Page 27

Asher

Watching Calisto so convincingly pretend normalcy with his family that even his mother was fooled, made me realize I should feel guilty for lying to him. It certainly wasn’t a great way to start what might not feel like a fledging relationship, but was. I didn’t, though. Not even slightly. What else was I supposed to do? Wave him off, wish him luck, and request he did everything in his power not to end up dead?

Calisto’s announcement the previous day had met with differing reactions. Griffin had been relieved, both to find out Calisto had spoken with Ben and he was alive, and that there was hope of getting him back.

John had been outspoken—no surprise there—and had labelled the whole thing as bullshit, oscillating wildly between the belief Calisto had to go, and that he should do no such thing.

Bellamy, as he was prone to be, was more introspective, his expression giving away what he didn’t want to put into words, that he just couldn’t see a way, even if Calisto did what O’Reilly wanted, that she’d let us walk away.

As for Cade, my boss immediately busied himself with making a string of phone calls while conversation raged around him, intent on finding an alternative solution. His exchanges grew more heated until he threw his phone on the sofa with a face like thunder and didn’t call anyone else.

The last bit of the drama before everyone had gone their separate ways was Griffin announcing he’d be accompanying us, that he needed to see Ben with his own eyes. While I more than anyone understood his motivation, my lie barely an hour old, it was a dreadful idea, the entire group working as a team for once to dissuade him.

In the end, it took Cade speaking plainly as only a friend of many years could and threatening to knock him out and tie him to a chair if he had to, for Griffin to back down and admit that perhaps he wasn’t in the best emotional state with his husband in jeopardy to not be a liability.

So that’s where we were, with the clock ticking down to our ‘date’ with O’Reilly, and Calisto acting like it was any other day, while a gnawing anxiety, the likes of which I never usually experienced, worked its way through my system.

When Calisto was finally alone, I seized him by the elbow, and, ignoring the somewhat bemused stare of his father from his usual spot in the garden, marched him into the summerhouse.

“What?” he asked, once the door had clicked shut behind us.

“Maybe you should tell them. Have you thought about that?”

He stared at me for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You think I should gather my family round me and say, ‘ by the way, just so you know, I’m bringing a long-dead girl back to life this evening in someone else’s body because that’s what the cold-hearted psychopath wants, so I won’t be around for dinner, but enjoy. ’”

“Not in those exact words, no. But…”

“You think I should say goodbye?”

Well, when he put it like that. “I don’t know. This…what you’re doing… just seems wrong.”

“What I’m doing?”

“Pretending everything is fine.”

Calisto held my gaze for a few seconds. “It is fine. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t changed my mind about us walking out of that building.

We both are. Ben, too.”

“You can’t—”

“I can!” he said without letting me finish, his jaw set and his brown eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. “You said it yourself yesterday that we would change things, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

I shook my head. “I was talking…”

“You were talking crap. I know. But I’m not. I’ll find a way. All I need is for you to believe in me.”

I closed the distance between us. “I do. I always have.”

“Well, there you go, then,” Calisto said with a bright smile. “You just need to carry on for longer. So, there’s no point in worrying my family unnecessarily. I’ve told them you’re having a posh dinner delivered to your friend’s flat, that you’re doing your best to romance me. My mother was so happy I thought she might burst.”

“I wish we were doing that.”

“So do I.” Calisto heaved out a breath. Even stressed, he was so handsome I couldn’t tear my gaze away. “After this is over, are you going to take me on a date?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I’ll take you on lots of dates.”

“Where?”

“An Italian meal. In Italy. We’ll fly there for the night on a private jet.”

Calisto blinked a few times, looked like he was going to laugh, and then stopped himself. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Deadly serious. Or if Italian isn’t your thing, we’ll do paella in Spain, or coq au vin in Paris. Anywhere you want to go.”

“Wow!” Calisto said, his eyebrows raised. “That’s crazy.”

“Is it?”

“I’m lucky if most of my dates will pay for a meal. I’ve never dated anyone who has money.”

“Money isn’t the be all and end all.”

Calisto didn’t miss a beat. “Which is only ever said by people who have it.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. Words hovered on my tongue, and after a few seconds of fighting it, I set them free, anyway. There was no point in holding back when we were only a few hours away from walking straight into the lion’s den. “If it came down to a choice between you and money, I’d gladly give away every penny I have.”

Smiling, Calisto looped his arms around my neck and pulled me closer. With every day that passed, there was a softening in him. One that gave lie to his claim of no connection between us. It was definitely there. Real and tangible, and throbbing with possibilities. And I wanted more days. I didn’t want O’Reilly to steal that away.

Calisto gave me a little shake. “ Do not give away all your money. You wouldn’t be you without it.”

“What? Rigid? Uptight? As emotional as a rock?”

Calisto frowned. “Have you been talking to John?”

“I try to avoid it if I can help it.”

“Yeah, well. You’re not like that. Not really. Not to me, anyway.”

And therein lay the key difference. “Speaking of money, I called my lawyer today.” A deepening of Calisto’s frown said he wasn’t sure where I was going with this. “I instructed him that if anything happens to me, everything I own goes to you, and that if you’re not able to collect it for any reason, then it passes to your family. Just for practical purposes,” I hastened to add. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Calisto pulled me in for a hug. “That is so sweet.”

“It’s practical,” I repeated. “I have family, but they’re all cousins twice removed, and they’re all financially secure.”

“Don’t play it down,” Calisto murmured into my neck. “There’s nothing wrong with being sweet.”

I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tighter. “No, I don’t suppose there is.”

Calisto was quiet for a moment as we swayed together, and I’d never wanted to freeze a moment in time more. His next question said his thoughts were running on a similar track. “What time is it?”

