Chapter 9
Nine
John rolled over in the dark.
Three a.m. Anxiety must’ve shaken him awake.
Was he off base for telling Vivian he couldn’t get past her job?
He’d thought Jane’s passion for art brokerage was attractive.
The way it lit her up, made her fire on all cylinders as she paced his apartment and excitedly chatted with artists and buyers on the phone.
This last day, though?
Vivian was breathtaking. She’d rescued him from harm’s way, spirited him to Morocco, then navigated Casablanca like she’d been born there. And she’d done it all like it was no big deal, cracking jokes along the way.
This was what she was meant to do.
He loved that for her.
For him, not so much. Growing up as an afterthought to his parents’ careers had been hard.
He didn’t want that dynamic in his adulthood.
But he might make peace with Vivian’s calling if the last twenty-four hours were a sign of how they could be.
It was too soon to tell, though, and he didn’t want to give her false hope until he’d had a chance to— A click caught his attention.
Probably nothing. Old bones were bound to creak in a centuries-old house. Except with Vivian, “probably nothing” stood a decent chance of being something.
He scanned the room.
He couldn’t see shit through the picturesque netting that draped his bed. Another noise—a thump this time. Definitely something.
He concentrated.
Hang on—was Vivian crying?
Another loud sniffle from across the hall. Ah, hell. She’d said she cried when she was alone. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have kissed her. Mixed signals were cruel, and despite their relationship’s murky state, he didn’t want to hurt her.
He couldn’t let her just sob over there.
He dragged on his T-shirt, then slipped his Zippo in his pajama pants. Light pooled from underneath Vivian’s door, interrupting the hallway’s inky dark. As he padded across the hall, movement in his periphery caught his attention.
A black-clad figure stood outside the second-floor patio door.
A door that was locked—he’d double-checked before heading to bed.
Man-in-black had attached suction cups to the glass.
They were the heavy-duty kind John used when setting objects under glass displays at the museum.
It was an effective way to install or remove panes of glass without leaving fingerprints.
Pretend you don’t see him.
More easily said than done, because he wanted to run screaming from the riad.
Not without Vivian.
He tapped on her door. “It’s me.”
She eased it open. “What’s wrong?”
He slipped inside, locked the door, then turned to her. “What are you holding?”
“Same thing I always hold when someone knocks on my door at 3:00 a.m.—a collapsible baton.” She wiped away shiny tear tracks with her pajama sleeve. “Trouble sleeping?”
“No.” A billion words stuck in his throat, all competing to escape. “There’s a guy.”
She straightened her spine. “In the hall?”
“Patio. He’s trying to break in.”
“Well, shit.” She eased open the armoire and dove into jeans, socks and sneakers, then thrust the riad-supplied slippers at him. “Here. Best I can do.”
“Best you can do for what?”
“Our escape. I don’t have a fight in me tonight.”
After extracting a bundle of nylon from the armoire, she crossed the room with the precision of one of Degas’s ballerinas. She eased the window up, then hooked two carabiners onto anchors hidden behind the curtain.
Ah, a fire escape ladder.
With one foot out the window, she beckoned to him.
“Don’t rush.” Vivian’s whisper tickled his ear. “It makes the ladder wiggle.”
She shimmied down the rungs. With adrenaline pumping through him, he followed her into the night.
When his slippered feet hit the ground, Vivian gestured for him to follow her to the yard’s edge.
She reached into a wall of leafy green plants and tugged, and a secret door swung inward.
They slipped through it and into the alley.
Quietly she closed it behind them.
They were in the alley that ran next to the riad. Despite his eight inches of height advantage, he had to hustle to keep up with her as they hurried toward the street. The slippers didn’t help. At the alley’s end, Vivian held up her hand to signal him to stop.
She peeked around the corner.
“Shit.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Black SUV on our six. Green neon underglow. Terrible music. It’s the snake charmer.”
“This is a lot of effort to collect the forty dollars we didn’t pay.”
“Doubt that’s what this is about.” She withdrew her baton. “Get low. We’ll crawl across the street, then run for it down the alley.”
Before he could ask questions, she speed-crawled across the road like a horror movie villain. He shot after her, knees be damned. Once he joined her, she straightened, tightened her backpack’s straps and sprinted.
The alley brightened as they closed in on the next block.
Vivian circled her arm around his waist. “Pretend we’re a couple.”
