Chapter 12: Whiskey and Stitches
The safehouse wasn’t a house at all, but the top floor of a decommissioned maritime archive building. Its windows were one-way tint, its doors reinforced steel. The main space was an open-plan living area that felt like the bridge of a ship: low, recessed LED lighting, blackened steel cabinets, and a wall of screens currently dark. The air smelled of ozone and old paper.
Toni went straight to a minimalist sideboard and poured two fingers of amber whiskey into a cut-crystal glass. She drank it in one go, her throat working, then slammed the glass down hard enough to make the bottle shiver. The adrenaline was draining away, leaving a toxic residue of fury and betrayal in its wake. She shrugged out of her blood-spattered jacket, letting it fall to the polished concrete floor. Her hands, Alex noted, were steady.
“You’re hit,” Alex said. Her voice was calm, operative-neutral.
Toni glanced down at her left shoulder, where the fabric of her white silk blouse was dark and clinging. A shallow graze from concrete shrapnel or a ricochet; she’d barely registered it. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. It’ll get infected.” Alex moved to the kitchen area, a sleek island of black granite. She opened a cabinet, found a bottle of Islay malt—peatier, more medicinal.“Sit. Let me take care of you.”
For a moment, Toni looked like she might refuse, the instinct to project invincibility warring with the bone-deep weariness. She sank onto a stainless steel stool, watching as Alex found a clean linen tea towel and poured a generous measure of the whiskey over it. The sharp, smoky scent filled the space between them.
“This’ll sting,” Alex warned, approaching.
“Everything stings,” Toni muttered, but she didn’t flinch as Alex carefully peeled the torn silk away from the wound. It was a four-inch laceration, angry and beaded with blood and grit. Alex began to clean it with a methodical, gentle pressure, the cloth moving in slow, sure strokes.
Toni sucked in a breath through her teeth. Her eyes were fixed not on her own wound, but on Alex’s face. The focused blue eyes, the slight frown of concentration, the way she bit the corner of her lip as she worked. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“Growing up in Derry, you pick up a few things.” The lie came easily, wrapped in a half-truth. She’d learned field medicine in the Regiment, long before MI6. “Falls out of trees.Football scrapes. The occasional… political disagreement.”
A faint, almost-smile touched Toni’s mouth. “Political disagreement. I like that.” She winced as Alex found a deeper piece of gravel. “You’re very good at it.The cleaning. Not just the… other stuff.”
Alex didn’t look up. She fetched the first aid kit from under the sink, her movements economical. Antibiotic ointment, a sterile pad, surgical tape. “The other stuff is messier. This, I can fix.”
She applied the dressing, her fingers deft and sure against Toni’s skin. The silence that settled was different from the fraught quiet of the cannery. It was charged, but softer. The hum of the climate control, the faint tick-tick of the cooling metal façade outside.
Toni watched her tape the edges down, her gaze intense. “You killed three men today without blinking.”
Alex’s hands stilled for a fraction of a second. She met Toni’s eyes. “They were trying to kill you.”
“That’s not an answer to the question I asked.”
“It’s the only answer that matters right now.” Alex capped the ointment, her tone final. She moved back to the kitchen, needing space from that searching look. “You should eat. Something that isn’t espresso or whiskey.”
“You’re going to cook?” Toni asked, skepticism and curiosity blending.
“I’m from an island. We know how to cook when we’re not throwing rocks at soldiers.” Alex opened the industrial refrigerator. It was well-stocked: fresh vegetables, eggs, cheese, a container of leftover pasta dough. “Omelette okay?”
“Sure.” Toni leaned on the island, resting her chin on her good hand. The defensive posture was gone, replaced by a watchful curiosity. “You’re full of surprises, Ciara from Derry.”
The name, her alias, hit Alex like a small, cold stone in her gut. She focused on cracking eggs into a steel bowl, the sound sharp and clear. “We all are, if someone bothers to look.”
She worked quietly, dicing a pepper, shredding cheese, whisking the eggs with a fork. Toni’s presence was a tangible weight in the room. Alex could feel her studying the line of her shoulders, the way she moved in the borrowed suit, now stained with dust and someone else’s blood.
“Sal was with my father for twenty years,” Toni said abruptly, her voice quiet in the dim light. “He taught me to ride a bike. Gave me a pearl-handled pistol for my eighteenth birthday.” She traced a pattern in the condensation on her fresh glass of water. “I knew he was ambitious. I didn’t think he was stupid.”
“Greed makes people stupid,” Alex said, heating oil in a pan. The sound was a domestic sizzle, utterly alien in the context of the day.“And afraid. You stopped being the little girl on the bike. That probably scared him more than anything.”
Toni was silent for a long moment. “You’re not afraid of me.”
It wasn’t a question. Alex poured the egg mixture into the pan, watching it bubble and set at the edges. “Should I be?”
“Most people are.”
“I’m not most people.” Alex flipped the omelette with a crisp twist of her wrist, a simple, practiced motion. The truth of the statement hung in the air, layered with meanings she couldn’t explain.
She plated the food, simple and golden, and set it in front of Toni with a fork. Then she made one for herself, leaning against the opposite side of the island to eat. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the mundane act of nourishment feeling profound, intimate.
“This is good,” Toni said finally, chasing the last bite around her plate.
“It’s just eggs.”
“It’s not.” Toni put her fork down. “After my father died, people brought food. Elaborate things. Tortellini in brodo, whole porchetta, cassata siciliana. It was all obligation. A show of respect for the position, not for me.” She gestured with her fork at the empty plate. “This feels like someone making sure I’m not hungry. There’s a difference.”
Alex felt a crack open in her professional detachment, a fissure of genuine warmth. It was dangerous. She busied herself with the dishes. “It’s just food, Toni.”
“Maybe.” Toni stood, coming around the island. She was close now. The scent of her, gunpowder and expensive perfume and clean sweat, mixed with the aroma of eggs and pepper. She took the dish towel from Alex’s hand. “Your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“You’re covered in dust and… other things.” Toni’s gaze swept over her. “And you’ve been holding your right side slightly stiff since we got in the car. Let me see.”
“It’s nothing. A bruise from the catwalk railing.”
“Let me see.” Toni’s voice was gentle but immovable. It was the same tone she’d used with Vittorio Carducci, but stripped of threat, leaving only stubborn concern.
Resignation, and something else, made Alex relent. She unbuttoned the suit jacket, slid it off. Underneath, the tank top revealed a livid, purple-black bruise flowering across her ribs. Toni’s breath hitched.
Her fingers, when they touched the edge of the bruise, were feather-light. The coolness of her skin against the heated ache was a shock. Alex stood very still, every nerve ending hyper-aware. This was a different kind of exposure, more vulnerable than any firefight.
“You should put ice on this,” Toni murmured, her brow furrowed.
“I will.”
“You saved my life today.”
“You saved mine too. With the shotgun guy.”
A faint, real smile finally broke through on Toni’s face. “So we’re even?”
“Something like that.”
Toni’s hand didn’t move from her side. Her thumb stroked a line just below the worst of the bruise, a whisper of contact. The LED lights glinted in her dark eyes. The world outside, the empire of violence and treachery, receded to a distant hum. Here, in this sterile, hidden room, there was only the two of them, the ghosts of the day, and this terrifying, electric quiet.
The mission was progressing exactly as planned. She was in. Trust was being built.
But as she looked at the empty omelette plate and felt the ghost of Toni’s touch on her skin, Alex Carlin knew, with a sinking certainty, that the most dangerous breach today hadn’t been in the cannery’s security. It was happening right here, in her own carefully fortified resolve.