Porter gave him a gentle rap on the shoulder with his knuckles and smiled. He thought of Simmons lying in her spider’s web of wires and tubes. Granted, there was nothing between them, not really. Nothing had actually happened. Maybe a little flirting, at worst? Worst? Best? He couldn’t decide what it was or what he wanted it to be. He couldn’t focus on that right now, but the idea that somebody he cared about could slip away at any time, without there being a damn thing he could do about it, stoked a fire that had only been embers since Holly. Even if it was only platonic, the concept of protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves was why he had joined up in the first place. Even though they couldn’t bring Bolton in yet, he felt in his gut that it was only a matter of time.

All the ladies love a bad boy.

Had that been Natasha’s mistake? The odds of her being alive were slim. He hoped that it had been quick for her. Maybe she hadn’t even seen it coming. Bolton didn’t strike him as a man much given to mercy, though. If he was involved, then it didn’t bode well for her, and maybe she had been her old man’s Achilles heel. Had losing her as well as the business tipped the scales and made his choice for him? Porter didn’t know what choices he would make if given the same circumstances, and hoped to God he never found out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

An arctic front still claimed squatter’s rights even now with March only a week away. Slate-grey clouds balanced precariously on the peaks, scowling down at the valleys below, and splashes of stubborn snow speckled the higher ground like dandruff. The A5 sliced through the heart of Snowdonia National Park, following paths sculpted over four hundred million years by the crushing weight of ice.

It was the kind of scenery that would make even a hardened city dweller stare in contemplative silence. Porter had spent nine years in the army, and had experienced the Welsh scenery first-hand on several training exercises, but without the creature comforts of a heated car interior. He smiled grimly at the memory of squatting behind the remnants of a drystone wall, blocks scattered like Jenga pieces, jealously guarding a fire from the savage wind, boiling water for a cup of tea he would savour like a fine wine.