Page 113 of One Last Stand

“You told me a story about your cousin Gage. How he’d been blamed for the death of this guy who tried to ski with him.”

“Yeah. Took him out of snowboarding for a while.”

“But you said he told you something before you went into the military.”

“Don’t get shot?”

“No. That God has a reason for everything that happens. And that wherever you go, you can trust that he has a purpose. And maybe that you don’t have to prove that you’re worthy for God to save you. He already has.”

He did remember that.

“That . . . stuck with me. Changed me. Made me realize that maybe . . . maybe I wasn’t in charge of enacting justice.”

He looked down at her. “You thought that?”

“A little.” She took a breath. “When I was eleven years old, we were visiting London when a bomb exploded on our double-decker bus.”

He sat up, pushed her off him. “What?”

She nodded. “It was just my mom, me, and . . . my little sister. She was six at the time.”

Everything shucked out of him. “You had asister?”

“Her name was Morgan. She was . . . perfect. Funny. She sang all the time. Curly blonde hair. I was five years older, and I thought . . . She just annoyed me. I’d spent five perfect years as an only child, and here she was, causing trouble. I was such a jerk.”

He said nothing.

“We were stopped at Tavistock Square, and I wanted to go to the roof. I was hot—it was July—and the bus was really crowded. It was just me and my mom and Morgan—we were going to meet my father, who’d done some business for a local firm. The bus stopped and I got up, and my mother told me to sit down, and I had a fit right there, in the aisle. I headed up to the front, and Mom followed me, maybe to grab me—I don’t know. But as soon as we got to the front, the world just—exploded. My mom had hold of me, and we somehow landed on the sidewalk together, but . . . the back of the bus was in flames.” She swallowed. “They say everyone in the back died instantly, but . . . my mom had a real rough go for years after that. She put on a face, but . . .”

“Oh, London, I had no idea.”

“I . . . I guess my impulsive temper tantrum saved my life and my mother’s life, but . . .”

“Your sister died.”

“They kept it quiet. Out of the media. I don’t even think she’s listed as one of the victims. Something about not wanting to make it part of an international issue—but I wanted justice. I watched the news relentlessly, and when they arrested the planners of the attacks, I watched everything. But it was never really . . . put to bed inside me.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “All these years . . . you’ve let me call you London. When . . . I mean, every time I said your name?—”

“It reminded me that I survived. And that my life needed to be about something. You calling me London made my life feel . . . important.”

“Is it why you joined the Black Swans?”

“Maybe. My justice meter ticks pretty high. But also . . . maybe I felt a little like I needed to justify why I survived. I think maybe my mother has the same problem.”

“You’re the daughter who lived. She wants to do right by you—that makes sense, suddenly.”

“Probably. But then I nearly died with you in Zermatt, and I thought . . . maybe I’d screwed up and God was giving me a second—or third—chance. And this time I didn’t have to chase down evil or justify my existence.”

“You don’t.”

She nodded, but something in her eyes tightened his gut. “That’s why I walked away from it all and went to Nigeria. And I thought . . . I thought that was all behind me—I really did. But somehow, seeing Ziggy stand up to these thugs yesterday, and then I had this crazy sense of satisfaction handing them the wrong code . . .” Her jaw tightened. “I want to see the Bratva taken down, Alan Martin brought to justice.”

“Of course.”

“But the evil doesn’t stop there.”

And that statement had him by the throat. “What?”