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“We’ll be fine,” he whispered to her in the dark, as she slipped her hand in his.
Eventually the truck stopped, and they heard a voice coming from near the front as someone spoke to the driver. One word stood out to Sam: Radiographie.
“They’re going to scan us?” Remi whispered. “How much radiation are we talking?”
“If they were, with accelerator-driven, high-energy X-rays—”
“I already don’t like the sound of that.”
“It’s not going to happen. Trust me.”
“And when the two of us start glowing? What then?”
Sam laughed, as he put his arm around her shoulders. “We’re not going to glow. We’re sitting in a car that’s on every wanted poster in every law enforcement agency in the entirety of Europe and the UK. Rossi’s already paid off someone to make sure this container bypasses the normal security routes. That includes being x-rayed.”
Sure enough, they heard someone shouting that the container had already cleared, was sealed, and didn’t need to be scanned.
Remi elbowed him. “I hope you’re not gloating, Fargo.”
“In the dark? Is that even possible?”
The truck started moving. Once they were on board the ferry, the sway of the ocean and the lack of windows made her think of a submarine. She tried to drown out the creaks and groans of metal around them. A giant swell lifted the ferry, then dropped it. Nothing she wasn’t used to, except for the part that they were locked inside a metal box and couldn’t get out. “How do we get out of here if the boat goes down?”
“Think positive, Remi. Ever imagine that you and I would be crossing the channel in an ’06 Rolls-Royce?”
“Pretty sure that never entered my mind.”
“And yet, here we are. That’s one for the books.”
She moved closer to Sam, taking comfort in his calm presence. “I’m still worried,” she said.
“Better to worry when there’s something to worry about.”
“Being trapped in a shipping container isn’t worrisome?”
“We have each other, don’t we?”
They were quiet a few moments. The larger swells turned shorter, choppier.
“The wind’s picking up,” she said. “And now I keep thinking about that cargo ship with all the cars that sank in the channel back in the early 2000s.”
“Remember when we first met?” Sam asked.
Remi pictured the little jazz bistro in Hermosa Beach, the Lighthouse Cafe, where they’d spent hours talking the night away. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“You know what stands out when I think of that place?”
“Besides me?”
He laughed, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. “The lighthouse on the neon sign inside the bar.”
“So, it’s not me?”
“Best night of my life.”
Remi looked over at him, unable to see anything in the dark. “Better than the day we married?”
“Think about it. A chance meeting that brought us together. Lighthouse. Beacon in the dark. It’s—”