Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-six
Inverness, Scotland
The next morning I feel battered and achy, like I’ve been spinning around in a dryer all night.
But the night’s sleep on a real bed made a noticeable difference.
I use the bathroom awkwardly and look around for clothes.
There’s a small dresser in the room. The first drawer has men’s clothing—jeans, underwear, tees.
These must be for Dane, though it feels presumptuous to assume that he’d be in this room with me.
I close it and open the next drawer to find clothes for me.
I leave on the shirt I slept in and take several long, frustrating minutes to wriggle leggings on with my splinted fingers and casted arm.
I consider calling for Xhan to help, but I want to be able to do this myself, especially if I’m leaving Scotland soon.
It hits me that no matter what happens now, at least I’ll have the prize money from the Enigma Challenge and all the freedom that affords.
It is pouring rain outside and the house feels dark and heavy, but this doesn’t dampen the cheer of the yellow-and-white kitchen, where the delicious aroma of baked goods greets me. A plate of warm scones sits on the counter.
“There she is!” Luca breezes in. “I’d love to get you eating something today, how about it?”
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you. I feel better.”
“Great! Have one of these scones, Araceli made them. They’re the bee’s knees.
She is a woman of many talents. You’ll meet her soon—she’s at the hospital with Dane again.
Tea? That’ll do you well for your first pill.
” He bustles around, plating scones, putting the kettle on. His mothering is adorable.
We sit in companionable silence as the kettle heats, and he pours me tea.
“Thank you for yesterday,” I tell him. “For everything.”
His expression softens and I think he gets what I’m saying: hiking for hours on end, finding me, giving me morphine, getting me to the hospital, and providing me with a room here.
“It is my pleasure.” He sets down a little pitcher of milk and a scone on a plate and sits down at the table too. I’m surprised that I am hungry, and I tear into the scone. “I hope I am not stepping off of the line here, but you are one of us.”
“Stepping out of line,” Xhan says, coming in from the small hallway. To me, she says, “His English is near perfect, but those pesky articles get in the way sometimes.”
Luca catches her as she passes and pulls her into his lap. “You can correct my English anytime you want.”
“I’m glad to see you eating, Zoe,” Xhan says. “Feeling better?”
“Yes.” I wrap my fingers around my mug, letting the warmth seep into my skin. “The shower last night helped. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” Xhan moves into her own seat and pours herself a cup of tea. She picks up her phone and sends a text.
There’s a silence, and I notice Luca nod at Xhan, who puts a hand on my good arm. “Zoe, can we ask…why don’t you want to see Dane?”
Both of them are looking at me with concern so tender that my heart twinges.
My mouth opens to say the words, and I find that I have to force them. “He is…” A liar? Complicated? Those things are both true, and I badly want them to be untrue.
“He’s desperate to see you,” Luca says gently. He and Xhan look so serious. So earnest.
“He’s been badgering Araceli all morning for updates,” Xhan says. “I just texted her that you’re awake, so hopefully that shuts him up for a while. I’m amazed to see you got dressed by yourself. That’s a good sign.”
“And eating,” Luca says. He slides over another scone although I’m not sure I can manage more.
“Dane’s been impossible,” Xhan says, rolling her eyes. “He wanted to see your charts for your arm and fingers, which of course the doctors wouldn’t give him. He’s relentless.”
“He is that,” Luca agrees.
“And,” Xhan says with all the drama of a campfire ghost story, “when he found out Luca had left to extract you without him? Oh my God. I’ve known Dane a long time, but I have never seen him like that.
It was pointless, of course, because there was no way he could have hiked all that way with his leg and we all know Luca is perfect at what he does. ”
Luca inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment.
“Dane was like a…you know what he was like? Like a guy turning into a werewolf. Superhuman strength. They had to restrain him, which only pissed him off more.” Xhan exhales a puff of air and takes a drink of tea. “Has ProtoDark been in touch with you yet? Dane was anxious to know.”
“No.” The word has an anvil-like weight to it.
Given that we ditched my phone, they can’t get in touch with me, but something tells me they will find a way.
I’m not sure how far saying I don’t want to work with them will get me—all they have to do is threaten my sister or anyone else I’ve grown to care about here, and I’ll cave.
