Chapter 26 #2
Eric’s stomach flipped and sank like a stone. “You said you had too much to drink.”
“What else would explain the way I passed out and why I don’t remember much?
But…but I didn’t think I’d had that much.
I figured my tolerance was low because I haven’t been drinking while I was on pain medication for my leg.
” She swallowed. “But was that me trying to explain away something I should have questioned?”
He swallowed, trying to keep his voice even. “Nikki, do you think he drugged you?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke. “I don’t know.”
“Fuck.” Eric gathered her up, pulling her into his arms. “Baby, have you been sitting here worrying about this all day?”
She nodded, her forehead cracking against his collarbone.
The idea of the woman he loved drugged and helpless with another man would shatter his control, so he took that thought, boxed it up, and put it to the side to focus on her.
“If he isn’t who he said he is, then he probably…”
“Drugged me,” she said, trying for cool and calm, but her voice cracked. “The question is why?”
He could think of a dozen—all terrible—reasons, but he could see in her own eyes they were both thinking about one particular possibility.
“Nikki, did he touch you while you were unconscious?”
She pressed her hands over her face. “I don’t know.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Eric, I don’t know.”
He couldn’t do anything but hold her as a terrible swirling helplessness fed a cold, quiet rage. He’d never leave her side again. He’d stay beside her no matter what or where.
He waited for her to cry, but she didn’t. The only sign of distress was her unsteady, cracking breaths.
“Shouldn’t I know?” She pushed up, still in his arms but no longer limp. “I would…wouldn’t I feel it if he’d raped or otherwise assaulted me?”
Rage boiled inside him, a terrible primal monster. But Nikki was here, in his arms, and her presence held the rage at bay, kept him calm enough to kiss her cheeks, her forehead, her mouth.
“I have to know,” she said finally. “We have to listen to the recordings. Zoran’s software might not have flagged anything if there weren’t really… If I didn’t say ‘no’ or…”
Her face was calm, but there was terror at the back of her eyes.
“Or we wait and see if they get the Spaniard tonight.” He liked that idea, because if they got him, and it was Gus, he could first beat the information out of the man, then kill him slowly.
“I don’t want to wait,” she snapped, and her shift from scared and stiff to angry was a relief. Nikolett gathered herself. “I’m tired of having no idea what’s going on. Of not knowing if I was drunk or drugged.”
He was watching her closely enough to see the slight frown when she said “drunk.”
“You said you remembered some things, right?”
“Yes. I know…I know I said your name.”
“Said my name or called him by my name?”
Nikolett’s head snapped up and she stared at him wide-eyed.
“Nikki, do you think you were… Were you asking for my help? And I wasn’t—” His words cracked, broke.
“No. No, Eric, this isn’t like your nightmare. Please don’t think that. Please don’t get stuck in your head.”
She gripped the sides of his head as if she could physically prevent the bad thoughts.
“I don’t remember being scared,” she assured him, almost desperately. “I remember being sleepy and horny.”
They both relaxed at that, and he didn’t think she realized the implications until she actually said them out loud.
“Tired and horny sounds like wine,” he said slowly, well aware it might be wishful thinking on his part.
She nodded, but it was hesitant, as if she too were afraid of clinging to the least terrible option. “We need to listen to the security recordings. Or read the transcripts. If Gus is the Spaniard—”
Eric was a fan of jumping to the worst-case scenario because in his experience, that’s normally what ended up happening, but there were a few things that didn’t add up. “Why would a man named Angus McAngus go by the Spaniard? Only someone completely deranged would put those names together.”
She paused, head cocked. “That’s true. And confusing. But the timing…”
“Walk me through it. If Gus is the Spaniard, what does it mean?”
“It means it wasn’t a chance meeting at that coffee shop. He was there to meet me.”
“Why? Why meet you instead of kill you?”
“He’s never tried to kill me, not really,” she said slowly. “Well, maybe the time I was shot.”
Now that she was focused on the puzzle of it, she was no longer vibrating with emotion. Eric gripped her thigh, squeezing to ward off the panic at the idea both that she’d been shot and that he hadn’t known about it until she was healed.
“Maybe there was poison in the cookie he tried to give you. He wanted to watch you die in person.”
“Risky. He ate half of it before offering it to me. Also, even if I did take a cookie from a stranger, at the first sign I was sick or something was wrong, my security team would have moved me. He probably would have missed my actual death.”
