Page 32 of Thief

“It was the name of my unit—Cobra One.”

“Unit? What do you mean unit?”

“In the military. I was in the army.”

Kat looked down at it again. A blissful tingle travelled all the way up her calf as he worked his fingers deep into the arch of her right foot. “Is that when you hurt your leg?”

“Yep.”

“Did you get shot?”

“Yep.”

“That must have really hurt.”

“Yep.”

“Is that why you left the army? Because you got shot?”

John gazed out the balcony doors at the London skyline. He continued to work gently on her foot, but there was a heavy bitterness in his voice. “You can’t stay in the army if your leg is so fucked you have to have a whisky to walk.”

“Can’t they fix it up?”

“They’ve done their best. I was lucky to keep the leg, although sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off without the damn thing.”

“So what happened? Who shot you?”

“A son of a bitch who paid for it with his life a split second after he’d fired the gun. But if it hadn’t been for my mate, he’d have taken out my other leg. He’d already had a go at my chest.”

Kat raised her eyebrows, and John turned back to her. “I was wearing a vest,” he explained.

“Vest?”

“Bulletproof.”

“Oh.”

“We looked out for each other Cobra One. We were a team and a bloody good one at that.”

Kat didn’t know what it was like to be part of a team, but she nodded hoping he’d go on.

“It was like losing my family when I left. Suddenly, I was on my own. No commanding officer telling me what to do or where to go next. No guys to hang out with.” He took a deep breath and watched the movements of his hands on her feet. “It was weird when I got out of hospital, being alone in the world. I’d always had company, someone to be with and somewhere to belong. It messed with my head big time.”

“What about your parents?”

“Mum left before I was two, I don’t remember her at all. Dad, God rest his soul, died of a heart attack a few years back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. I was real pissed about it for a long time. I never got the chance to say goodbye ‘cause I was in Bosnia when it happened.” John stopped with her feet and reached for his drink again, bending over her ankles and pressing them into his lap with the hard muscles of his stomach.

He took a drink and set the glass back down. “He’d turn in his grave if he knew what I was up to with those diamonds. It was him who taught me the trade. He wanted me to have something to fall back on if life got tough. I don’t think this was quite what he had in mind.” John frowned. “He was so proud of me climbing up the ranks and travelling to trouble hotspots to sort out problems for our country. He would have told everyone if he could.”

As he took hold of her left foot again, Kat saw a different man sitting on the other end of her sofa—the John behind the macho-ordering-her-about stuff. He had guilt issues about taking the diamonds. He hurt inside about the loss of his father and mates, and he was clearly still haunted by the shooting and was searching for a way to equal the shitty hand life had dealt him. He was alone in the world now, just like she’d always been—no one to turn to, no people to call his own. He’d lost everyone, everything he once had. At least she’d never had it to lose it. She didn’t know what it was like to have love and security then have it ripped away. She reckoned she was better off. “You’re doing what you need to do to survive,” she said quietly. “You learnt about survival in the army. So what’s the difference now you’re out?”

“One major difference.” He laughed without humour. “I was the good guy back then, now I’m the bad guy. A thief, a liar. The people I’ve robbed would be real unhappy if they found out their precious stones were cheap cuts of cubic zirconia or, worse still, cuts of glass.”

“Is that how you got the diamonds?”

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