God, Christine. I hope Eric didn’t send that email to her company, but now that I’ve won, that’ll give her a cushion if she’s fired.
“So what is it?” Luca asks, and I know from his solemn tone that he’s returning to why I don’t want to see Dane.
I sigh heavily. They’re like his family. I don’t know how they’ll take the news that Dane was going to deliver me to ProtoDark like a delayed FedEx package. I open my mouth to tell them but chicken out at the last moment.
“I know he does the deleting for the Enigma Challenge,” I say instead. “Allard told me.”
Luca nods. “Ah.”
Xhan looks pained. “I’m sorry that you found out that way, but Dane’s not supposed to tell anyone, including us. None of us like it. Dane hates doing it, but he has to. He wanted to tell you, but ProtoDark doesn’t allow him to tell anyone, for security reasons.”
“Allard knew,” I point out.
“Allard has ways,” Xhan says. “He was a French intelligence officer for most of his career. He’s connected.”
“Was connected.” Luca makes a faint smirk.
“Please don’t hold the deleting against Dane,” Xhan says. “He wanted to protect you as much as possible in case someone tried to get information out of you.”
“This shouldn’t keep you from seeing him,” Luca adds.
I shake my head. I have to say it. “It isn’t the deleting. It’s that he was supposed to bring me to ProtoDark regardless of whether I won the Enigma Challenge.”
Xhan and Luca exchange a confused look. Xhan shakes her head. “No. That’s not right.”
“He tells us everything when it comes to the Enigma Challenge, Zoe,” Luca says. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“He admitted it,” I say simply. “At the cottage before Allard took me.”
“He told us about Eric showing up at the cottage and threatening your sister and trying to take you, but not this,” Xhan says, frowning, but there’s a note of dismay in her tone. “I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”
“There is a good reason,” Luca says.
Xhan sends him a sharp look. “You knew?”
Luca looks deeply uncomfortable. He scratches his rough beard. “As I said, there are reasons and methods—”
“Dane’s been lying to all of us this whole time,” I say.
The pain pill is kicking in, and the room is a little blurry.
I want to hide somewhere and wait out all the heartache with no one to witness.
The tears are back. God. “If I can please ask one favor? Can you please get me a plane ticket home? Out of Edinburgh or Glasgow or whatever. I can take the train down. Just…if you can help me do that, I’ll get out of your hair. As soon as possible. Tomorrow.”
Xhan and Luca stare at me, twin expressions of confusion and worse—hurt. I can’t stand it.
“Zoe, I really think—” Xhan starts, but I shake my head. Suddenly hiding in my room isn’t enough. I have to get out of this house. Out of Inverness.
“Can I borrow your car?” I ask. “Please. I need to—I need to step out. For air.”
“They drive on the other side of the road here, Zoe,” she says, her forehead creased in concern. “And it’s raining. Plus, your arm—”
“Xhan,” Luca says quietly. He’s watching me carefully with the wary expression you’d give a wild animal. “Give her the keys.”
I shoot him a grateful look. Xhan hands me the keys, and Luca grabs a raincoat from the rack by the door to pass to me. It is made for giants. Xhan stands in the small entryway, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“I don’t like this,” Xhan says. “I would prefer if you stayed here and rested. At the least, let me go with you.”
I shake my head and say no thanks. I wrench open the front door, which sticks from the rain.
It is pouring absolute buckets outside, and I gingerly take a step down the short stairs to the pavement.
The rain soaks through my leggings almost immediately, and by the time I get to the car, I’m drenched.
Naturally, I go to the wrong side of the car, because the driver’s side is on the right, just as Xhan said.
She and Luca watch me from the doorway as I step into a giant puddle on my way to the correct side of the car.
I’m glad they know better than to say anything.
I shiver, already miserable from the cold.
I open the car door and get in, but my stupid cast clangs against the steering wheel and my splinted fingers on my right hand won’t allow me to pull the door closed.
I manage to turn on the car, but I can’t find the windshield wipers and I’m not sure the switch for the headlights exists.
Sheets of water sluice across the windshield, and my whole right side, exposed to the rain with the door open, is soaked.
I’m trying to decide what to do when a car pulls up next to mine, its wheels squelching as they turn on the wet pavement. The headlights illuminate slanted needles of rain. The passenger door flies open, and a figure leaps out of the car, heading right for me.