CHAPTER 23
C HAPTER 23
C urtis parked in Emma’s front lot and rose because Amiya was already out of the car. His body moved, he might have even spoken to the young woman staffing the bookstore, but he operated on autopilot. He followed Amiya down the connecting hall to where Emma was seated at the kitchen table, her computer and sales slips and bills of lading spread over the surface.
Emma greeted them both with a smile and told Curtis, “Why don’t you give me and your lady a moment?”
He didn’t mind leaving. Emma’s smile said it all. Rae and Amiya’s conversation back there on the avenue in Atlantic Beach had been about this. Of course, Rae’s first phone call after their departure had been to her aunt.
Of course.
Today of all days.
His phone pinged as he walked back through the bookstore. The text was from Jiyan, an Iraqi from a northern Christian tribe, the Yazidi. His family was spread all through northern Iraq, Turkey, and parts of Iran. Jiyan was in his fifties, a former colonel in the Kurdish militia, who had served as Kurien’s go-to guy and sole guard since the year after Amiya’s mother died. Curtis liked and trusted the man, who was smoothly efficient and clearly devoted to his boss.
The text said simply that Kurien’s plane would land in New Bern at eleven the next morning, and this timing included the necessary stopover in Washington to clear customs. Curtis responded with an okay, then asked if an ambulance was required. The response was a long time coming. He entered the sunlit front yard and stood drenched in heat and the magnolia tree’s cloying fragrance.
Finally Jiyan responded: No ambo.
Curtis knew he should run through a summary of what they’d lined up. But the phone weighed a thousand pounds, and his fingers simply wouldn’t obey his simple commands. His thoughts slowed. Congealed.
Amiya wanted to marry him.
He should have been framing the list he would offer in response. All the reasons why that was a terrible idea. Wrong from every angle.
Except one.
The looks she had been giving him. The way she spoke. The one element he should have recognized before now, which changed everything.
She loved him.
He might have stood there, trapped in the sweltering heat for the rest of his human existence. But his phone rang.
Rae.
He swiped it to voice mail.
Ten seconds later, she called again.
And again.
On the fourth time, he gave in and connected. Curtis wanted to shout at her. No. Scratch that. First he’d demand to know exactly what she had told Amiya. Then he would shout.
But it just wasn’t in him.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Rae declared, “I have a problem. A big one. Tomorrow it’s most likely going to become a full-blown crisis for all three of us. And Dana agrees.”
“Rae—”
“This is urgent, Curtis. And confidential. I’m making this call on Blythe’s phone. Despite it being totally off-the-wall illegal, there’s a chance my line is being surveilled, or about to become. Where are you?”
Rae’s tension washed over him and left him untouched. “Emma’s.”
“That won’t work. I need to discuss this with you and Amiya, now and in private. How fast can you get back to the hotel?”
“No idea.”
“I’ll meet you there.” When he didn’t respond, she came close to shouting. “This impacts everything you’re trying to put in place. Get a move on!”
Amiya was ready when Curtis reentered and told her that something urgent had come up, they needed to leave. Emma motioned him forward. She pushed herself to her feet, one hand maintaining a trembly grip on her chair’s back. When he was within reach, she hugged him. When Emma released him, she settled one hand on his cheek. Just held it there.
Then Amiya received the same. An embrace, a hand to her face, the caring look that had seen him through so much. They departed without a word being spoken.
As they left the kitchen, Amiya slipped her hand in his. Like they had been doing it for years. Like it was natural to pass through the bookshop and enter daylight, with Amiya so close her own heat defied the afternoon.