Muscle memory took over as his protective arm met the familiar shape of her shoulders.
He glanced behind them. “Why did he follow us to the riad?”
“Beats me, but I’m pissed I thought the snake charmer was doing the tourist trap thing.
He targeted us. It’s a trick that hired goons pull.
They interact with a target, and the person who hired them watches, then confirms they have the right person.
Skeezy guy too, I’d bet. The one who ogled me. We need to get to a safe place.”
“The police?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Does that mean the police are the bad guys?” he asked.
“No. Well, sometimes, but the ones here are good guys who ask a lot of questions. I know a place where we can crash. A fortress. Ooh, and there’s our chariot.”
A teenager sat on a retro motorbike near the club, smoking.
“That bucket of bolts?” he asked.
“We need wheels. I don’t steal from civilians. Loom over my shoulder and look like a tough guy in case he tries to mug me.” She approached the kid. “Excusez-moi?”
Thus began a very brief negotiation while John did his best to menacingly loom. The kid’s attention perked up at the words two thousand, and he immediately demanded five hundred more. Vivian nodded and exchanged dirham for the key.
As the kid walked away, a plume of smoke curled into the air above him.
Vivian wrinkled her forehead. “Can you drive this?”
John’s stomach sank. “I—”
“I’m kidding.” She nudged his shoulder. “You looked like you believed me.”
“I always believe you. That’s kind of the problem.”
“You’re right, sorry.” She swung her leg over the motorbike’s duct-taped seat. “No helmets, though. Here.” She shrugged her backpack free. “Wear this and hang on to me.”
The black SUV from the riad slithered into view.
“Fuck,” she said. “Get on.”
She dropped her foot on the kick-starter and…nothing.
The SUV crept closer.
Vivian pumped the kick-starter again. Still nothing.
“Third time’s the charm,” she said.
The bike finally rumbled to life, and Vivian gunned it. John held tight.
Letting her go would be the end of him.
* * *
Vivian’s instincts took over as the SUV bore down on them. The therapy podcast she’d been listening to lately said typical trauma responses were fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop.
Her particular trauma response was fuck you.
Because honestly, how dare these guys target her and John at the marketplace, break into their riad, then chase them in the middle of the night?
Alone, she would’ve happily thrown hands at the patio guy, then dropped on top the SUV like a spider to take out the snake charmer and interrogate him.
At the very least she would’ve called the police to report a suspicious loiterer.
But with John in tow, it was safety first.
“They’re gaining on us,” John shouted.
Not in a panicky way. He was loud, but this was the same matter-of-fact tone he used when quoting an interesting article in the Post.
“Roger that,” she answered.
His grip on her tightened as she sped through middle-of-the-night Casablanca. Shame she couldn’t give him a proper tour of one of her homes away from home. The place was beautiful, especially at night, with all the pale buildings lit up in a golden glow.
The bike coughed and backfired.
“Hang on,” she shouted.
Ignoring how much she loved the feel of his arms around her, she hairpinned into a narrow alley that the SUV’s fat ass couldn’t fit within.
“That was close,” John said.
Close? Nah. This was easy. Close was when she’d been pinned in a blind alley and had parkoured her way out of it. But she’d keep that story to herself. After several sharp turns, she stopped at a set of steel double doors.
She cut the engine. “We’re here. Can you let me go?”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry.” He released her, then slid off the motorbike.
The doors vibrated with the unce-unce-unce club music they’d play until closing.
Pain shot through her knuckles as she knocked three times.
She paused, knocked three more times, paused again, then gave two more knocks.
She shook out her fist. It had been a minute since she worked here, but hopefully they hadn’t changed the code.
A moment later, the lock on the other side thunked. The unoiled hinges squealed as the door opened. The club’s candy-colored lights spilled over a familiar figure.
“Bonjour, Tonton,” she said.
“Jeanne d’Arc!” He picked her up and swung her around, the only man on the planet besides John whom she allowed to do so. He set her back on her feet with as much grace as a trained ballerino. “What’s the deal?”
“Trouble,” she explained in French. “May we come inside?”
Tonton appraised John before complying. Good for him. As the head of security for Café Americain, he was responsible for the employees’ and club-goers’ safety. After five long seconds, he gestured for them to wheel the motorbike inside.
“Park the bike,” he said as he bolted the doors. “You can have the office.”
“Thanks, Tonton,” she said.