I freed my arm so I could see my watch. “Two o’clock.” My stomach lurched. Four hours was nothing in the grand scheme of things. And in just four hours, we’d be entering the tower block.

Calisto backed off, his eyes shining. “That’s plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what?”

He jerked his head toward the sofa. “Fancy a lie down?”

I got it then. “Oh!”

Calisto threw himself back onto the sofa and held his arms out in invitation. “Come here.”

Perhaps I wasn’t made of ice, after all. A man made of ice would have pointed out there were more important things that needed doing to prepare for the horrors the evening might bring, but I was already lowering myself on top of Calisto and fitting my mouth to his, our hands roaming.

We’d agreed on a rendezvous point a few streets away from the tower block. When Calisto and I got there at the agreed time, there was a large white van parked close to the curb, but nothing else.

Calisto pulled his phone out. “I’ll call Cade. Maybe he—”

He didn’t get any further as the side panel of the van clattered open, both of us instinctively stepping back, before Cade’s head appeared through the gap. “In here,” he instructed.

I let Calisto go first, climbing in after him to find a panel of screens awaiting us. A man I didn’t recognize sat in front of the screens while another man sat diagonally to him. John and Bellamy were there too, sitting quietly at the back. Of Griffin, there was no sign. Perhaps Cade had tied him to that chair, after all.

“Surveillance,” Cade explained. He pointed to the stranger not manning the screens, who offered a nod. “This is Jeremy. After a protracted argument with Detective Chief Superintendent Baros, he kindly offered me this van and two members of his team.” He indicated the man in front of the screens, the tower block clearly visible on one of them. “This is Victor.”

Cade held up a rectangular black box with a circle sticking out of it. He made sure we’d seen it and then pulled a shirt off the back of a chair, turning it so we could see the similarity between one of the buttons and the circle on the box, the rest of the buttons closely matched so it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. “Hidden camera,” he explained. “The picture will be grainy and the sound poor, but it’s better than nothing. We talked about you both wearing a wire, but it would have been too obvious and the chances of them not searching you and finding it are virtually zero. This we should get away with.” He threw the shirt at Calisto and he caught it.

“Put it on,” Cade urged when Calisto simply held it to his chest.

The instruction spurred him into action, Calisto taking off his jacket and then his T-shirt. John roused himself from his silent vigil to offer a quiet wolf whistle that had Calisto coloring slightly as he fastened the buttons. It was a good fit, Cade obviously having done his homework.

“There’s one for you as well,” Cade said to me while Calisto was still sorting himself out. “Same style, sorry. Best we could do was different colors, so they’re not completely matching.” They were, mine a pale blue and Calisto’s a forest green. At least they were casual shirts rather than dress shirts. Although it would have been the ultimate irony if on one of the few occasions I’d foregone a suit to wear jeans, I’d ended up having to wear a formal shirt with them.

John sat forward in his seat as I removed my jacket and reached for the hem of my T-shirt. “Now… this is the show I’ve been waiting for,” he said with a leer. For once, I didn’t mind his little quips. Without them, the tension in the van would have been cloying. If there was one thing you could rely on John for, it was lightening the mood. I also got treated to a wolf whistle once my chest was bare, Bellamy just fondly shaking his head like he expected nothing less of his boyfriend.

Once we were both dressed, Jeremy carried out some tests to check the cameras were transmitting correctly, getting us to turn around slowly and say a few words for an audio check. “Don’t zip up your jackets,” he said, “or obviously, we get no picture. There’s a limited field of vision on these cameras, so try to stand front on to anything worth seeing. If you can, speak clearly. Don’t get it wet. Stay away from electronics as it may cause interference. Anything I’ve missed, Victor?”

Victor turned his head the minimum amount. Far enough to show he’d heard, but not so far he could actually see anyone. In contrast to Jeremy’s boyish enthusiasm, he gave off vibes he’d rather not be here. Either that was his usual attitude toward work, or he didn’t know why someone had given him a job outside the norm. He wasted little energy on his shrug in response to Jeremy’s question either, using just the one shoulder for it.

Jeremy offered an apologetic smile. “It’s the most important stuff, anyway.”

Calisto beat me to the question that had been circling through my head. “What’s the point of this? It’s not like you can storm the building… if we get into trouble.” The slight pause spoke of a temptation to say when rather than if.

“Video evidence,” Cade said. “So if you can get her to say anything incriminating, that would be helpful.”

“I think we’ll be too busy trying not to upset her,” I pointed out coldly. “Springing all this on us at the eleventh hour”—I waved a hand around the van to show what I meant by this—“isn’t as helpful as you probably think it is.”

Cade ran a hand through his hair to leave it sticking up in spikes. “I had to do something. Griffin also has access to the video feed. It was the only way I could stop him from being here. If nothing else, at least we’ll know what happened in there.”

“If we don’t live long enough to tell you, you mean,” Calisto said, his voice surprisingly calm.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Cade said defensively.

“He did,” John muttered from behind us.

I checked my watch, glad of the excuse to end the conversation. “It’s going to take us ten minutes to get there, so we need to go.”

Cade escorted us to the door, his brow furrowed. “If she finds out you have precognition…” he pointed out.

“She won’t. Calisto and what he can do for her will occupy her attention too much for her to worry about me.”

“I hope so.”

When we stepped out of the van, John and Bellamy joined us on the pavement. “We spoke,” Bellamy said when I shot him a quizzical look, “and we agreed we’d accompany you to the tower block. For moral support. Not right to the door, for obvious reasons. But, yeah…” He cleared his throat. “If you’d rather we didn’t, then just say.”

I left the decision up to Calisto. He pondered it for a while and then smiled. “Sure. That would be nice. Not too close, though.”