43. The mole
FORTY-THREE
THE MOLE
Lake
Miro sits at the desk with his phone propped on the base of the lamp. Val’s on the speaker, and the pair of them hack the sadist’s laptop along with his phone. He never mentioned I’m in the room with him, but that doesn’t mean he’s ignoring me. I’m being held at gunpoint.
His gun lies on top of the desk, and he told me to stay put. I’ve seen the speed with which he executed three people. I’m not going anywhere, though I wonder if it’s better to let him save Alessio the trouble of having to end me. The moment Alessio finds out what I did, he’ll execute me the same way Miro executed the sadist who kept me here.
As Miro chats with Val, it becomes clear that the piece of plastic I handed over to the sadists is a short-range tracker for the warhead Alessio is transporting.
Yup, a goddamned warhead.
I handed over the tracker that would’ve activated itself when the sadist got within a hundred-mile radius of the warhead. That was why he asked me for the location.
I struggle to unpack what Val and Miro are talking about, mainly because the depth of my involvement in a situation with such major, deadly consequences hasn’t sunk in yet. Actually, it might never sink in since I’m in complete shock over what could’ve happened if this man hadn’t intervened.
It occurs to me, if he killed me, it would have been for the greater good. Either I’ve lost my marbles or I’m really okay with that. Regardless, I’m a travel junkie and a foodie, a walking peace sign. I don’t know how to navigate an international criminal crisis. I just… I just…
“I want to go home,” I say. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“What was that?” Val asks, still on speaker phone.
“Nothing,” Miro answers, giving me a warning look.
“I heard someone,” she retorts.
Miro shakes his head. “You’re hearing things.”
“When is Alessio coming?” she asks.
A bang from the door makes me jump, and Miro picks up his gun.
“What was that?” Val asks.
“Stay on the line just in case I need backup,” he says.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Just stay on the line, Val.”
Miro points his pistol at the door. “Go open the door before he breaks it.”
“Who are you talking to?” Val sounds fearful now.
The crack that comes with the next bang makes me want to pee my pants. Really.
“Get the fucking door!” Miro shouts.
I rush to the door, my body shaking all over. I open the door, and Alessio barges inside.
His normally crisp white shirt flaps over his pants, and it’s open, showing half his torso. With disheveled hair and rapidly moving gaze searching my body, he looks wild. “You’re fine.” He presses me against his chest and holds me there, kisses the top of my head. “Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing at all. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Oh, but he will when he finds out I cooperated with his enemies.
Alessio goes stills. “What the hell is this?”
I don’t think he’s talking to me.
Alessio tucks me behind him. “You point a gun at me, you better shoot or start explaining.”
Definitely not me. I turn my head toward the exit behind me. Alessio kicked in the door, and it’s not closing correctly, so a line of light from the hallway outside penetrates the dark hallway.
“Alessio,” Miro says. “We have a breach.”
“You working behind my back?” Alessio asks, his voice low and terrifying. “After all I did for you and the mess you made in Venice, you come back and take my governess.”
I wonder how many people heard Alessio break into the room and if they’ll come to investigate. There are three dead bodies in here. Oh my God, I’m a witness to a crime, a….a…conspiracy, a crisis of potentially nuclear proportions. I can’t be involved in this. I want to go home.
“She’s not your governess,” Miro says. “She’s a mole.”
Alessio charges at Miro.
I scream, and for the first time in my life, I take flight instead of freezing in place. I run as fast as my feet will carry me. Down the hallway, past a pair of security guards who are running in the opposite direction, likely toward Alessio and Miro.
At the elevator, I slam my palm repeatedly over the elevator pad as if that’ll make the lift come faster. The five seconds I wait feel like an eternity, and when I can’t stand the wait anymore, I sprint toward the end of the hallway. I burst through the exit doors, setting off the fire alarm. It blares through the hotel, and now I’m freaking the fuck out, hyperventilating as I descend five flights of stairs to the ground floor.
Panic must make me a great runner, because I blast out of the stairwell onto the square and take off like a bullet, gunning toward the US embassy, which, because I thought this might happen, I already know is about a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel. At this pace, I can make it there in under ten minutes.
The heavy pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk forces me to slow down. I don’t want to hurt anyone if I run into them. Still, I bump shoulders with lots of people and even hear a woman shout at me in French. I’m rushing and apologizing profusely, and I try to watch where I’m going, but my vision is blurred, and I’m pretty sure I’d pass out from pure terror if I slowed down now.
So I keep moving.
I need to cross the street, and I do it, but realize too late and somewhere in the middle of a wide, busy Parisian street that I should’ve waited for the pedestrian signal. The cars zip past me, honking. The buses too. Other modes of transport in the city. Everyone honks. Everyone screams at me.
I freeze.
“Lake!” I hear someone shout my name and turn. There’s a man. White shirt. Black pants. My vision is a blur, but I can see he’s running toward me. “Lake, get back here!”
But I’m frozen.
A red bus zips past me. It’s so close that it almost runs over my shoes, its wind making me stagger back.
On the sidewalk, the man I’m sure is Alessio stands still. I think he froze too, probably thinking the bus would hit me. I thought the bus would hit me too.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Hands grab me and shove me into a dark space. I hear a door slam closed, and a man says, “We have her. On our way.”