Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Vicky
“We’re here,” Alex says as we pull up outside a small office building.
“Where’s here?”
“JFK.”
It doesn’t look like part of the airport I’ve seen before, but a plane takes off while my weary brain tries to figure it out, and it’s close enough to attest this is indeed the right place.
“Where are we going?”
Alex hesitates, then drives into a space and puts the car in park. “A lot’s happened that we haven’t caught up on yet. Can I ask you to trust me?”
I do trust him.
Mostly.
“Where are we going, Alex?” The words come out more tersely than his request deserves.
He lets out a slow breath, his face in shadow, eyes catching the light. “Spain.”
I stare at him and swallow hard. The word ‘Spain’ echoes in the cabin like it belongs in another language. “A holiday?” I ask tentatively. I suspect I already know the answer.
“If that helps,” he says slowly. “Albeit a rather long one.”
“How long?”
In answer, he shrugs one shoulder.
I’m slouching in my seat, and I push myself straight, ignore how my body protests. “We’re frigging moving to Spain?”
He raises a hand in placation. “Please, Vicky. Can we talk about this later?” He glances at the clock on the dash. It shows ten after eleven. “We have a plane to catch.”
“What time’s the plane?”
“Eleven.”
“Then we’ve missed it, haven’t we?” I slump back in my seat and fold my arms. “We can talk now.”
“I chartered a private flight, so we haven’t missed it. But they’ll get antsy, and we could miss our slot. Besides, I want us onboard. Out of New York. Out of…”
America.
He doesn’t say it, but it hangs in the air.
“Are we staying with your family?” His parents are out there somewhere.
“Nowhere near,” he replies. I hear the subtext: it’s the first place they’ll look.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” I say sullenly.
I’m fully aware it’s implied consent. But I can’t say no to him. Even when I do, he ignores me. There’s probably a vial of chloroform in the dash and a forged power of attorney in his pocket.
“I speak enough for both of us.”
Yeah. So I’ll be dependent on him. At least for a while.
“Did you pack underwear this time?”
The shadows on his face don’t quite disguise the twitch of his lips. “You’ve got the ones you’re wearing.”
He knows damn well I’m not wearing any.
“Then we’re going shopping when we arrive.”
He nods, like that’s a done deal. “Can you walk? I can get you a chair.”
“I’ll walk.” I’m not leaving the damn country in a wheelchair.
But my body has hardly recovered, and it still takes me too long to get my door open, pull myself out, and stand. By then, Alex has a luggage cart and has loaded four suitcases. None of them are mine; those are still in Carol’s apartment.
Which hits like a gut punch.
“Are you all right?” he asks, stepping forward, bracing me with a hand on my arm even though I didn’t need it.
Or perhaps I did.
“Fine.” So not fine.
But now that I’m resigned to going, I just want to get on the plane.
“Trust me,” he said. “A lot’s happened that we haven’t caught up on yet.”
I know he means Van Wyk, but I wonder what else.
What would it take for Alexander Reyes to leave his job, his work, his city, and move to Spain?
With me.
My breath catches, my chest tightening.
The only thing he’s taking… is me.
“Vicky?”
“I’m fine.” It comes out on a pained gasp, undermining the words, but they’re the truth. Hell, I’m better than fine. I’m good.
Alex wants me.
We’re going away, leaving our lives behind, focusing only on each other.
He told me he loves me, but now he’s showing it.
“Are you sure you don’t want a wheelchair?”
“Damn sure. I’m feeling stronger.” And it’s true. “Maybe your arm, if you can manage that cart too?”
“Of course.” He takes the handle in his left hand, offers me his right arm, and I grip it. Together, we walk toward the building, our progress slow as he matches my pace.
“Are you abandoning the car?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a gun in it?”
“No. I threw it in Gravesend Bay. You were asleep.”
“Smart.” We make another half dozen steps. “That other gun. The one you turned up with. Where was that from?” Better to ask these questions when we’re not going through security.
“It was DeLuca’s.”
“Oh.” Another step. Then another. “Did you kill him?”
His arm tenses under my hold. “No,” he growls, like he’s regretting it.
I decide not to ask more questions that might provoke another murderous rage, in case he leaves me here in the departure lounge and drives back to finish the job.
My fiancé, the killer.
Yet what is love, if it’s not knowing someone’s flaws, and accepting them anyway?
Alex has a lot to accept too.
I’m far from perfect.
There’s a reception desk inside, a burnt ochre theme, no one around but staff, and a disconsolate coffee machine in one corner. Alex props me against the desk while he deals with our booking. I don’t even consider that I haven’t got my passport until he pulls it out, along with his.