“So why approach you?”
“Information. He wanted more information either about me or he thought I’d reveal information.”
“What information? Has he asked you any questions about us?”
“No. The only time I even vaguely mentioned anything related to the society was when I tried to defend arranged marriage. I was hoping to sway him so he’d accept and become a member…”
Eric started to say something but she slapped a hand over his mouth to stop him from interrupting, eyes focused on nothing.
He could practically see her zipping thoughts as she worked through something.
“What if…that’s what he wanted—to become a member?
He puts me in danger, then rescues me, or catches the person responsible. ”
Eric mumbled, trying to answer her, and when she didn’t move her hand, he licked her palm. She gasped and dropped her hand, apparently having forgotten she was muting him.
Eric probably wasn’t the best person to work through this hypothetical because he was too straightforward in both his thinking and actions.
“There has got to be an easier way to get noticed and become a member. Why attack the archive and try to get the Oscar Wilde book? Why help a blackmailer in Crimea?”
“Maybe he was supposed to save the day in each of those situations, but we fixed it ourselves first. When that didn’t work, he decided to introduce himself to me so I’d notice him, and the next time, he’d be the one to save me.”
“He created the problem, then planned to solve it, be the hero, and become a member. That’s…annoyingly convoluted.”
“It’s a possibility,” Nikolett insisted.
Eric sighed. “I know it is because half of our people think like this.”
“We can’t all be the ‘rips heads off’ person.”
Eric grunted in amusement. “Even if he did become a member, he had to know we’d eventually figure out it was him.”
“Actually,” Nikolett said, “I’m not sure the timeline works. Unless we assume attacking me was a long-term backup plan because they started early. It could work, because he only escalated to direct contact with me when the other operations failed.”
“Assuming Gus is the Spaniard.”
“True. And if he is, who was he going to ‘catch’? There were easier options. And why come here and have dinner with me?”
Eric looked around. “Maybe he planted a bug, or a computer virus.”
She shook her head. “Unless it’s something unknown and undetectable, he didn’t plant anything.
They checked before and after. I think Grigoris even used an EMP pulse to short out everything in the room, then reset our system after.
But again, nothing’s impossible.” Nikolett jumped to her feet, crossing the room to grab her phone.
“There are too many possibilities. I need answers.”
“I just messaged Regina to check the recording transcripts.” Before he could say they’d wait, his phone pinged. “She says Zoran already checked, and once you moved to the bedroom there were very few words picked up. Just some mumbling, and…” Eric smirked. “My name, then later ‘Gus.’”
She rolled her eyes, then her face screwed up. “I was hoping we’d hear him questioning me and we’d have our answer.”
“We’ll get them when we catch the Spaniard. And you know that Grigoris and Regina are also tracking Gus, but so far aren’t sure where in Paris he’s staying.”
Nikolett sat down beside him, unlocked her phone, and then passed it to him. “Do you see anything suspicious in his messages?”
Eric scanned through the messages between her and “Cookie Guy,” also looking at the time stamps. Gus had been awkwardly flirting with her and saying sweet, funny things for weeks while Eric had been ignoring and hurting her.
Eric took a few calming breaths, then clicked out of the messages. “Nothing suspicious.” Something farther down her screen caught his eye and he pulled his hand back before he could actually return the phone to her.
“Do you have me saved in your phone as ‘Fleet Admiral Coward’?”
“Uh. Yes.”
He thrust the phone at her. “Change it.”
“To what?” She arched a brow, looking truly calm for the first time since he’d closed the door.
“Something better than that. How about ‘Best Sex I Ever Had.’”
“Too many characters.”
“‘Man I’m Fucking.’”
“Eh.” She shrugged, but she was smiling, some of the stark look fading from her eyes, so he kept going.
“‘Sex God.’”
She snorted, then tapped her screen before turning it so he could see.
Above their conversation, the contact name now read “Szerelmem.”
“Is that a word, or did you just hit a bunch of letters?”
“You figure it out.” Nikolett had a grim, determined look in her eyes as she tapped her screen. “I’m getting answers.”
He lifted his own phone. “How did you spell that?”
She spelled it out, looking at her phone as it pinged.
He put it into the translation app.
Szerelmem—the possessive form of the word for romantic love. Used to refer to something or someone as loved (romantically) by the speaker. “My love” or “Beloved.”