She looked scared again. “Why?”
“I need to pick up something that will help us get someplace safe. It won’t be for long.”
“Out of Paris?”
Nate nodded. “We need to leave town as soon as we can. So we’ll get up pretty early.”
“What are you getting?”
Keeping the promise to himself, he said, “A false ID for you. So we can travel anonymously.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not kidding at all.”
She was silent for a moment. “Then where are we going?”
“Someplace safe.”
“That’s the best you can do?”
“For now.”
She thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Good,” Nate said, pushing himself off the bed. “Now pick a side. I’ll be right out.”
“Where are you going?”
He hopped to the bathroom door. “Forgot to brush my teeth.”
Once inside, he shut the door and turned on the water. He then picked his pants up off the floor and got his phone out of the front pocket. He shot off a quick text to Julien.
Status?
While he was waiting, he decided to go ahead and brush his teeth again, anyway. No lies.
His phone vibrated. Julien had responded.
Active search still on. R u safe?
Nate typed:
Safe. But need car. Can u help?
Twenty seconds later, from Julien:
Think so. When?
Nate thought for a moment, then texted:
5:30 a.m.
It was almost a minute before Julien responded.
Ok. Will text meeting place once arranged.
Nate sent a confirmation, then put the phone back in his pants pocket. When he opened the door, the bedroom was dark. He flipped off the bathroom light, but he’d seen enough to know Liz had taken the far side of the bed. She had also folded back the covers on his side so he could get in.
“I was thinking,” he said. “I mean if it makes you feel more comfortable, I could sleep on top of the blankets.”
“You’d get too cold,” she said.
“It’s fine. I can put on some of my clothes.”
“No,” she said. “Please just get in.”
He stood by the bed, paralyzed.
“Nate, please,” she said. It was the first time she’d called him by that name. “It’s okay.”
He lay down on his back and pulled the covers over him. He and Liz weren’t touching, but he could feel her warmth only inches away. He could also sense that her eyes were open. He was about to tell her to go to sleep, but she spoke first.
“Tell me that I have nothing to be worried about, and it will all be okay.”
“It will all be okay,” he said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Silence.
“Why are they coming after me?”
“They think they can control Quinn if they have you.”
“But they can’t?”
“No.”
“He’d just let them have me?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nate said. “They wouldn’t be able to control him, because if they did somehow take you he would come after them and get you back. And if that happened, they wouldn’t know what hit them.”
“He could do that?”
“Yes.”
More silence, then the rustling of blankets as Liz turned on her side toward the window.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said. “We weren’t sure if there was going to be any trouble, so it seemed best to—”
“It’s okay. I get it,” she said.
Nate hesitated, then said, “We should get some sleep.”
She didn’t say anything, but he thought she nodded her head.
“It’s all going to be okay,” he said as he instinctively reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Just try to sleep.”
Her left hand touched his. He thought she was going to push his off, but she grabbed it instead, pulling it around her so that he was hugging her. As if it were a single movement, they moved closer together, her back pressing against his chest.
She seemed about to say something, but her voice remained silent. He, too, opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.
After a few minutes, he could feel her body begin to relax. He thought she had fallen asleep, so he started to pull his arm into a more comfortable position. As he did, his hand brushed against her breast.
Before he could pull it away, she turned under his arm until she was facing him. She looked at him, her eyes soft. The fear was still there, but there was something more, too.
He leaned forward, his lips finding hers.
As her left leg slipped over the stump of his right, she hesitated. But it was only a second, and after that it didn’t seem to matter to her that he wasn’t whole.
Chapter 35
The 2 a.m. pickup went off without a hitch. Nate had slept for just over an hour and a half before he got up and made his way to the trash can on Rue de Rivoli across from the Jardin des Tuileries. Just as arranged, inside he found Liz’s false documents wrapped in a paper bag, stuffed halfway down.
Nate had been afraid when he returned he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. But within a minute of closing his eyes, he was out.
At 4:30 a.m. he woke again, courtesy, as it so often was, of the alarm on his phone. Liz was draped across him, her head on his chest, her legs intertwined with his.
He started to stroke her hair, then stopped, suddenly realizing what he was doing. I should have slept on the floor. Or the bathroom. Hell, I should have taken a second room. His hand started moving again, lifting strands of hair from her face.
Her eyelids parted and she looked at him.
“Time to get up?” she asked.
“Almost,” he said.
“What are you doing?”
“Your hair fell on my hand.”
She smiled, then pulled herself onto him.
“You probably shouldn’t do that,” he said.
“You want me to stop?”
In his mind, he said, Yes, but in the real world, he slid a hand behind her head and pulled her mouth to his.
When they had made love before falling asleep, there had been an urgency to it, a want and desire that possessed them both. This time their motions started slower, as if they wanted to remember every second. But then the intensity overtook them, and by the time they finished, Nate now on top, they were both drenched in sweat.
Nate held on to her for a few moments. “We’re already late.”
“Just a little longer.”
“I want to.”
“Then do it.”
“Julien is going to meet us with a car at five-thirty,” he said.
“When did you arrange that?” she asked.
“Last night.”
“Sneaky,” she said. “What time is it now?”
He looked at his watch. “Crap,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s almost five. We need to move.”
“Once more,” she whispered. “He’ll wait. And we might not get another chance for a while.”
She slipped her hand between his legs and moved her lips to his ear.
Yeah, he thought. Julien can wait.
By the time Nate and Liz left the hotel, it was already twenty minutes after five. There was no way they were going to make it on time. Nate pulled out his phone and sent Julien a quick text:
+ 15
Outside, it took a few minutes longer than he’d hoped to find a taxi, but once they did, traffic was light, so it wasn’t long before the driver dropped them off near the entrance to the Sully-Morland Métro station on Boulevard Henri IV. As soon as the cab left, Nate pointed at the station entrance.