Chapter Twenty
Twenty
When I open my eyes, my wrist is throbbing like a bastard, my back aches, and my face is swollen from where Allard smacked me.
But sweet pale sunshine streams into the small bedroom, and I smell the comfort of fresh coffee.
The little blue clock on the bedside table says that it’s just past seven.
Soft voices come from the living area, punctuated every so often by a loud laugh from Luca.
I realize that I like Luca and Xhan, despite the insanity of last night. I like Luca’s easy laugh. I like that they obviously adore Dane. I think it’s because I don’t have this in my life: people so close that I would trust them with everything.
I slide out of bed. My wrist is almost useless. I can’t put on the dress I was wearing last night. I have on only a T-shirt and undies. I wrap the blanket from the bed around my waist and open the bedroom door.
The three of them are sitting around a small table that takes up most of the living room. This really is the smallest apartment in the world.
“Good morning,” Xhan says. She gets up. “Want some coffee?”
“And some drugs?” Luca asks. “For the pain. How is the pain?”
“Both would be great, thank you,” I say. “The pain is…definitely present.”
Dane is out of his seat, hand out. “Can I see your wrist?”
I give it to him, and he unwraps the brace. It’s not only swollen but also purpling. The bruising is so grotesque that I stare at it, fascinated. Dane carefully puts the brace back on, his fingers moving gently, almost a caress on the skin that isn’t bruised.
“Going to be shit if you have to do any climbing,” Luca remarks, handing me two pills and a glass of water.
“Hopefully no climbing,” Dane agrees.
I don’t have it in me to say that I didn’t consider there would be climbing in this. Anything is possible, I guess. I sit down at the table, the blanket bunching. Dane’s eyes flit down to the blanket and back up.
“I guess the real question,” Xhan says as she sets a cup of coffee in front of me with a little pitcher of cream, “is whether we can expect more of Allard today.”
“Will he know where we are? Will he know about the Louvre?” I ask.
“We think they’re tracking you somehow,” Luca says. His tone is grave. “We were talking about it before you woke up. We think Sophie knew you were in Paris, because meeting Dane in the cheese shop was too coincidental.”
“Especially right before she was throwing a party,” Xhan adds.
“So if they knew you were here, yet they didn’t get the egg puzzle, then they’re watching you,” Luca says.
“I gave them the Montparnasse Cemetery line,” I say. “Do you think they know we’re here? At this apartment?” I ask. My heart is pounding again.
“This place is safe,” Xhan says firmly. “I have surveillance and alarms.”
“But we don’t know how they’re tracking us,” Dane admits.
That feels unbearably creepy. I thought being chased by guys in Barcelona and having wrists dislocated by Allard was bad enough.
Xhan must see the panic in my face. “We’ll be with you in the Louvre. We’re stationing ourselves at the entrance and behind you. We’ve got your back.”
That earlier feeling returns, that I’m glad Dane knows them. But I want to trust them too, and learn more about them. I need to. I wrap my hands around the heat of my coffee cup and ask, “Will you tell me about your work?”
I’m really asking to know their business, and I wait to see if Dane will demur. But he doesn’t appear to think about it before saying, “I met Luca, what—ten years ago?” He looks at the large man across from him. Xhan gets up and goes into the kitchen as Luca nods. “He worked for Swisstopo—”
“I still do, in an advisory capacity,” Luca cuts in as Xhan places a plate of croissants on the table. I send her a grateful smile. “Oy! You were holding out on me?”
“I didn’t want you oafs eating them all before Zoe was up,” she says. Which, fair, because Luca takes one bite of his croissant and it’s half gone.
“What’s Swisstopo?” I ask.
“It’s the federal topography office for Switzerland,” Luca says. “We make all the survey maps. Typical Swiss operation: strict and well run.”
“Do you illustrate the maps?” I ask.
“I do surveying.” He spills croissant crumbs all over the table.
Xhan scoffs in faux disgust. “When I met Dane, it turns out he had heard this story about how we hide Easter eggs in our maps. Our job is to survey and make sure the landscape and subsoil is documented, but sometimes we sneak little things in before they go to print, like a fish or a face drawn into the topography lines. Our superiors are unamused.”
I’m smiling. “But Easter eggs are fun.”
“We are Swiss. We don’t do fun,” Luca says, deadpan. “Anyway, Dane hears this and loves it. He likes that I have successfully gotten three countries to sneak things into their maps. He thinks knowing a mapmaker can be useful.”
“Has it been?” I direct my question to Dane. He only smiles faintly.
“It was useful for me,” Xhan says. “I’ve known Dane since high school. I came to Paris for a job he hired me on and met this one.” She jabs Luca in his biceps.
“What do you do?” I ask Xhan.
“I pick locks and rescue Dane when he gets himself into stupid situations,” she says.
Dane looks like he wants to protest, but I say, “So you’re a mapmaker and a lockpicker and a hacker.”
Dane smiles, running a fingertip over a scratch in the table. “Something like that.”
“I actually thought it was clever of Dane to recruit you in Madrid,” Xhan says. “Not that he’s clever, mind you.”
“I’m right here,” Dane says, but I see the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. There is a shy pleasure in the ribbing.
“Because now we have a codebreaker to add to the team,” Xhan says.
“Oh—” I start. I haven’t joined their team.
But Dane shakes his head, maybe to give me space. “We’re just getting through the Enigma Challenge right now.”
Xhan looks between us and seems as though she wants to say more on the subject but decides against it. “Even if it’s the Enigma Challenge, I really like that you’re here, Zoe.”
“You are the bee’s knees,” Luca says. “Xhan and I agreed.”
