Chapter 30
CHAPTER
THIRTY
The first thing I feel is rage.
The careless, red-hot, pulsing kind.
The kind that makes you do really stupid things, like blindly follow orders or throw the nearest piece of furniture across the room. An innocent ottoman in this case.
Graham’s hand lands on my arm, steadying, and I’m still glaring at the ottoman with a broken leg when he kneels beside Kat’s body and shuts her lifeless eyes. He stands and comes to my side. I can’t look at her again. Not yet.
“Who would’ve done this?” he asks, though we both know the answer.
My lips tighten into a scowl. I know exactly who, and I’m going to end him with my bare hands.
The snapped neck, the blasting air conditioning, the cracked door.
Petyr Volkov prefers to think of his job as mercy killing.
“They’re going to die anyway,” he’d say, “Why must they suffer?”
So he utilizes the fastest, cleanest methods—it helps that he’s a massive Russian and can snap necks like pretzels—and ensures they’re discovered quickly, as humanely as possible.
As if keeping the bodies from bloating makes him morally superior to the rest of us at the ISA.
Too bad it also makes his work incredibly obvious.
He might as well have painted his initials on the wall.
“We need to leave,” I murmur, still fixated on the ottoman. “There’s no telling when the maids make their rounds, and I’d rather not be discovered at a murder scene.”
“Sloane…”
I glance back at him. “It’s what she would’ve done.”
What feels heartless is usually practical.
My stomach’s churning, the image of her slack expression swimming behind my eyes as I stop beside her overturned suitcase and toe through her things.
I can feel the judgement radiating off Graham’s body.
Tossing a shirt aside with my boot, I spot the obscenely pink, flowery bag I knew would be there.
Holstering my weapon back beneath my sweater, I gingerly pluck the bag from the floor, careful not to touch anything else. Not that I think there’ll be much of an investigation about a young woman with no family who will turn out to be a Jane Doe.
I don’t need to search her belongings to know. Petyr would’ve taken her wallet and searched for anything else that could possibly reveal her identity. Better a tragic robbery-gone-wrong in the local paper than some curious detective wondering why the college girl has a 9mm and a burner phone.
But Petyr’s too stupid to bother with what looks like a floral makeup bag.
When I stalk quickly back toward the door, I realize that Graham’s frozen, obviously torn between holding vigil and escaping into the night.
“Graham,” I say, but he’s staring at a spot on the floor between us. “We need to go. Now.”
He motions vaguely in Kat’s direction. “This is… wrong.”
“I really don’t need one of your lectures about how morally inferior I am to you,” I bite out.
“You want to know what being a spy is like? It’s not slinky dresses and glamorous parties, it’s this.
It’s finding the dead body of a woman you’ve known since fourteen and barely stopping to think about it.
We’re sharks, Graham—if we don’t move, we die. ”
His jaw ticks but he doesn’t reply. Tamping my swelling anger down, I maneuver back around the mess Petyr left, and stop close enough to Graham that I can feel his heat. Our eyes meet when I poke his chest.
“You—” I inch forward, my chin tilting up so I stay beneath his gaze. “—are in my world now.”
This time around, I grab the blasted ottoman on the way out.
It takes me a little while to locate the security offices.
I’m having to maneuver through the back of the hotel, undetected, cradling a broken ottoman with my DNA all over it like a strangely shaped wooden child. Graham trails behind me, pink makeup bag tucked under his arm. We’re quite the pair.
We creep along a narrow, employees-only hallway lined with cardboard boxes and the odd maid cart. The lack of confrontation gives me hope for the level of security I’ll have to contend with.
Beside an exit that leads to what appears to be an employee lot, there’s a cracked door emblazoned with a sign that reads Service de Sécurité. I can hear the laugh track blasting from yards away.
Friends. Of course.
After a peek, I sidle up beside Graham—flush against the wall of boxes, ottoman and all. Our shoulders brush. Not that it’s relevant.
“There’s only one guy in there, clearly incompetent,” I whisper. When the sound of the TV ebbs, I stop for a beat. “I’m going to sneak in and put him to sleep, okay? Nice and clean—he’ll barely remember what happened, and probably won’t bother reporting it,” I say once the TV’s loud again.
Graham frowns. “How do you know that?”
“Even if he does remember, he’ll know it was a woman.” I send him a raised eyebrow. “Based on personal experience, men don’t like to admit when they’ve been physically bested by a woman.”
He gives me a quizzical look, as if that’s the strangest thing he’s ever heard. “Sloane?—”
“Do shut up and allow me to do what I’m best at, yes, thief?” I cut in, throwing his words from the roof of the Grand Palais back at him with a triumphant smile. I push the ottoman into his arms and slip noiselessly into the office.
It’s tiny—probably more of a closet than a proper office—and the guy’s got his feet kicked up on the desk, chair angled toward the miniature box back television instead of the desktop displaying live security camera footage.
If I squint, I can see Graham, hands full as he glances up and down the hallway.
My arm slides around the guy’s neck and the other braces, tightening and pressing him into the chair as he struggles. It helps that he’s more of a bucking pony than a bucking bronco. He kicks—a last resort—but it only smacks his TV.
“Shhh,” I say, “go to sleep.”
When he slumps backward, I gradually loosen my grip, pausing for a few seconds before rolling him away with my boot. His head lolls to the side and thumps against the wall.