“How back together is your shit, then?” she mumbled, fast losing the threads of consciousness.
“Not very,” his voice came from far away.
When she awoke, David was asleep in the armchair. She bit back a groan as she sat up. Her cuts stung like a motherfucker. She’d been cut by the vase, which had been shattered by the guy who’d shot her friend. She took a steadying breath. Okay. She could do this. Her country had asked her to step up, and she’d tried her best. But she wasn’t done. She hadn’t failed…yet.
She grabbed her phone and looked for Brandon’s number so she could text him. A quick glance told her that David was still asleep.
Mission not accomplished. Mission Impossible.
Crap, she couldn’t say that. She didn’t really know what to say. Maybe that was too much. Maybe someone was monitoring her phone. Was she paranoid? Getting too far into this? She deleted it and tried again.
Cocktail party was a bust.
There. No one could read more into that, surely. Besides which, a shooting at a G20 cocktail party was bound to be covered by all the news channels. She hit SEND and watched for a reply. Nothing. She pulled the envelopes from her pocket and felt them under the duvet. Was the message to blame for the shooting? Maybe it was a warning that he was going to be killed and she’d arrived too damn late to save him? Stupid effing airline.
“How do you feel?” David said, his voice making her jump.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, gingerly leaning back onto the pillows. “My back hurts, my friend…well my acquaintance, is dead, and I guess it could easily have been me, right? I mean if you hadn’t jumped on me?”
He stretched his arms above his head and she heard a series of clicks as his joints cracked. She winced at his grimace. And something in her softened. She wanted to touch him, to ease his pain, his past. A wave of warmth flooded through her as she watched him awaken properly. No, she couldn’t think that way again. He’d already broken one promise to her, she wasn’t going to get sucked into him again. But…she was alone in a hotel room with him.
“Don’t look at me like that, sweetheart,” he said.
“Like what?”
He gave her a “you know what I mean” look.
Before she could say anything, a weird vibration came from the other side of the room. A tinny voice. “Um, I think your trash can is talking. That’s…not right…right?” She held her head. This was all so surreal that there had to be a good chance that she was dreaming, or maybe locked in an asylum somewhere having a very specific delusion. David being in Greece, Alexandre being shot, the stupid message she hadn’t passed. No one could blame her for taking a second to see if things were actually real. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head.
David pinched her as he went by. “Yup. It’s all real.”
She opened her eyes, solely with the purpose of eye-rolling him, and saw him fish something out of the wastebasket and stick it in his ear. It took her a second. Oh, right. Must be an earpiece. Which kind of explained the fractured conversation she vaguely remembered from last night. Last night…
David shoved the earpiece in his ear. “What’s up?”
“Do you want to go on a field trip?” Mal asked.
How was he not hung over and still sleeping? That guy had the constitution of an ox. An ox on PCP.
“I’m kind of tied up right now,” David said, stretching again and shutting the bathroom door behind him.
“Nice work, mate. Wait. Literally tied up? You need help, or privacy?”
There was just no talking to him.
“What field trip?”
“To the sniper’s lair.”
A jolt flashed through him. “Yeah. That’s the sort of field trip I’m interested in.”
“You know the proper answer to that question should have been ‘No, we’ll let the authorities handle it’?”
“I’m not proper,” David said. Mal was right, but this felt personal now. He wanted to get answers for Molly. If nothing else, he could give her that.
“I thought you might not be. Meet me in the lobby in ten.”
“Roger that.” David took the earpiece out and eyed the shower. He was still in his suit pants and shirt from the night before. He needed to change. Nothing said “guy we need to question” like a disheveled guy in a tux following a night of death and destruction.
Eight minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom in jeans and a T-shirt, thinking about what he needed to take with him on the field trip. And then he remembered. Molly. Sweet, crazy, and injured Molly. What had she been trying to pass the Russian before he’d been shot? He had a concern that she was into something bad. He’d definitely witnessed the attempted pass. He didn’t imagine that. He didn’t think. But then he hadn’t believed Molly was actually there, even when he’d seen her. Maybe he was still teetering on the edge of insanity.
“Where are you going?” Molly asked from the bed.
She was lying back down again, on her side, looking sleepy. He grabbed a bottle of military-grade ibuprofen from his bag and shook out a horse pill. “Here. Take this before you sleep. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, okay?”
She nodded, and as she took the pill and glass of water, he fought every instinct to crawl in beside her, and wrap his arms around her as she slept. He’d killed someone to save her life in Iraq, and that had to mean something. She was his to protect now. What the hell was she into? Or was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? He wanted to know what was in her head. Why her eyes had lost that glow of openness he’d remembered. He wanted her so badly. Had been wanting her for months. He shook his head and reined in his impulse.
“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll wake you when I get back.” He hesitated and leaned down, swiftly pressing his lips to her forehead. He let himself out of the room and braced the door as it closed so the bang wouldn’t startle her, hanging the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle.
In the lobby, Mal was drinking coffee from an impossibly small cup and reading a newspaper. He didn’t acknowledge David’s presence.
David pulled out his phone and pretended to scroll through emails as he surveyed the foyer. There were two policemen behind the reception desk looking at a computer and one talking to the concierge. David stowed his phone and strode out of the hotel, snagging some tourist brochures from the concierge desk, figuring brazenness would save the day. It worked. Both the hotel employee and the policeman smiled at him as he left. You could get away with anything ninety-nine percent of the time if you smiled and appeared relaxed.
He hooked a left outside the hotel and loitered by a newspaper bodega. To his alarm, the English newspapers all led with the assassination of a Russian official at the G20 meeting. The Greeks were outraged that this had happened on their turf, and all the other coverage was speculating on why a minister of antiquities was the target.
“Not exactly low profile,” Malone said from behind him.
David just nodded and walked toward the next block. As soon as they were out of earshot of the bodega guy, Mal pointed to the left, and they took the road that led to the back of the hotel.
“So, who’s the bird?” he asked.
Of course that would be the first thing he mentioned. “Just someone I met last year.”
“Pre, or post fucked-up breakdown?” he asked boldly.
David shot him a look, trying to figure out the line of questioning. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure about Molly and what she was doing last night, but that was his problem and he wasn’t going to lay her open for Mal to investigate. He paused, not willing to suggest that she had anything to do with the situation, nor wanting to lie.