9. The Kiss
The Kiss
Louna lasted ten minutes before putting the earbud back in.
It was quiet, so she took out her sketchbook in an attempt to distract herself. She flipped to an empty page and picked up her pencil, but her phone buzzed before she could begin.
Argenis would not talk, but I’m certain he’s hidden the painting.
Charlotte’s indignation was clear in the text, and Louna could almost hear the bite in her voice as she demanded information from their recently arrested enemy.
Did you go to see him? Louna typed back.
A reply came almost instantly. I tried. Apparently he is not accepting visitors.
That made sense. He had only been arrested a few days ago, just before Louna followed Tennyson to Romania.
She doubted he’d had time to formulate a plan of defense with his lawyer, and he would be unwilling to give anything away before he knew how he would plead.
And before he could do that, he would have to work out how his miniature painting had ended up in his bag at the airport when he’d seen its ashes in his safe only months before.
It was something he would not be able to do for some time.
Or, preferably, ever.
The phone buzzed again, and another message spread across the screen. How is your mother?
A sigh gusted through her lips. Her quickly concocted lie had fooled the museum’s director, but she’d never had much hope of deceiving Charlotte.
Louna had seen the disbelief on her friend’s face when she had given the excuse, but Charlotte had opted to wait for an explanation.
Her question now was a pebble tossed into a still pond, testing the depth of the waters.
I had to leave suddenly, she explained. And given Gérard’s devotion to his own mother, it was the only topic I knew he would not question.
Are you safe? came Charlotte’s quick reply.
Warmth blossomed in her ribcage. Yes, Louna wrote. And I will be home soon. Can you hold the fort until I return?
There was a pause while Charlotte composed a response, and Louna began a sketch of Francesco Hayez’s The Kiss.
She’d always loved the dramatic painting, the arrested sense of movement between the figures, caught in a moment of intimacy.
The faces were obscured, so her mind had no chance to mis-remember the man’s features.
Another message popped up on her screen. I will be fine. Just be sure to tell me all about it when you get back. A moment later, a new text joined the others, offset by a string of heart emojis. Did you run off after your man?
Louna’s gaze pulled back to the drawing, and the memory of Tennyson’s lips on hers raised a flush to her cheeks. Her man. She’d come to Romania thinking he wasn’t, and had been determined to make him so. Was she trying to steal something she already had?
I have to go, she typed. I’ll call you later.
She turned her phone over and let herself get lost in the drawing, pushing thoughts of Tennyson and whatever she felt for him beneath the predictable, capturable details of the figures.
She could alter them however she wanted, highlighting certain features, erasing others.
They revealed only what she wanted them to.
“Harlow wasn’t always like this,” Tennyson said.
His voice, low and unexpected in her ear, made her shiver.
“I’ve never talked about this,” he said, tentative, into the silence. “But I think you should know.”
He was talking to Lindsey. Her pencil stalled over the male figure’s cap, his feather half-shaded. This conversation wasn’t meant for her, and she should take out the earbud now, before he said something she wasn’t supposed to hear.
She kept drawing, her hands too occupied to reach for the comm.
“When we met,” Tennyson went on, “I thought he was helping people. He was helping people. He only targeted those who had done wrong, or hurt others, and he only went after them if the law couldn’t.
He found evidence. Brought them to trial.
Kept them from paying their way out of their consequences.
My job was to keep him safe, or to guard witnesses who were willing to speak out in court. ”
The feather took shape under her fingers, and she moved on to where the man’s hand cradled his lover’s face as they kissed.
Tennyson’s words hushed in her ear. “And then it was getting information. Following suspects. Intimidating bodyguards. Fighting them.” He swallowed.
“Worse. When Bas realized how much I could do, he started sending me out on my own, or working with his other operatives in different countries. I thought it was the best way to use what I’d learned to help people. I thought...”
He exhaled, and Louna paused with her pencil pressed over the man’s lips. She had never heard him say so much about himself before. Hearing it felt a little like pushing a lock pick into the wrong part of a tumbler.
“You would have seen through it,” he said quietly. “You would have noticed that the jobs kept getting darker. And when it got bad, you would have said no. I didn’t want to think about it. I told myself the rest didn’t matter, as long as it helped someone.”
Soft shadows hid the man’s hand in his lover’s hair, but the tender way he held her was evident against the bright stone wall in the background.
She clung to him, her fingers clenching over his shoulder as if she could keep him there with her, as if his foot wasn’t already raised to carry him up the stairs and off to war.
“It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. I just wish—” Tennyson broke off, and the muffled sound of a closing car door filtered through the comms. “I know there’s no use in wishing things were different. But I’m not going to let you take the punishment for what I’ve done.”
The car started, and Tennyson fell silent.
She shouldn’t have listened. She took out her earbud and tucked it into her pocket, sighing at the drawing.
It was a poor choice of subject, now that she thought about it.
On the surface, it seemed like a passionate, hopeful moment, but there were hints at something darker in the composition.
A dagger hidden in the shadows of the man’s belt.
The desperate way the woman clung to her beau, trying to keep him with her.
He was leaving her behind so he could run off and fight, and would probably tell her he was going for her sake. Maybe he thought he was.
It never felt that way to the ones left behind.
Louna snapped her sketchbook shut and sat up on her bed—and then, with a sudden burst of energy, she stood and heaved the window up, sliding out into the cold and climbing down the bricks with practiced ease.
She dropped the last few meters and landed lightly on her feet, and was waiting inside the garage when Tennyson returned.
