Chapter Nine
Port de Sóller
Mallorca, Spain
Caspian entered the hotel room he shared with Liesel, expecting to find it empty.
Instead, and to his relief, he found Liesel sitting on the sofa, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She wore a fitted white tank top and linen shorts; her dark hair, still wet, was loose around her shoulders.
The look on her face stopped him cold. Something was wrong.
Her eyes met his. “Where the hell have you been?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you everything, but for now, we need to pack our stuff,” he replied, locking the door behind him. “I want us out of here in ten minutes.”
His words instantly wiped the frustration from her face. Caspian knew this wasn’t because of his power of persuasion, but because she was a professional. As an intelligence officer with the BND, Liesel could grasp the seriousness of a situation faster than most.
“I’m already packed, but we can’t leave the island,” she said. “Not yet.”
That caught him off guard. “I wasn’t planning to. But why?”
“You first.”
Caspian shared with her what had happened, telling her about Hobb’s abduction, the yacht, the two armed people he’d been forced to neutralize, and his call to Samantha Ranger.
“Holy shit,” Liesel muttered when he was finished. “You think this has anything to do with Florence?”
“Not sure yet. Ranger will send someone to check on her, covertly of course. She’ll let me know,” he said.
“What else did she say?”
“She wants us ready in case she needs us. But we need to get to Palma. Port de Sóller is too small. We, or I should say I, could be found easily here.”
“Someone has already found us,” Liesel said.
“What do you mean?”
She handed him a folded note.
“This was inside a pastry box that was left for me,” she said.
Caspian read the note, then looked at Liesel.
“You believe Sofie dropped this off?”
Liesel shook her head. “Not personally. I went to the front desk to ask if they were aware that someone had delivered a pastry box to our room.”
“And?”
“The box was left for me at the front desk by a local deliveryman they’re familiar with. The concierge delivered it to the room.”
Caspian’s gut tightened.
“You were right,” he said, handing the note back to Liesel. “Whoever sent it knows where we’re staying. Maybe not our room number, but the hotel.”
“Hacking the hotel database isn’t complicated,” Liesel pointed out. “We have to assume they know everything.”
Liesel wasn’t the type to scare easily, but the tightness in her jaw and the way her fingers fidgeted against her thigh told Caspian how much the note she’d received had shaken her.
He reached out and cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing lightly against her cheek.
She leaned into his touch, closing her eyes.
“Do you think it’s her? Do you think it’s really Sofie?” he asked.
“I . . . I don’t know,” she replied. “But what if it is? What if she really needs me?”
“Then we go,” he said without hesitation. “You’re not doing this alone.”
“But what about Ranger’s orders?”
“This is your family. Let’s deal with that first, okay?” he said. “But we need to do it right. I’ll loop in Ranger.”
“If it is my sister, she might not show up at the restaurant if she sees you there,” Liesel said. “She did ask me to come alone.”
“She knows who I am. I’m in the photo too,” Caspian reminded her. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t sit with you at the restaurant.”
He moved to the desk and grabbed a map of Port de Sóller, then spread it out on the bed. He tapped the location of the restaurant with his finger.
“You’re supposed to meet Sofie here. I’ll find a spot from where I can keep an eye on you.”
Liesel leaned over the map, studying the layout.
“There aren’t a lot of places where you’d have a good vantage point,” she said after a moment.
Caspian grunted. He’d come to the same conclusion.
The restaurant was separated from the beach only by a pedestrian road and the tram tracks.
Adjacent to it was a narrow street, Carrer d’Alaró, and beyond that, another restaurant.
On the other side of Ses Oliveres was a private residence with an iron fence.
“I wish I could be on overwatch, but without a rifle, that’s not happening,” Caspian said, his finger hovering over the end of the large concrete dock that jutted out of the waterfront promenade and cut through the bay.
“Even if I had a long gun, the only viable place I could set up to have an overall view would be here. And that’s about three hundred meters away. ”
“What if I make another reservation, this time for one?” Liesel suggested. “That way, you could sit a few tables away from me.”
Caspian didn’t like that idea. “If we’re being watched, and whoever’s after us sees me sitting alone a few tables away from you, they’ll know something’s off. They might realize we’re onto them.”
“So, we sit together? Just a regular couple having dinner?”
“A regular couple?” Caspian smirked. “More like a great-looking couple having dinner.”
Liesel took his hands, lacing her fingers through his. “We’ll be sitting ducks,” she said.
Caspian smiled, then squeezed her hands and leaned in, kissing her gently. He then set his backpack onto the bed, unzipped it, and took out the two pistols he’d earlier confiscated.
“At least we’ll be armed sitting ducks,” he said.
Liesel let out a small laugh.
“Let’s just hope we won’t need them,” she muttered.