Going Grey Read Online Free PDF

said. "That'd be down to Dad. He knows people."
    "I was having a nice beer with the AU lads at the base when your lot showed up. I thought I was going to end up with a bag over my head en route to a CIA jail in Shittistan."
    "Sorry. It's probably because I kept asking for you."
    "Well, here I am." Rob gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Why didn't you tell me you were just an ordinary, average billionaire with an ordinary, average billionaire senator dad who's got government ministers on his speed dial?"
    "I was kind of disembowelled at the time. It slipped my mind." Mike felt suddenly emotional, a backslapping, tearful kind of relief. "Rob, thank you doesn't begin to cover it. But anyway, thank you."
    "So you hung around just to see me? You mad bugger."
    "I wouldn't have made it out alive without you." It sounded lame, but anything Mike said that summed up what had happened would sound feeble. You saved my life. You saved me from being taken hostage. I owe you. "And I even know what a bollocking is. I lived in England for a while. I read history and politics at Oxford."
    "So we civilized you, did we?"
    "You sound like you come from somewhere down west."
    "Bristol. Oh-ahh. And you sound like Katherine Hepburn."
    "New Hampshire. Fairly close."
    Rob pulled up a chair and sat down at the bedside, unfazed. Up close, his dark hair was flecked with a trace of grey. "So what's Septic nobility like you doing in a mucky job like this? Bored with crashing Ferraris into swimming pools?"
    "I spent a few years in the National Guard. I like the life."
    "No offense to the Guard, mate, but your knife skills seem a bit too hardcore for that. I bet you could kill a bloke with a teaspoon, couldn't you?"
    "I got myself trained privately." Mike made it a rule never to bitch about the Guard, however frustrated he'd been with it. He knew he was talking to a seasoned commando who wouldn't brook any whining. "I joined Esselby as a contractor. You learn a lot there. Not spoons, though."
    Rob didn't blink. "Never wanted to join the regular Army? No, I suppose they'd beat the shit out of you for being the crown prince. That's what the lads on the flight over here called you. Very fairy-tale."
    "I keep the family connection quiet. People think I'm playing at soldiers because I'm bored. My sister calls me Marie Antoinette."
    Rob didn't ask why, but maybe he understood the reference. Mike felt totally and inexplicably at ease with him. Maybe it was because he exuded a solid sense of his own worth, a certainty about his place and purpose in the world. All the revelations that made people fawn over Mike or want to pick a fight — his dynastic wealth, his education, even his service — didn't even make Rob blink. Mike didn't have to wonder whether to trust him. Rob had pulled him to safety under fire and shielded him, and that told him everything he needed to know.
    "Well, you're not shovelling the thankless shit for the money, obviously," Rob said.
    "It's a compromise. My wife sees more of me and I still get to do the kind of things I'm good at."
    "Yeah. I didn't quite get my compromise right. Kids?"
    It was a far bigger question than Rob could have realised. "Still trying," Mike said. "We've been married fifteen years."
    "Stick with it. My mate and his missus had twins two years after they'd given up." Rob rummaged in the grocery bag and fished out a couple of cans of beer carefully wrapped in a T-shirt, presumably to muffle the telltale clanking. "Nurse Ratchett's going to go mental if she sees this, so hide it for later, okay? And Sam retrieved your kit. Phone, wallet, the works." He tossed the items onto the bed. "I hope you didn't leave your contacts on your mobile."
    "No, I always wipe it." Mike checked his wallet for Livvie's picture first. He hated the idea of some stranger dumping it. Yes, it was still there. "Thanks, Rob. And thank Sam for me. No watch?"
    "Missing something diamond-studded?"
    "No. Just a service issue timepiece. Three hundred bucks.