Chapter Twenty-Six Time to Dig Deep
Adelina
“He keeps touching the camera,” I grumble, staring at the live feed on my laptop. “Is there a way you can tell him to stop?”
“We didn’t want to risk an earpiece giving him away, remember?” West pulls up a chair to sit beside me, resting his elbows on my desk. The airplane hangar is particularly cold today. “So how does it work? This little program of yours.”
I type while I talk, determined not to waste any time.
“This little program is analyzing the footage captured by the camera pen in Allistair’s front pocket.
As he completes his rounds, the computer digitally measures and reconstructs the layout of Berruci’s villa, correcting the blueprints we already have to give us an up-to-date map so we can plan your route more accurately. ”
“Did you write it yourself?”
“No,” I confess. “It’s a repurposed construction tool.
Mostly for interior decoration, mind you.
There are some companies out there who will conduct walking tours of empty houses or apartments, and then they upload what they’ve captured into their computers to show off potential designs to clients. ”
“Interesting,” West muses. I can’t tell whether he’s being genuine or if he’s mocking me.
“What is?”
“I figured a genius like you might have whipped something like this up from scratch.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m no genius. There are entire forums dedicated to open-source coding. There’s no point in doing it myself when someone’s already done it before me.”
When West doesn’t respond, I turn and find him staring. The corners of his lips are turned up in a smile. Not the one he normally wears, though—the one he uses as a mask. This time, his smile is sweet and warm, the green of his eyes reminding me of springtime fields after a heavy storm.
“Tu as le plus beau des rires,” he says, the words rolling off his tongue with a mesmerizing musicality. “J’aimerais que tu le fasses plus souvent.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
West shrugs. “Learn some French. They say learning languages is good for your brain.”
“Or you can just speak in English, you weirdo.”
He chuckles and reaches out, his fingertip just barely grazing the side of my neck. “I was asking about your tattoo,” he says.
I bring a hand up and rub my neck self-consciously. I’m fairly certain he’s lying, because he used way too many words to ask such a simple question. Then again, what do I know? My French is just as bad as my Cantonese. “Sometimes I forget it’s even there,” I mumble.
“Are sunflowers your favorite?”
I set my jaw, hesitant to share my thoughts.
I guess not letting things get personal between us is officially out the window.
It’s been out the window for a while, actually.
I was so adamant about keeping him at arm’s length that I didn’t notice how easy it would be for him to duck under.
When did I start to let things slip? Was it when he told me about his niece?
When he came to my rescue? When I let him kiss me?
West has shared a lot of himself with me, but I haven’t done him the courtesy of the same. Surely it isn’t the end of the world if I share a story or two.
“My sister,” I tell him slowly, keeping my eyes on the laptop screen. Allistair has made his way through roughly half the villa now, taking his time—as I’d instructed—to give the camera a chance to drink in every detail of what we’re up against.
“Yes, I recall.”
“I think it was at our tenth birthday party. Someone gifted her with a whole bouquet of lilies. I remember crying because I wanted to be named after a flower too. My dad snuck out from the party to run to the florist, and he picked up a big bouquet of sunflowers to gift to me. Supposedly, he thought they were the most beautiful flowers in the world. Then Lily started crying because she took that to mean she wasn’t the most beautiful flower in the world.
And then I started crying because I hate seeing my sister upset, and Dad tried to backtrack and…
” I grin, feeling ridiculous now that I’ve said it out loud.
“Dad always liked to say that whenever I was feeling down, I should think of myself as a sunflower.”
“Why is that?”
“Because they face toward the sun so that all their shadows fall behind them.”
“He sounds like a wise man,” West says.
My chest tightens. “Yeah, he was.”
He tilts his head to the side, reminding me very much of a curious golden retriever. “Was?”
I swallow hard, unable to bring myself to explain.
I know it’s been nearly six years. I should be over it by now.
But the memory of how I left things, our last conversation…
it’s settled sediment deep within my core, heavy and ugly and cold.
