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The black Land Rover was technically Susie’s. It always smelled faintly of vanilla inside, but not the gentle kind—the artificial, too-sweet stuff that clung to the air from a plastic freshener. Eddie was behind the wheel now. He’d already established the seat settings for himself the last time he drove her car. The motorways along the western edge of London stretched out in a numbing monotony: three gray lanes framed by hedgerows and sprawling blandness of farm fields, unchanged since the days Eddie used to make these drives for Sunday visits during his uni days, back when his mother expected him and his father was still content to keep his secrets.
Susie insisted on riding shotgun, pulling her boots up onto the glovebox and curling her body into a shape that looked, to Eddie, both impossible and vaguely feline. For ten minutes she’d been locked in a silent battle with her phone, typing with a focus that felt almost dangerous, as if she were defusing a bomb rather than sending threats if it weren’t for the faint smile playing on her lips. The blue light from the screen accentuated the angles of her profile: high cheekbones, button-tipped nose, the kind of beauty that dared you to call it pretty.
A thud in the distance, and then the strobing blue hazard lights stamped themselves on the horizon ahead. Eddie eased off the accelerator. The brake lights bloomed in the mirrors, multiplying like a trick of the eye. Traffic fell into slow motion.
“Typical,” Susie muttered, not glancing up.
He tapped the steering wheel, a nervous tic from years running armored convoys, where sitting still always made you a target. “Car crash or horse box?” he asked.
She looked over then with a smirk. “On this stretch? Some trust fund wanker thought his Bentley could fly and ended up in the median. Or maybe a clown car. I hope it’s the clown car.”
“Odds are on a Peugeot.” He glanced at her, then at the wreck coming into view: a nest of twisted metal, fluorescent jackets swarming around the husk of a silver coupe that had probably shuttled more coke in its lifetime than a South London nightclub. He felt the old urge to get out, take charge, direct the scene, or at least nitpick the response.
Susie’s thumbs kept going, relentless. When she was like this, she chewed the inside of her cheek and wore her hair in a messy knot that made her look young, but softer too, something she’d deny if anyone noticed. Every so often she’d make a sound at the phone—half amusement, half contempt. It was hard to tell whether it was work or play; for Susie, the line always blurred.
They sat in the petrol hum, time stretching itself thin. Eddie said, “I hope you’re not texting your date you’ll be fashionably late,” tossing it out like bait, ready to reel it back if needed.
She didn’t hesitate. “If he waits much longer, I’ll say I got kidnapped by a rogue llama.” Her fingers didn’t pause. “Honestly, that seems more likely than me going on a date.”
“Debatable,” he said, letting a lorry merge. The cab leveled with theirs, and a sticker on the window read: oi bruv ‘onk if u fancy me. “You seem like you’d have admirers in every postcode. Like a blue plaque scheme for unfortunate men.”
Susie finally looked up, and there was heat in her smile. “Unfortunate is generous. Most of them should be in the British Museum. Best viewed behind glass, zero chance of revival.”
He huffed. “Do you rate your own collection?”
She rested her phone, studying him. “No offense. You’re a bit… upright. Like one of those Beefeater guards they roll out for American tourists.”
Eddie watched the drama ahead: a shopping trolley stranded on the hard shoulder, a policewoman gesturing at it like it might suddenly run. “I’m gutted. I always saw myself as a Queen’s Guard.”
“With the furry hat?” Susie leaned forward, peering outside. Her profile looked cut from glass. “I can definitely see that. The uniform did wonders for your ass, Captain.”
“Don’t.” He tried to sound stern, but Susie always got under his skin. He let out a groan. “I can’t believe you saw that photo. It was one time at a costume party.”
She chuckled, the sultry sound sat in the car, warm and real. He wished, suddenly, that the traffic would just move, that they’d get swallowed back up in speed, so he wouldn’t have to think about the ache in his chest. He preferred to drive for this reason: something concrete to focus on, a task that kept the rest at bay. If left with silence, he’d start filling in the blanks, writing stories in the space.
The police were routing cars around the mess now. Eddie craned his neck: three cars, smashed together, one burned out to metal. He could see the crews moving, efficient and unhurried, as if they’d seen this a hundred times before. Susie was watching too, her eyes ghosted in the window.
“That’ll be an insurance headache,” he said, almost to himself.
She nodded, finally sliding her phone onto her lap. She didn’t fidget, not even in a dead stop, and Eddie found he admired that. He thought about how his own family would have handled this: Freddy already yelling for a helicopter, his mother using the gridlock as an excuse to open wine.
“So,” she said, eyes still on the chaos outside, “why do you always get this tense in traffic? You look like you’re waiting for an IED to go off.”
He almost smiled at the accuracy. “Old habit, I suppose.”
She hummed and tilted her head. “I think you like it. The tension. You can’t stand still unless there’s a puzzle to solve.”
He let the silence breathe for a moment. “Or maybe I’m just wary of sharing a car with a mobster who’s late for her date.” He let that hang, curious if she’d correct him. She didn’t. The quiet pressed in.
The last car was pulled out of the lane and the traffic began to flow in lurches and starts. Eddie slipped them into gear, following the current. Susie shifted next to him, arms folded, and now he could smell her perfume—something floral. It suited her.
She said, “You never asked who the date was with.”
“I didn’t want to sound jealous.” The words felt strange but honest. She only smiled enigmatically.
“Good. Because you’d have no competition.” Her voice went soft, almost lost under the engine.
He looked at her, then away. He realized he had never seen Susie uncertain, never off-balance. He wondered if she ever let herself get there. He doubted it.
He signaled, aiming for the gap between cars. “You know, if you’re meeting someone, I can drop you off early. I’ll just—"
She answered quickly, “I’m not. Unless you count my father’s bookie, and he’s ancient enough to have named his first dog after the Queen.”
Eddie let the quiet stretch. “That’s a relief. I’d hate to get upstaged by a llama.”
She scoffed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you were kidnapped, the ransom note would come on cream stationery, sealed with a monogram.”
He pictured it and smiled. “Would you pay?”
Susie squinted, thinking. “I’d negotiate. Maybe a ten percent discount for sentimental value.”
He laughed a genuine laugh this time. It startled him a little, how good it felt. “You’d have run circles around most hostages. Or the negotiators.”
She shot him a look. “Wasn’t that basically your job? Fixing things, hauling out people who got in over their heads?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Mostly it was making sure the idiots in charge didn’t get everyone else killed.”
She turned away, but he could tell she understood. “I can relate.”
There wasn’t much left to say after that. They let the quiet settle, not heavy, but companionable, patched up with the hum of the road and the fading blue lights in the mirror. Eddie drove one-handed now, the other resting on the center console. He risked a glance at Susie, caught her watching him, her eyes bright and unblinking. Their gazes met, the world narrowing to just the Land Rover and the two of them, the rest fading like the chaos in the rearview. She smiled at him, slow and certain. He found himself returning it.
When he turned back to the road, the air in the car had shifted. Not gone—the tension—but gentled, as if they’d both agreed to let it linger, unnamed, for the rest of the ride. The Land Rover rolled on, the vanilla fading, replaced by something cleaner and more awake. Eddie watched the road stretch open ahead and didn’t mind the traffic at all.