Ian put the fifties inside his jacket as if he hadn't quite given up the fight to pay, then zipped the holdall shut. Mike decided they were now far enough from Athel Ridge for him to call home and beg forgiveness without worrying about the cell identifying exactly where they'd been. He turned off at a strip mall with a likely-looking run of restaurants.
"So – Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Lebanese?" he asked. "We can reheat it in the galley."
Rob looked back at Ian. "Are you vegetarian, Ian?"
"No. I'll eat most anything."
"We had vegetarian choices in the Marines. Starve, or piss off and starve."
Ian managed half a smile. Things were improving. "Can I try Lebanese? I've never had that."
"Good call," Mike said. "Then I can get some
ma'amoul
to pacify Livvie."
Mike left Rob and Ian in the car and went to order a set menu. It was going to take fifteen minutes, plenty of time to find a quiet corner to make his call. He was relieved that this had to be a cryptic yes or no conversation for security reasons. He still wasn't sure how to word it.
"Hey, sweetie," Livvie said.
Mike took a breath. "We're on our way back, honey. Expect us tomorrow, probably mid-morning."
"Everything okay?"
"Fine."
Here goes.
"We'll have a house guest for a while. I said he could stay with us."
"Oh."
"And his dog. It's okay – it's only a greyhound. They just sit around and sleep. Not like Billy."
"Oh."
"I'm sorry. I didn't have the chance to ask if it was okay."
"So was the good doctor right?"
She'll think I'm crazy.
"Yes. Yes, he was."
Livvie went quiet for so long that Mike thought he'd lost the signal.
"Really?" she said at last.
"Really."
"Wow. Are you sure?"
"Ask Rob. Kind of changes the world, doesn't it?"
"Have you called your father?"
"Not yet. I don't know what to say."
"Okay."
"I'm sorry, honey."
"I'll get a room ready."
"He seems like a nice kid."
"Just remember you can't stall your dad forever."
"I know. 'Bye, sweetheart."
Mike couldn't tell if Livvie was just keeping the call short and bland as good opsec, if she was giving him the frosty treatment, or if she was just stunned. It was probably a little of each. He didn't want to guess the ratio. He collected the food from the counter, paid cash, and went back to the car.
"Sleeping in the guest room tonight, then?" Rob asked. "Or the garage?"
Mike stowed the food in the trunk. "Not sure yet." A phone started ringing. "Is that yours, Ian?"
"Yes." Ian took his cell out of his pocket, but he didn't answer it. He just stared at the small screen. "Number withheld. That's not Joe, then."
Mike couldn't tell if Ian was too smart to risk answering or just too socially awkward. He shut the tailgate and got into the driver's seat. The phone was still ringing. "Do you get many wrong numbers? Does anyone else have the number?"
"No. Gran never registered it or gave it out. You know that. That's why you used it."
Rob took the phone, but he didn't look convinced. "Maybe it's Kinnery. The daft sod should know better. You want me to answer? I'll put it on the speaker."
Mike nodded. They couldn't ignore it in case it was urgent.
"
Hello?
" But the voice that emerged from the tinny speaker wasn't Kinnery, or even the pilot. It was a woman's voice, thirties maybe. She paused. Mike listened for noises in the background. "
Hello, is that you?
"
"Maybe," Rob said. "Who's
you
?"
"
Ah, I have a feeling I've dialled overseas."
She didn't sound as if she'd been caught off guard. She sounded like someone who made a lot of business calls. "
I'm really sorry.
"
"No problem, love. Happens to us all."
But she didn't hang up, at least not fast enough. It was just a beat too slow. Nine times out of ten, people who got a wrong number would either bluster in apologetic embarrassment or just ring off abruptly. She hung on, very controlled.
"
My bad. Sorry to have troubled you. Goodbye.
"
Ian didn't say a word. Rob switched off the phone and took out the battery. Mike looked at him, waiting for him to confirm the worst.
"Well? Was that what I think it is?"
"It wasn't a wrong number, mate," Rob said. "I think we've just been dicked."
ODSTOCK, MAINE
FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE LANDING.
"Wakey wakey, Ian. We're landing soon."
It took a few seconds for Ian to work out where he was. He didn't even remember curling up on the divan. One moment he'd been watching a movie on the bulkhead TV, eating crisp pastries filled with lamb, and the next he was in a blissful semi-doze with the faint, soothing noise of engines in the background. He could hear Rob, but it was like part of the movie soundtrack, something he was vaguely aware of but didn't need to note. He was still waiting for the alarm to wake him to go check on the sheep when someone shook his shoulder.
But the sheep were gone, Gran was dead, and he was thousands of miles from home somewhere in the skies above Maine. Rob loomed over him in the gloom, smelling of coffee, soap, and toothpaste.
"Time to stow this away." Rob raised the blinds on the windows. Daylight stung Ian's eyes for a moment. "The pilot likes everyone buckled in for landing. How do you feel?"
Ian was stiff and bruised. "Fine," he said, nodding. Rob was looking at him as if he wasn't okay. "Have I changed again?"
"No. You just need a shave."
"Sure?"
"Don't look so worried. If there's one person you can trust to keep his word, it's Mike."
Ian craved the peace of being able to trust someone. Suspicion of the world beyond the ranch had been fine when he had an ally in Gran, but the last few lonely weeks had left him exhausted by the effort of being constantly on guard against unseen and unimaginable threats. He needed someone to trust in the same way that Rob trusted Mike. He could see it from the way they leaned in and nudged each other, from their eye contact, from all the small unconscious gestures that said they never doubted they could rely on each other. Ian noted it all. He couldn't resist the compulsion to fit in and be one of the gang. He knew why humans reacted that way, but nothing had prepared him for how strongly his gut insisted on it.