I laugh as Xhan rolls her eyes. “He picked up that phrase when we were in the US for a few months. I tried explaining only goobers say it, but—”
“What time are we supposed to be at the Louvre this morning?” Luca interrupts pointedly.
“The puzzle said 9:22,” I say. We have a little more than an hour. A surge of anxiety over what’s to come hits me.
“That’s precise.” Luca glances at Dane and claps his hands together. Croissant crumbs spray over the table. “We will be there, ready for anything, yes? The museum opens at nine, so whatever this is, they are doing it so there won’t be too many visitors inside yet.”
“The Winged Victory statue is at the top of the Daru staircase, on level one,” Xhan says. “Araceli sent over the floor plans this morning.”
“The timing definitely means something,” Dane says. “And if it’s out in the open, it’ll be easy for other players to get at it too.”
“We’ll spread out,” Luca says. He turns to me. “Think of us as support. We do anything we can to help you so you can win this. And then, of course, afterward, if ProtoDark makes you work for them.” His face falls at the idea, which honestly, same.
“What do you know about ProtoDark?” I ask them.
Xhan glances at Dane. “They’re shady. And large.”
“Powerful,” Luca says.
“They’re as secretive as possible,” Dane says. “For obvious reasons.”
“Governments around the world want to stop them,” Xhan says.
“But there are plenty of autocrats who want them to stay as is because ProtoDark will do their dirty work. Communication from them is typically done through untraceable, secure links. No one knows the extent of who works for them or even what they want, except money, of course.”
“We watch Interpol watching them,” Luca says. “I have a contact there. They have a big file in their database on ProtoDark, and they’ve given them a green notice.”
“What’s a green notice?” I ask. My head spins with all this. It’s surreal, movie-level stuff.
“It means Interpol considers the organization to be a threat to public safety,” Dane says.
“All you have to do is not piss them off,” Xhan offers. She nods at Dane. “This one has worked for them for a few years now because of the Enigma Challenge, and it’s been all right.”
“Not sure I’d classify it as all right,” Dane says. Xhan gives him a look that seems to contain some silent conversation between them. She frowns slightly.
“Time is ticking, my friends,” Luca says. “We should be going.”
“Oh,” I say. “I need…clothes.”
“That’s right.” Xhan gets up and fetches a box from the side of the sofa. “This arrived from Araceli. She loves shopping, so she may have gone a bit overboard.”
I see that the box has been overnighted from Madrid. I’m touched that Dane had her buy clothes for me.
“Get dressed and we’ll head out,” Xhan says. “We’ll need extra time to get there because we’re taking a variety of transportation to ensure we’re not being followed.”
Dane picks up the box, and we go into my—our—bedroom. He opens it for me without a word, because it would have taken two hands. There are shirts, jeans, leggings, and underthings for me, and clothes on the bottom for Dane. All black for him, of course.
I pull out a cute blouse and the leggings.
They’re pretty much my size. I’m five foot three and have a complicated relationship with pants, owing to my pear shape.
My top size is always smaller than my bottom.
Dane must have given Araceli details, which meant he’d thought about this. Thought about me.
“How do you feel, going into this?” he asks.
“I’m trying not to spend too much time thinking about the consequences if we lose.”
He steps close and brushes a piece of hair out of my face, and it’s so tender that I almost close my eyes. “We won’t.”
I laugh. “I’d be worried, but you are a two-time victor.”
“All-star Enigma Challenge winner,” he says.
“Win there, done that.”
“My drink of choice is a win and tonic.”
“It’s a winnapalooza,” I say, but my voice falters.
Neither of us are laughing at the silly puns, and it isn’t because we’re worried.
It’s the air in the room…it feels tight.
Like there’s less oxygen. He’s looking at me, and I think about how he didn’t wear a shirt in bed last night.
How the fact of it kept me awake. The insatiable urge to touch him hits me again with a gale force.
I can smell him, that woodsy scent of him that I might have been reveling in since Barcelona.
My heart pounds, and it feels like whatever is racing through my head, he feels it too, because he’s staring at me, his lips slightly parted.
I could take a tiny step forward and be against him.
He seems to be holding his breath as much as I am.
But a sliver of uncertainty of moving too fast, of trust, of a fear I can’t identify, makes me clear my throat. It seems to break the spell, and we both look away. “If I put on my bra, can you clasp it? Or should I ask Xhan?”
“I can do it.”
“Close your eyes, then.”
I turn around and peel off the T-shirt I slept in, struggling with one side of it.
He steps over to grab the other side and get it over my head, which means his eyes are not closed.
I pull my bra on, and he clasps it in the back for me.
He helps me into a new shirt and then holds out the leggings for me to step into.
There’s a moment of acute horror when I think I’m going to have to wriggle the leggings over my ass, but by some small mercy they go on.
“There,” he says. “Not bad for doing it blind.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you were.” I laugh.
I wonder what I would have done if he’d slowed down enough to be sensual about it.
I know the answer: nothing. I would have welcomed it.
I turn, but I’m suddenly shy and can’t meet his eyes.
“Thank you. For all of this. The clothes. The help. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
I finally meet his gaze and find that he’s watching me, like he was waiting for me to look up.
He opens his mouth as though he wants to say something.
Closes it. Visibly inhales. I track the way his Adam’s apple bobs.
The moment stretches, but then he breaks it by stepping away and turning to the box of clothes.
“Keep your wits about you today. We can’t afford to let anything trip us up. ”
He leaves the room and closes the door softly behind him.
I stand there for a moment, and all I can think is how we are the ones who might trip ourselves up.
Because that moment there, before helping me into my clothes?
And that one just now, when I thanked him?
Every wit I possess abandoned me. Then I glance at the clock and spur myself into motion. It’s puzzle time.