He parked inside the empty work space and got out with a curious expression on his solemn face.
“I listened to your conversation,” Louna said.
Tennyson blinked at her. His face was pale, but then, he hadn’t gotten much sleep over the last few nights.
First he’d stopped an attempt on her life, sustaining an injury he hadn’t yet had a chance to heal from, and then he’d driven through the night to rescue her from Harlow.
Worry for Lindsey had kept him from sleeping more than an hour at a time since arriving in Romania, if the pacing he’d done last night was any indication.
He needed rest, but until this business with Harlow resolved, she doubted he would let himself take it.
She wanted to lift some of the burdens from him, if only for a moment.
“I knew you were talking to Lindsey,” she said, stepping across the cavernous space toward him. “I was curious. And I thought maybe you would say more about yourself.”
He watched her approach, holding himself still. “Why not just ask?”
“It’s different,” Louna said. “Listening to what you tell someone against asking a question. I wanted to know what you would say.”
“What did you hear?” Tennyson asked.
She came close enough to touch him, and stopped without reaching out. “What did you do for Harlow?”
“Whatever he asked.”
Nothing in his expression changed, but there was a heaviness in the way he held himself that Louna hadn’t seen before. She put her hand out, but he shifted away and turned to close the garage door. “Tennyson,” she started. “Whatever you—”
“I think you should go back to France,” he said.
Louna stared at him. The door squealed as he pulled it shut, and when it was settled, he stayed with his back to her, waiting. She didn’t ask if he was serious. She didn’t try to pass it off as a joke.
“That call from Harlow,” he said at last. “He threatened you.”
“So?”
The muscles in Tennyson’s back were tensed, as though bracing for an attack. “He gave me three days to return with you. If we don’t leave by Saturday, he’ll come after us. After you.”
“We already knew he would,” Louna said.
Tennyson shook his head. “You’re not an average target. You’re smart and experienced and you know how to take care of yourself, and you have friends Harlow doesn’t want to cross.”
“You mean Ilya?”
“Yes.” He turned slightly, and the harsh electric light threw sharp shadows back from his face, just like the male figure in The Kiss. “Between your skill and Ilya’s protection, Harlow only has two men good enough to go after you. One of them is here, and Harlow will keep him on Lindsey.”
Louna folded her arms. “And who is the other?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Me.”
Something cold coiled in her chest, pinching at the familiar impulse to run. She squashed it down. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Harlow will use me against you,” Tennyson said. “And he’ll use you against me. It’s how he does things.”
“We can prepare for that.”
“We can’t,” he said. “Not for everything.”
The ice in her heart, which had just begun a faltering thaw, froze again. “I don’t understand,” she said in a flat voice. “Last night, you thanked me for being here. Now you want me to go?”
Tennyson’s tone was almost as dull as hers, his expression carefully blank.
“The trial will take months, and every day you’re here just gives Hartmann more opportunities to make his move.
But the visibility of this case means that Harlow has to keep his focus on Lindsey—he can’t risk it making international news.
If you leave now, Hartmann will let you go. You may not get another chance.”
“He doesn’t scare me,” Louna said darkly. “And neither do you.”
“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. “I’m trying to reason with you. You’ve got the museum to get back to, Jean-Claude and Philippe have their flower shop. There’s nothing keeping you here.”
Louna took a breath. “Nothing?”
He didn’t flinch. “Regardless of whether Lindsey and the others get their charges dropped, Harlow wants to punish them.” He swallowed and almost looked away before forcing himself still. “He wants to punish me. Lindsey can’t get away, but you can. You should.”
A chill had settled over Louna’s skin, and a new thought stole over her. “Where were you?”
His brows furrowed slightly, trying to read past her words to what she was really asking. “Scouting.”
“You didn’t worry when you woke to find me missing?”
“Of course I did.”
“But you didn’t come after me.”
“It was clear that you’d left on your own,” he said, a little sullenly, and she could hear an accusatory again in his tone.
“Where were you?” she repeated.
His voice lowered even more, until it was barely audible over the sounds of the city outside the walls. “Do you want me to ask you the same thing?”
“You left when I did,” Louna said, ignoring him. “You knew I would have my earbud, and you knew I would check it in your absence. You wanted me to overhear you.”
He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.
“This is your punishment,” she went on. “Doing this alone. This is what you think you deserve, and you said all of that about Harlow—about the things you’ve done—so that I would agree with you.”
“That isn’t—”
“And the boys?” she pressed, her voice rising. “You wanted them to hear, too?”
“They wouldn’t have listened,” Tennyson said.
Hot anger melted the cold still lingering in her throat. “So you trusted that Philippe and Jean-Claude would not eavesdrop, but thought that I would?”
Wisely, he didn’t point out that she had eavesdropped, and his prudence only made her more furious.
“I decide when I am done,” she said sharply. “Not you, not Harlow. If you want me to leave, then tell me so—do not hide behind a noble excuse. I don’t need you to protect me. As you have said, I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” he said.
She stalked closer, until their faces were almost touching. “Then tell me for yourself. Do you want me to leave?”
A lightbulb buzzed distantly. Tennyson hadn’t moved, but there was a sense of interrupted motion in his rigid muscles, as if he had been in the middle of something else when she approached.
Again, she thought of The Kiss, and the movement captured by the still figures.
The emotion in their stances. The fear of loss bubbling beneath the romance.
“Yes,” he said.
Louna turned on her heel and stalked across the echoing concrete, leaving him alone in the shadows where he wanted to be.