Bombshell - Jane Harvey-Berrick

  Bombshell

  Copyright © 2019 Jane Harvey-Berrick

  Editing by Kirsten Olsen & Krista Webster

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you do, you are STEALING. I support my family through my writing. Pirate copies are illegal, and you’ve really spoiled my day.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Jane Harvey-Berrick has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Sybil Wilson / Pop Kitty Design

  Formatted by Cassy Roop / Pink Ink Design

  Photographer: GG Gold / Models: Ellie Ruewell & Gergo Jonas

  ISBN 978-1-912015-84-9

  Harvey Berrick Publishing

  To the men and women who work to clear landmines in former war zones, all over the world.

  Dedication

  A Note About This Book

  Want a free book?!

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Reviews

  More books by JHB

  MORE ABOUT JHB

  Acknowledgements

  A Note About This Book

  Bombshell can be read a standalone story, because it deals with a new heroine in a different country with new situations.

  But it is also the sequel to Tick Tock, so if you read that first, I think you’ll have a better understanding of why James is the way he is, as well as Clay and Zada—two of my favourite supporting characters.

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  Reviews

  I really hope that you enjoy this story. Reviews are love! Honestly, they are! But it also helps other people to make an informed decision before buying my book.

  And this book means a lot to me as I have friends who work in bomb disposal.

  So I’d really appreciate if you took a few seconds to do just that. Thank you!

  Goodreads

  James

  THE FIRST TIME I tried to kill myself, I failed.

  Obviously.

  The gun misfired. I kept pulling the trigger and nothing happened, just empty clicks and a cosmic frustration.

  But next time, I’ll do it right, no mistakes. I have it all planned out. There’s a bottle of 25 year old Irish whiskey with my name on it, a handful of sleeping pills, and a plastic bag over my head. It will be a quiet end, peaceful. Which is ironic really, and nothing like the way I’ve lived my life.

  So with everything in place, the last thing I want is to find a reason for living.

  James

  THE PUB WAS dim and dingy, with a lingering aroma of steak and kidney pie, and a carpet sticky from decades of spilt beer.

  There weren’t many old-school boozers like this one left in London. But if you knew some of the backstreets in the poorer areas, you could still find them.

  I’d been haunting this place for a month now, and before that it had been a different dive, a different part of London—different places to sink into a drunken stupor, delaying the day when I’d make the decision to die. It was quiet here and no one bothered me. They didn’t play music, there were no slot machines or pool tables, just a dartboard nailed to the wall. You had to bring your own darts, but I’d never seen anyone play.

  During the day, older blokes propped up the bar, drinking inky-blank Stout and reading Sporting Life before deciding which bets to make on the horses or football. After work, a few younger people came in to drink imported lager, and then just before closing time, the real night life arrived, with shady characters doing deals in the dim alleyway outside.

  I was content to sit and watch and drink, nursing my ninth or tenth whiskey of the day. Even that wasn’t enough to fill the empty ache inside me or to numb the pain: whiskey was far less dangerous than women. Besides, my tolerance for alcohol was at the point where anaesthesia was hard to achieve. Even so, sleeping at night was something I hadn’t been able to do for a while now. Passing out was the only option. The trick was to be sober enough to make it back to my flat, but not sober enough to remember anything about it. Perhaps one night I’d just drink myself into a coma and never wake up. A man can hope.

  The door of The Nag’s Head swung open again sending an icy blast through the pub, making the oldies grumble and scowl.

  Out of habit, I glanced up with tired, bleary eyes. Then looked again.

  The newcomer walked toward me, pulling off his beanie and unwrapping a long scarf from his neck.

  “Hello, James. I’d ask how you’re doing, but I can see for myself. You look like shit.”

  I was still sitting with my mouth open when Clay sat down opposite me, a small, sad smile on his face.

  The last time I’d seen him, he’d been in a hospital bed waiting for his third or fourth operation because he’d lost his right leg in a blast injury. Eighteen months later, he looked fit and well, and was walking easily on a prosthetic.

  Not that you could tell he didn’t have both legs—I only knew because I’d been there when it had happened.

  I shut my mind to the memory and lifted the glass of whiskey to my lips.

  Clay’s hand closed on my wrist.

  “That’s not the way, brother,” he said gently. “It’s not what she would have wanted. Seeing you like this, man, it would break her heart.”

  “Can’t break her heart when she’s already dead,” I mumbled, then downed the whiskey in one gulp.

  Clay didn’t speak, he just watched me, his face solemn.

