Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Blue lights flash against the Chateau De Cocove.
The maids must have found Kat faster than I thought, because we were barely three feet into the employee lot when sirens sounded in the distance.
We broke out in a sprint toward the forest surrounding the hotel—I’d disabled the necessary cameras, deleted all the footage where we made a cameo, and found the nearest dumpster for my ottoman—and we dipped into the shadows before an ambulance and a police car squealed up the drive.
I use the respite to rifle through her bag.
Graham’s disapproval pours off him in waves as I stoop to the forest floor, straining to see in the dark and picking through the contents.
“Didn’t we talk about this?” I mutter. My hand finds her sheath of throwing knives and a box of ammo. Perfect.
“About what?”
I start digging, scooping dirt aside with my push knife. “You judging me.”
“You didn’t even—” He sighs. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I said goodbye at the pub.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Shoving the empty bag into the hole, I stand, pointing my knife at him with a glare.
“What do you think I’m doing, Graham? Because right now, we should already be in a taxi back to Calais—instead, I’m hanging out in a dark forest waiting for her body to be carried out.
” I throw both hands in the air. “And I don’t know why, either, because Kat wouldn’t have even looked back. ”
A few thick seconds crawl by.
“It’s because you still have your humanity,” Graham replies quietly. There’s a softness in his eyes that makes me turn back to the hole. “After all this time, you never let them take your humanity.”
I shrug and start covering the bag with dirt, reconfiguring the layer of dead leaves and pine needles. Unbidden tears waver at my lashline. I force them away and sniffle, covering it with a cough, and remain crouched until I can pull myself together.
His words lodge somewhere hidden, a place he shouldn’t know about.
But he’s seen it all along, or maybe sensed it—that lingering piece of my old self, an ember that kept glowing no matter how many times I stomped and tried to snuff it out.
He’s pried and jabbed, paring away the blackened bits, confident of what he’d find.
It should be aggravating. A violation of privacy.
Instead, it makes me want to hold that ember up to a torch and light it all on fire.
For an hour, we don’t speak. Graham sits in the dirt next to me, arms looped casually over his knees, watching the scene unfold.
The coroner gets there faster than I anticipated—business is slow in a small town, I guess—and my breath lodges in my throat as the gurney’s wheels sink into the gravel and the body bag rolls by.
Once upon a time, that would’ve been me.
Zipped up into a black bag, cold, alone, destined for a crowded gravesite and a tombstone with a fake name. Mateo might not ever get to know how she died or why.
The shred of hope sinks like a stone. I can hear the echo of a nail being hammered into pine, as if this moment has moved me closer to what seemed inevitable at the start of this.
I’ll be alone. That’s not new for me, of course, but the short-lived possibility of an alternative makes the reality of my situation go down like acid.
Alone, friendless, with no agency to fall back on and no one to remember me. Spies usually don’t have long enough to fully consider the after.
A chill runs down my spine and I shudder. Graham takes off his jacket—suede, warm, smelling distinctively of him—and drapes it around my shoulders. Despite the fact that I don’t need it, I stick my arms through and wrap it tight.
Police stream out right behind the coroner, confirming my suspicions. Robbery-gone-wrong. We make our way to the main road by sticking in the woods and scaling the perimeter wall.
Outside the hotel’s grounds, it’s far too dark for my liking. Sunset has long passed. It must be at least eight o’clock. Streetlights are few and far between, leaving gaps of shadows and stretches of unknown that make my skin crawl.
All we have to do is walk fifteen minutes to the nearest bar, where we can hail a cab. Simple enough.
But I wasn’t planning to be headed back so late.
I’m laser-focused on the open space across the road, scanning every inch like the bushes might come to life and attack us.
Ahead, there’s a stretch of open fields swathing the road, not a street lamp in sight.
If I squint, I can spot an old barn and a yard of cars, but it’s impossible to see much from a brighter area.
To anyone watching, though, we might as well be under a spotlight.
Goosebumps erupt down my neck. I huddle to Graham’s side, hoping to look like a couple out for a stroll and not a woman who’s armed to the teeth. He snakes an arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer.
We’re stepping into the unlit section of road when I glance up at him.
He doesn’t know I did it for appearances. In his mind, there’s no one here to perform for.
I’ve barely formulated those thoughts when Graham starts drawing me into him, his head lowering to mine, my heart accelerating to a dangerous pace.
That’s when several things happen at once.
Something whizzes by our faces a few inches away just as our lips are about to touch. I glance over my shoulder fast enough to see another muzzle flash. And then we’re falling, or rather, I’m tackling him to the ground and rolling us into a ditch.