Mike was in the galley, standing over Oatie with his arms folded while the greyhound wolfed down chopped steak and cookies from a porcelain bowl on the deck. Gran always said that animals were good judges of character. Oatie certainly seemed at ease with Mike.
"No puddles at all," Mike said approvingly. "What a pro. You want to hang on to him while we land?"
"Is landing that bad?"
"Course not."
Oatie handled it better than Ian did, curled up under one of the tables. The jet touched down with a bump that Ian wasn't expecting. He coaxed the dog down the steps and looked around the small airfield while the crew helped Mike load the luggage and boxes onto a cart to drive it to the parking lot. A black Mercedes SUV was waiting. Oatie stopped to pee up the tyres.
"You're welcome," Mike said, opening the rear door to transfer the bags. "Better out than in."
Rob started the engine. "Is Livvie going to punch me if I ask her for fried egg sandwiches?"
Mike settled in the back seat and shut his eyes as if he was going to sleep. "You can get away with anything," he said, eyes still closed. "She thinks you're Mr Wonderful. I'm the one who's going to get his ass kicked."
Ian glanced over his shoulder from time to time to check on him. Mike gradually slid down the leather upholstery and started snoring. Rob swore a blue streak when some joker cut him up at an intersection, but Mike still didn't stir. Ian studied the satnav screen, torn between fascination and suspicion.
"What's
dicked
?"
"When the enemy tails you." Rob frowned as if he was trying to remember when he'd said it. "In our case, it's a sort of virtual dicking. Whoever that woman was, she got your number from somewhere."
"I don't always understand what you're saying."
"Sorry, mate. You're not alone. I used to speak pure Bootneck, but it's turned into a sort of multi-service multilingual pidgin since I've been with Esselby. That's who we work for."
"Bootneck. Leatherneck?"
"That's it. Same derivation."
Rob stopped at a red light but he was still doing the constant sweep from mirror to mirror that he'd done on the way from Athel Ridge to the airport. Ian started to feel the same compulsion to check everything around him.
"Just your habit, yeah?"
"Sorry." Rob winked at him. "Situational awareness. You'll need to brush up on that. Welcome to my world. You're one of us now, mate."
One of us.
Ian had never been part of anything before. What else was possible? It was the first time he'd felt truly hopeful in years.
Small talk wasn't as easy as it looked, though. He had a list of questions, and Rob had a fascinating answer for every one, but Ian had nothing interesting to tell him in return.
"Here." Rob thumbed his phone's screen and handed it to Ian. "Have a look through the videos. There's stuff of me and my mates. And Tom. Some of it goes back years." Rob called everybody
mate
, a term Ian had already filed for future use. "Tap the small pictures to open them, and pull your finger down the screen to go to the next page."
"I know. I watched you and Mike do it."
It took Ian a few moments to get the hang of it. A lot of the videos showed guys doing crazy things in bars, or sitting around wearing desert camouflage in makeshift camps in desolate, dusty places. Rob kept glancing across to check what he was looking at.
"See him?" The car stopped at the lights. Rob pointed to a guy in a bunch of Marines in T-shirts, doing some drunken dance and enjoying themselves with a kind of unselfconscious abandon that Ian envied. "That's Aggie. Alex Agnew. Poor sod got blown up. Nineteen."
The video took on a new perspective for Ian. Aggie, a year older than him, was instantly a real person, not some two-dimensional stranger on the news, and it felt intrusive to watch him knowing that he was gone. Ian swiped through more images, uncomfortable, and came across a kid who looked just like Rob. That had to be Tom. There were lots of pictures of Tom and Rob together, some of them with a dark-haired woman who was probably Rob's wife. Ian couldn't see much resemblance between her and Tom.
Do I look like my biological parents? What do I really look like anyway?
"Does your wife like it over here?" Ian asked. "That's her, yeah?"
"Yes, that's Bev," Rob said. "But she left me years ago."
Ian wasn't sure what to say to that. He carried on and found a video that could have come straight from a news bulletin, a firefight in a rocky landscape. The camera jerked everywhere and the noise of automatic fire almost drowned out the yelling. Ian had never heard the F word used so much in his life. It was Rob. The footage must have been from his helmet cam. Suddenly the event shifted from newsreel to reality again and became the guy sitting next to him, fighting for his life. Someone was yelling "Man down," and Rob was shouting at a guy to fucking well move, fucking
now
, or else he'd fucking come over there and fucking kick him back behind fucking cover. It was loud, distressing, desperate stuff.
"Sorry about that. Me and my big gob." Rob reached into the door pocket and handed Ian a pair of earphones. "Anyway, that's what me and Mike did. So if we're a bit deaf, you know why. Watch it all and get to know us better."
Rob shifted back into loud cheerfulness and went back to singing along with the radio. Ian plugged in the earphones and worked through clips of interesting wildlife, Marines relieving their boredom doing dumb but funny things, and some really amazing stuff at sea involving fast inflatable boats and helicopters. But a lot of it was confusing, painfully noisy firefights, mortars in and out, and big explosions in dry, hot countries. Ian was struck by how matter-of-fact guys were in the middle of terrifying situations.
Who would want to volunteer to do that?
Me. I do.
By the time they reached Westerham Falls, Ian wanted nothing more than to do that kind of stuff alongside guys like Mike and Rob, however terrible some of it looked. Rob was still singing. From time to time, he injected his own lyrics, most of which Gran would have slapped his ass for saying out loud.
"I don't know what vitamins you're popping, Rob." Mike stretched and yawned. "But pass them around, will you?"
"Just glad to be alive, Zombie." Rob turned right past a small house set back a few yards from the road. He gave it a nod. "That's Mr Andrews, the free site security. God bless nosey neighbours with time on their hands."