If I could go back in time and take back what I said, I would do it in a heartbeat—though the what-if game is a dangerous one to play. It has no winners, no conclusion.
Thankfully, something on the screen grabs our attention, sparing me from the painful answer.
Through the camera pen’s feed, we can see Allistair standing at the top of a set of incredibly steep stairs.
The walls on either side of him are gray, made entirely of hastily poured concrete.
Before he’s able to take a single step, however, he stops abruptly.
There’s no audio connection, but the way he turns suggests that someone’s talking to him.
Two armed guards come into view—guards I recognize from the personnel files Allistair provided us.
West is already scrolling through on my iPad, matching their faces to their profiles. The one standing to the right has distinctively large ears, while the other sports a buzz cut and a scar bisecting the left side of his upper lip.
I watch the feed carefully as Allistair backtracks, gesturing with his hands like he’s trying to appease two rabid raccoons. Much to my disappointment, he doesn’t make it down those stairs. They’re sending him away.
“That’s going to be a problem,” I mutter. “If we don’t get a sense of the space—”
“It’ll work out,” West assures. “He’ll try again on his next round.”
“How can you sound so sure?”
“We’re thieves, mon tournesol. We have to roll with the punches.”
“Wait,” I mumble, taking a closer look at the personnel files. “Those were the guys who came after me. So Berruci does know.”
“Shit,” he grumbles. “But how? We were so careful.”
My mouth goes dry. I think I might be sick. There’s really only one possibility, but I don’t entirely trust it. “Do you think…”
“What is it?” he urges.
“Do you think we have a mole?”
West frowns at this. “That’s absurd.”
“Think about it. The day Diana decides to make nice and take me shopping also happens to be the same day Berruci sends his men after me? What if she did that because she wanted to give them a window of opportunity?”
“Stop it, Adelina. Diana and I go way back. She wouldn’t do something like that. Plus, she was chased too.”
“We don’t know that,” I say sternly. “She claims she was followed and managed to get away, but all we have is her word.”
“She got hurt.”
“Cuts and scrapes are easy to fake.”
“What are you doing?” West asks, an edge to his tone.
“I’m trying to be logical.” I grit my teeth hard enough that my molars squeak inside my skull, sending a terrible vibration shooting down my spine.
“Stop making excuses and think for a second. Diana told me about how the Paris heist went wrong. That the police were tipped off before you could make a move.”
West’s expression grows dark. “She told you about that?”
“You were the only one who managed to get away.”
“What are you implying?”
I hold his gaze, the words sitting on the tip of my tongue.
What I’m about to say might be a mistake, but I’ve been wrestling with my suspicion for long enough.
“Tell me the truth. Did you sell them out? Is that how you came to run the mule accounts for Berruci? You thought you could get away clean, but he had conditions?”
West rises, the air around us suddenly turning cold. “Sell them out?” he murmurs, crestfallen. “No, Adelina. I didn’t sell out my friends. And I didn’t expose you to Berruci either, since that’s clearly what’s on your mind.”
“West—”
“I could have. The moment I found you, in fact. But I didn’t because you are my best shot at protecting the one person in my life who I hold dear.
” The muscles in his jaw jump. “I told you before that Berruci is well-connected. He has informants crawling everywhere. He basically owns this city. Maybe we were sloppy and someone reported us, but I guarantee you that no one here is a mole.”
I swallow hard, his unwavering conviction leaving me breathless. “Okay,” I murmur. “I’m sorry.”
West paces in a circle, seething in quiet fury. He won’t look at me. “The moment we start fighting among ourselves is the moment Berruci wins. I can’t let that happen again.”
“Will you tell me?” I ask quietly. “About that day. Why did you agree to put yourself under his thumb?”
He stands there, hands on his hips and as still as a statue, taking his time to consider. “I didn’t agree to anything,” he says slowly. “My brother made the decision for me.”
“Your brother?”
“Michael. Jack’s father.”
“He betrayed you?” I ask, alarmed.
“No,” West mutters, looking me in the eye. “He saved me.”