My brain’s still muddled by the fifty volts.
I wonder if there’ll be long-term damage, and if not, how long it will take me to recover. But though I feel shit, I also feel better than when we left the warehouse. Stronger in myself, despite the weakness of my body. I take that as a good sign.
“They’re ready for you, sir,” the receptionist says.
“How long is the walk to the aircraft?” Alex asks.
“Only a hundred yards or so.”
“We’ll have a golf cart.”
“Uh… Sir, we don’t—”
Alex leans forward. “Find me a golf cart.”
I know it’s for me, and I almost stop him. Tell him I can walk.
But the receptionist glances my way, back to Alex, and smiles. “Of course, sir. A short delay, then.”
In the end, it doesn’t take them long, and we’re soon heading outside.
The tarmac’s lit by floodlights, and the jet waiting for us gleams white.
Alex helps me into the cart, and up the airstairs when we reach them.
Sleek outside, refined inside, the plane has only a few comfortable-looking leather chairs, and I’m grateful to see a bed beyond a half-pulled curtain.
Our luggage has already disappeared somewhere, and we’re met by a smiling flight attendant, shown to our seats, and served drinks.
I ask for a water, my throat clenching as I wait for it to come, and don’t hear a word Alex says to me until I’ve got the glass in my hands.
It hurts to drink, my throat sore, but I don’t care.
I’m through the first bottle before the engines have fired up, and halfway into the second before I can slow down.
Alex is watching me with concern, but the attendant has left, granting us some privacy. He probably did that; I didn’t even notice.
I give him a shaky smile. “I’m all right now.”
“You’re far from all right. Do you want to sleep?”
I do. Very much so. But there are questions that won’t wait. “Not yet.”
He nods, concern in his eyes. I quite like seeing it, even though I don’t, too. It reminds me that I’m his focus now.
Unless he gets bored of me again.
But I push that thought away. He killed for me. That has to count for something.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, voice low. “Any… regrets?”
“Many,” he says candidly. “But not from how this evening went, if that’s what you’re asking.” He shakes his head. “Aside from parking too far away and being late. Those are high on the list.”
So Haynes’s death isn’t bothering him. Perhaps that should disturb me, but it doesn’t.
Maybe that’s the most disturbing thing of all, but I can’t bring myself to care.
Haynes didn’t strike me as the kind of man to have kids around somewhere, now fatherless, and if he had a wife, she’s probably like Amelia, thanking us in absentia.
Alex is sitting opposite me, too far away to reach, and I’m feeling too weak to make the effort. But I need his touch.
I gesture to the chair beside me. “Would you sit here?”
He gets up and moves without hesitation or asking why, and that’s better. I can reach him now, my hand in his.
We wait in silence for the aircraft to take off, sitting like that, both of us tense. I finish my second bottle of water, glass by glass, and Alex orders a third. Then at last the aircraft moves, and minutes later we’re in the sky. Leaving New York behind.
I wonder if I’ll miss it, but it doesn’t feel like I’m leaving a home. My life has been Alex these past nine months. No, ten now. The rest of it has faded all too easily into obscurity, proving its loss didn’t matter. Only Carol was consistent, only Carol mattered, and she paid the price.
I dash tears away with the heel of my hand, seeing again the raw marks left by Haynes’s ropes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep?” Alex asks.
I shake my head and take a shuddering breath. “Let’s start with why we’re here. Why are we running? What’s so bad that you’ve left everything?” For me.
“I’ll give you the short version,” he says. “The details you can have whenever you want them, but after you’ve slept.”
Fair. “I’m listening.”
“DeLuca recruited me into a secret part of Cadrion Holdings,” Alex tells me bluntly, his voice pitched low for my ears only. “Illegal dealings, high reward, high risk. Failure had a steep punishment.”
“The finger thing?”
He nods. “The finger thing.”
“So you’ve quit? Resigned? You’ve left them?”
“In the interest of simplicity, I’ll say yes to that.”
I suppose that will do for now. “And Van Wyk?”
“Fournier’s right-hand man, and his… let’s say ‘enforcer.’” His head tilts. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
“He’s a murderer.”
Alex smiles. “Can you prove it?”
I hesitate. “I suppose not, officially. But within my heart, with what I know… I believe it strongly.”
“That’s good enough for me,” he says.
It means everything to hear those words from him.
My head feels heavy, and my mind isn’t as fast as it usually is, but there are still things I want to know.
“This flight… this jet. The bags. You had it ready, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“So what happened? Why tonight? Why the coincidence of timing?”