Page 30 of Pervade Montego Bay

He was asking me to take him to an expatriate haunt famed for its bars. “What’s there other than the party scene?”

“From there I can find my own way home, Commander.”

He was delusional.

“Lieutenant, we’re going back to the U.K. in this vessel.”

Xavier closed his eyes in resignation.

I pushed off the bed and stood. “I’ll find you something to read.”

He looked more lost than I’d ever seen anyone, perhaps only now realizing the consequences of his actions—a prison cell reserved just for him.

With this miserable fact burning a hole in my chest, I gave a heavy sigh and headed for the door. There came a sense of loss at leaving him.

His words back in Macau lingered in my mind.“James, I have the skill to find the man who made you a widower.”

If I stayed, there could be answers that would unravel a past I hadn’t been able to let go of. Or just more games played by a treacherous agent trying to manipulate a broken man. I was a senior operative who usually hid his pain well beneath his contentious demeanor.

Damn him for seeing through me. Damn him, too, for being so likeable.

Outside the cabin, I gave a courteous smile to his guard, trying to ignore the fact that I was feeling protective toward this young man. I had to fight the urge to turn around and walk back in…

I bit down on my cut lip to refocus.

Half an hour later, after grabbing a hot meal of processed lasagna in the officer’s mess, I gathered a couple of books from the communal shelf.Alex Crossby James Patterson and12 Rules for Lifeby Jordan B. Peterson, which I thought would be of interest to Xavier. With these in hand I made my way back to his cabin.

The Master-of Arms who’d been guarding his cabin was gone.

The door was open.

My gut wrenched in alarm when I saw Xavier wasn’t inside. He wasn’t in the head, either. I flung the books onto the bed for when he returned. I wondered where they’d taken him. To have that walk, maybe? He’d desperately wanted to stretch his legs.

The submarine tilted and I braced myself.

We were banking—that familiar sensation similar to a car cresting a hill. The sub had broken through the surface of the water.

With my throat tight with dread, I leaned sideways to avoid the overhead with my right shoulder forward as I made my way through the passageways. I eased through the open hatches, throwing courteous nods to the crew as they passed.

“Where are we?” I called to one of them.

“Just off Hong Kong’s harbor, sir,” replied the young midshipman.

What the hell are we doing here?

A rush of heat and heavy air hit me when I reached the exit to the surface, peering up the ladder through the outside port at the night sky, glittering with stars. I heard the distinctive chop of blades slicing through the air. With two hands on the ladder, I rushed up the rungs toward the outer hatch.

Oliver Hague was standing on the bridge and beside him were two military policemen. I looked up at the Royal Air Force helicopter hovering above.

Xavier was being winched off the sub by rope.

The fierce wind from the chopper blades created a surge; a light spray covered us.

“What’s a SAR-H doing out here?” I yelled to Oliver over the noise.

The RAF left in the late nineties when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule. There were no military bases here now. Not for the British, anyway.

Xavier was pulled through the chopper’s door.