourself up to blackmail is hard work, Autumn, and even you’ll admit, she’s done a great job at pretending to be the hard-nosed bitch she wanted everyone to believe she was.”
“Nothing’s changed, in my opinion, and I don’t know whether I even believe her, not now, not after she’s kept this from me for so many years.”
She stopped walking, and her shoulders shook with the sheer shock of the situation. Her father was alive. He was alive and she still didn’t get to see him. The tears fell thick and fast, and she drooped, ready to hit the sand again. This time he caught her.
He drew her into his body and wrapped his arms around her, trying to shield her from everything she was feeling. Her whole being trembled as she cried, and a memory from his past filtered into his mind. He had held someone else the same way, when he’d had to tell her their daughter and granddaughter were dead. He had felt the life drift out of her, her reason for existing floating away from her with every sob. He wouldn’t let that happen to Autumn.
He ran his hands over her hair, trying to comfort her, trying somehow, in some small way, to make her feel better. She drew her head away from his chest and met his eyes.
She looked so vulnerable at that moment, so lost and frightened and unknowing of what to do next. He felt that feeling again, starting in his stomach and moving downwards and upwards all at the same time. Lust? Definitely, but that wasn’t all.
She reached up to his face and traced a finger along his jaw line. He was unable to stop his eyes from closing, thinking about what could happen between them, what shouldn’t happen. He snapped his eyes open and took hold of the hand caressing his face.
“What?” Autumn asked.
“I’m your bodyguard,” Nathan breathed, trying to substantiate something. He didn’t really know what.
“I know.”
She pulled at the collar of her dress, undid the button at the back of the neck, then, in one motion, slipped it off her shoulders until it dropped to the ground around her ankles. She kicked it away.
Nathan took another deep breath in. He couldn’t do anything else but look at her. A slight frame, creamy skin, long, lithe legs, and bare breasts, nipples erect.
“So, here’s my body. Guard it,” she told him.
She needed someone. She needed him, to distract her, to take away the emptiness, to fill her with desire, if nothing else. She wanted to feel wanted. She needed to feel his hands on her, his body next to hers, deep inside her. She saw the want in his eyes, saw what the sight of her naked was doing to him, but still, he held back, breathing deeply, his eyes on her, his thoughts who knew where.
She reached out and ran her hands along the waistband of his pants, then lower, over his hardened groin. He wanted her, that was obvious.
“Autumn,” he groaned and took hold of her hands.
“What?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.
She began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked, slipping her hands inside.
“Yes.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He shook his head and removed her hands from his chest.
“No! Don’t you push me away like everyone else!” She folded her arms across her chest. “You’re here. We’re here together, and I suppose—in a rather rough-around-the-edges way—you’re attractive. I know I’m attractive, and I know I’m attractive to you, so...”
“So...” he repeated.
She raised her chin and looked at him. “Just sleep with me, Nathan. Just, give me something to cling to.”
She was beautiful, the most stunning woman he had ever set eyes on, and here she was, offering herself up to him. In extreme situations, people took comfort from anything they could, and she needed comfort. He could do that without getting emotionally involved
. He’d done it dozens of times before. He couldn’t fight it anymore.
He tugged her toward him and met her mouth with his, kissing her without any doubt to his intent. Her mouth opened wider to let him in, and he kissed her, one hand at the back of her head, the other removing his shirt.
He felt her rip open the buttons on his pants, and he pulled her over, rolling on top of her on the sand.
“I want to feel safe,” she begged. “Make me feel safe.”
He regarded her as he hovered over her, one hand in the sand, the other in her hair. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly open, moist from their kiss. Her creamy skin laid bare for him, the whole of her body, there, waiting. Waiting for him. Wanting him. He closed his eyes and took a breath, the essence of something from his past flowing over him. He was hesitating, thinking, still, even now, when Autumn was naked, exposed, and the need in him was pretty close to boiling point.
She bucked her hips slightly, making contact with him, letting him know how desperate she was for this closeness. She had never felt such longing. She pulled at the waistband of his boxers, making absolutely clear of her intention, easing the fabric down over his hips, revealing the part of him she craved inside her.
She watched his eyes close, and she reached up to cup his face in her hands, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, down to his mouth. He opened his mouth and touched her fingers with his lips, so gentle.
And then he nipped the edge of one finger with his teeth and she let out a small cry. Not because he had hurt her, because she wanted more.