  I had two questions tripping over themselves, but I couldn’t summon up the energy to ask them. If he wanted to tell me how he’d found me and why he was here, well, he’d get to it eventually.

  Besides, I suspected that I already knew the how: only our spook friend, Smith, would have the connections to find me when I really didn’t want to be found.

  So, that left the question of why.

  I lifted my empty glass.

  “Buy an old soldier a drink?�
�� I smirked at him.

  “Sure,” he said easily, and went to stand at the bar.

  It seemed to take him ages to get served, but when he returned, he was carrying two cups of coffee.

  “I’m not much for strong liquor these days,” he smiled, sipping down a mouthful of lukewarm gnats’ piss, then shuddering.

  The Nag’s Head was a crappy pub and served crappy beer, but their coffee was even worse.

  His response pulled a grin from me, something I hadn’t done in a long while.

  I didn’t want coffee—I wanted to carry on drinking until I stopped having thoughts, but I looked up, meeting Clay’s eyes.

  “You’ve travelled all the way from Ohio to piss me off, so it must be serious. You need money, advice, or an alibi? Because I’m stony-broke, give shitty advice, and couldn’t give an alibi to a nun.”

  He smiled and sipped his coffee, just shaking his head as his gaze took in my scruffy beard, dirty clothes and battered Army boots.

  “How’s the leg?” I muttered at last.

  “You know, I wondered about that,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you think they cremated it? Or maybe buried it? It seems weird that my leg might have had a funeral without me.”

  I gaped at him.

  “Oh, you are listening. Great, just checking. Well, I tell you, brother, it’s been a long road to reach this place.” He looked around the pub, frowning. “Although I gotta tell ya, in my mind, our reunion was somewhere classier.”

  “Not romantic enough for you?” I asked through a mouthful of the dreadful coffee.

  His dark eyes flashed with amusement.

  “Now you mention it,” he said cheerfully, “it’s a shithole.” Then his expression turned serious again. “Why are you here, James?”

  My thoughts were still blurred around the edges, but I was pretty sure that was my line.

  “I was going to ask you that.”

  He seemed to consider his answer, leaning back on his seat and studying me.

  “I want to offer you a job.”

  I spat coffee on the table, then wiped my mouth with my sleeve.

  “Your sense of humour hasn’t improved, Clay.”

  He gave a thin smile.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the joke’s on you, brother.”

  “Yeah, it definitely is,” I growled. “Fucking cosmic joke, an interstellar joke. Yeah, the joke’s on me alright.”

  He grimaced.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Look, this is a genuine offer and I’ve come a lot of miles, so at least give me the courtesy of a genuine reply.”

  I choked down another mouthful of coffee as I scowled at him.

  “Yeah? Who do you want me to kill?” and I snorted at my own joke.

  He sighed.

  “I’ve been offered a job working for the Halo Trust. You know what they do, right?”

  He wanted to work for one of the biggest landmine clearance charities in the world? That was a sobering thought.

  “Yeah, I know what they do. Clean up after the war’s over: IEDs, landmines, large calibre ordnance, cluster munitions—all the debris of battles lost.”

  I remembered when I was a kid seeing Princess Diana on TV wearing body armour and a helmet as she walked down a road in Angola, ‘DANGER’ signs on either side of her, then spent hours talking to kids who’d lost limbs when they’d stepped on landmines.

  I was eight years old then and I already knew that the world was a fucked up place.

  Clay nodded.

  “You got it. I’ll be supervisor, running local logistics, but I need an EOD operator as the project manager to teach the locals how to search for and destroy the munitions left behind.”

  I stared at him as I shook my head.

  “I’m not the man you need. You need someone who cares enough to get the job done right. You need someone who gives a shit, mate.”

  His gaze cooled although there was still a small smile on his face.

  “A suicidal Ammo Tech? I would have thought this was the perfect job for you, James. Since you don’t care if you live or die, why not do some good first?”

  Do good.

  The words echoed through my brain.

  She’d wanted to do good. She-who-must-not-be-named.

  I gulped down the filthy coffee and glared at Clay.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He grinned broadly.

  “Good enough, brother. Good enough.”

  James

  I LAY ON my mattress, eyes dry and head aching.

  I hadn’t slept, I’d just sobered up slowly during a long night of too many thoughts and all the painful memories stirred up by seeing Clay.

  What was the point of anything? I hated what I was, who I’d become. And I hated that I didn’t have the guts to finish it either. Each day when I woke, I thought today would be the day. But by the time I collapsed at night onto the filthy mattress in this shitty doss house, I’d lived another day. Not that anyone would call it living: I was existing.

