Chapter Twenty-Three #3
Touching him is somehow more intense than the kiss.
“He’s leaving,” Dane says, his voice barely audible. “Doesn’t see us.”
I move my hands up his body with the barest pressure.
His fingers dig into my hips in response, and I look at him, unsure what I’ll find on his face.
There’s tension in his jaw, the slight pursing of his lips.
I bring my nose against his chest, inhaling him, that clean Dane smell that I’ve grown to know and crave.
His hands move a little higher up my waist, and the tiniest, almost imperceptible groan leaves his throat.
I push myself up against him on my tiptoes, and I hear a tiny inhale of breath from him before he begins to lower his mouth toward mine.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, breaking the tension.
He gives a shaky exhale and pulls away, fishing his phone out from his back pocket. I hear a woman’s tinny voice in the quiet, not loud enough to make out what she’s saying.
“We’re still on Rue Lepic,” he tells her. “All right, I know the one. Meet you there.”
He ends the call and runs a hand through his short hair, exhaling shakily again. “That was Araceli. Xhan called her and filled her in. She got us rooms at a hotel in the tenth arrondissement.”
“Do we walk there?” Every cell in my body is roaring. Possibly on fire.
“Metro.” He moves away from the wall, and we walk down another alley, away from the direction the man went in.
We cross down into Place Blanche, across from the iconic red windmill of Moulin Rouge.
A ping of regret hits me that I can’t see Paris as a tourist. We’ll be lucky if we make it out of the city alive at this rate.
The art nouveau Metro sign is overhead as we proceed underground and get tickets.
We don’t speak as we wait for our train.
I’m relieved when we meet Xhan and Luca in the lobby of a little hotel and she hands Dane and me our own room keys.
“Araceli got you a deal,” she says, holding my eye. “Two rooms this time. Luca went to the apartment and cleared out what he could. We got the clothes she sent; they’re in your room already. The rest you’ll have to get on the road or in Edinburgh. Your flight leaves tomorrow at one.”
“You’re not coming with us to Scotland?” I ask in surprise.
“We have things to tie up here,” she says, and I’m guessing she means the body part in her car.
“I want to track Allard,” Luca says. “And the 1982.”
Something occurs to me. “If the 1982 left a hand in your car, then he’s tracking us too. And Allard knew to come to the Louvre.”
“I don’t think they’re both tracking you,” Luca says. He looks at Xhan. “But I do think the 1982 was tracking our car.”
“We just bought it too,” she says.
“Maybe Delphine and Théo solved the third puzzle and sent Allard to the Louvre,” Dane says, but he exchanges a glance with Luca, and it seems clear from their expressions that they don’t believe this.
Luca says, “Remember how the 1982 tracked Allard in the last challenge? He’s exceptionally good at it. There was bloodshed between them over it.”
Obviously not enough.
“Are you staying here tonight?” I ask them.
“We’ll stay elsewhere,” Xhan says. “It’s safer.”
“I put a few of those pills in your bag,” Luca tells me. “They’re paracetamol with a bit of a kick. Don’t allow yourself to be in pain. You don’t want that to slow you down if you have to run.”
Everything they’re saying sounds final.
Luca pulls me into a bone-crushing hug. “It is the best of pleasures to know you, Zoe. Please continue to keep Dane in line. He needs it.”
Dane snorts.
Next is Xhan. She grips me with surprising tightness. “Call me for any questions, okay? And remember what I said.”
I’m about to ask what it is I should remember, because she said several things, but she steps back and she and Luca leave without so much as a wave. They melt out of the hotel lobby. It all happens so fast.
Dane and I get in the elevator. I want to be with him in one room, but I’m greedy from sleeping next to him for the past several nights—and because of the kissing. The doors open on our floor, and we look at each other, as though we’re both thinking it.
But Dane’s phone chirps, and he checks it.
“Luca. Wants to strategize about the 1982.” He sighs.
“I’ll text you in the morning.” He holds his room key card suspended in the air as though waiting for me to say the word, to tell him to ignore Luca and instead come to my room.
And I want to. I want him to come in and kiss me again like he did in front of the Winged Victory and nearly did again tonight, to take it further.
But he should discuss the 1982 with Luca, and anyway we have more work to do, people after us, and a whole other country to be in.
And maybe I need to see who he is beyond the parameters of this mad game.
Maybe sleeping with him based on that one kiss wouldn’t be wise.
So I say, “Enjoy your snore-free sleep.”
He laughs and presses his key card to his door, and we both retreat to rest up before the fifth and final puzzle.