An Inconvenient Arrangement (Inconvenient Matches Book #2)

Chapter 14: Rafe and Sylvie

Who is your contact?

Don't you want to die? Don't you want it to stop?

Raphael gasped awake, his body shivering violently, his hand automatically reaching for the knife beneath his pillow.

Breathe.

Just a nightmare.

He flicked the knife in his hand, watching the blade gleam in the low light.

He was home, in London.

Flick.

It was the year 1823.

Flick.

The war was over.

Flick.

The war was over.

His scars were burning with a vengeance so he got up with a snarl, irritated and sleep-deprived. He reached for the salve on his nightstand, smearing the cool cream on the ridged skin until the itching subsided. It was always the worst after a nightmare.

Sleep beyond him now, Raphael stood up and walked to his office. He sat down on the chair behind his desk and took a look at the wall opposite him, where he had tacked information pertinent to his investigation. Three columns, two for each of his suspects and one for Thomas. The Major had provided him with information on their backgrounds.

The Widow. What did the daughter of an Edinburg crime lord possibly have to gain by betraying the Collective to the French? As far as he could tell by her career, until Belgium, she and Thomas would never have served in the same country. She was undercover almost her entire tenure in Belgium, as far as Rafe could tell, she and Thomas would never have interacted. Such a meticulous, mess-free kill was simply not in her area of expertise.

Or so she would want it to appear, in any case. Just because she didn't care to cover her tracks didn't mean she wasn't able to. Hadn't she been trained by the same men and women who had trained him?

But there was no damn motive.

The Doctor had been an explorer in his youth, traveling all over the world to learn unorthodox medicine from China, India, Egypt, Spain, and a host of other countries that Rafe could not even name. He trained Rafe in the more unorthodox methods once Rafe had become a rising star, going into the field with more and more frequency, on more dangerous and vital missions. If anyone had the skill set to stage a scene so perfectly it was him.

But the Doctor would never have been so sloppy as to make the mistake of leaving the gun in his right hand. And again, there was the lack of motive.

Raphael turned his attention to Thomas' side of the wall, where Raphael had listed down all the information he was able to glean from the coded documents. Many of the documents and notes had been gibberish and dead ends, but the more recent the documents, the more frequently Raphael began to see one name.

Brigadier Felix Benjamin.

Thomas had newspaper clippings following the man's career all the way from when he was a lowly lieutenant all the way to his final promotion right before Napoleon's first exile. Thomas had circled some other names from the same regiment, but they all had died or retired. It could be no coincidence that Brigadier Felix was the one whose plans for ambush Thomas had been tasked to relay to their contacts in the French army.

No matter how he looked at it, Raphael kept coming back to The Viper.

Rafe ran the days before Thomas' capture in his head.

Eight days prior to the mission, The Viper, who had been Thomas' direct superior, had a loud argument with Thomas over his lack of willingness to work, telling him that he was a useless asset if he was unwilling to take the kind of risks that were required of him. The Viper had then forced Thomas off of fieldwork, punishing him with menial tasks like relaying messages to the embassy or generals.