  Like I said, what was the point?

  I reached for the bottle by the side of the mattress, but it was empty. I must have finished it during the night. I couldn’t remember.

  Rolling to my hands and knees, I clawed my way upright using the wall to support me, then staggered to the disgusting shared bathroom. It hadn’t been cleaned in years, possibly decades, but I didn’t care. It was a toss up which smelled worse: the bog, the scummy shower, or me.

  My piss was the colour of rust which meant I was dehydrated. There was grim satisfaction in the thought that I was slowly killing myself with drink. Faster would be better.

  A heavy pounding on the front door bruised my brain, but despite all the grey cells I’d been assassinating steadily over the last 15 months, I had a shrewd idea who was making all the racket, so I ignored it.

  When the front door was flung open with sound of the wooden frame splintering, I sighed and shuffled back to my room to lie on my mattress, waiting for the inevitable.

  I heard Clay’s heavy footsteps clomping up the stairs, noting a slight unevenness to his gait. I closed my eyes, remembering again the moment I saw the explosion rip through him, the blood on my hands, my ears ringing. I could see the panic on her face, taste her fear, feel the futility boil inside me as time ran out, the inevitability of the seconds counting down—then flames and noise, the stench of burning, flying through the air and…

  He kicked open two other doors before mine was slammed into the wall, sending chips of paint flaking from the ceiling, and my mind skittered and lurched back to the present.

  “This place is a frickin’ dump, James.”

  “Yeah, it suits me,” I said tiredly, depressed that I hadn’t been able to find another bottle of whiskey to sink into. “Well, you found me. What next?”

  He didn’t answer, but I heard him stomping around my room, so I cracked an eye, watching without interest as he tossed the few clothes I had into my old Army kitbag, emptying drawers and…

  “Don’t touch that!” I said sharply, sitting upright, suddenly very awake and very sober.

  He paused, his hand hovering over a shoebox that I kept hidden at the back of the wardrobe.

  “Make me stop,” he said with a challenge in his voice.

  Fury exploded inside me, piercing through the shield of numbness, and I launched myself at him. He stumbled, my weight knocking him backwards, but then he recovered his balance and put me down with one punch.

  I lay on the floor winded, my jaw howling in agony as I felt my cheek start to swell.

  “Aw, damn,” said Clay, leaning over me to offer his hand.

  I ignored his outstretched arm and scrambled to my knees, pulling the precious shoebox toward me as I hunched over it protectively. I didn’t care about much, but no one touched that box.

  I pulled off the lid, just to check, just to see, and stared down at the small square of folded silk. My fingers shook as I stroked it, taking the smallest solace from the feel of it, know
ing it was safe.

  “That hers?” Clay asked softly.

  I nodded, my throat closing as I choked down emotion.

  I touched the folded material once more before I replaced the lid, wiping angrily at my eyes.

  Clay touched my shoulder.

  “Come on, brother. Amira wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

  Hearing her name sent tremors racing through my battered body and broken mind. But Clay hadn’t finished.

  “She wouldn’t want you living like this.” He hesitated. “Look, Zada’s in London with me and she’d really like to see you.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t in a position to see anyone, especially the woman who should have been my sister-in-law.

  I glanced at Clay’s hand resting on my shoulder and paused. He was wearing a platinum wedding ring.

  “You and Zada?”

  He smiled and nodded.

  “You were invited to the wedding.”

  I hadn’t known, hadn’t checked my emails in months.

  “Congratulations,” I said dully. “She’s a great girl. She’s … great.”

  His eyes lit up.

  “Yeah, she is. I’m a lucky bastard.”

  Then he picked up my kitbag and snatched my shoebox, tucking it under his arm.

  “Hey!” I yelled, stumbling to my feet. “HEY!”

  He was already out the door and halfway down the stairs when I came pounding after him. I tripped the last three stairs and landed on my hands and knees at the bottom, winded and pissed off.

  “Give me my fucking box!” I yelled after him as Clay strode down the street.

  “Come and get it!” he called over his shoulder.

  Furious, I picked myself up and limped down the road after him, wheezing like an old and knackered sixty-a-day smoker.

  After a few hundred yards when it became clear that I couldn’t keep up with him, he took pity on me.

  My head pounded and my whole body ached. Everyone else on the pavement was giving me a wide berth, avoiding the scary-looking homeless guy they saw.