Chapter 3
She drove me home
Declan
Dina lives in a beige, three-story building in the older part of Selnoa near the coast. The location and her dialect tell me she’s a Selnoan native, and given that her daughter attends a local college on the other side of the city, I’m guessing that Dina has lived in Selnoa all her life.
We park in the residential parking spot under the building and climb a flight of stairs. Correction. Dina climbs. I carry my sniper case and drag my right foot while hopping on the steps with my left one. The older buildings have no elevators. Dina lives on the top floor.
Because of course she does.
Annoyed, I hop after her.
When I look up, her tennis-style black skirt gives me a nice view of her thighs.
I can’t see her underwear, so I stop for a rest and let her ascend a little farther.
Ah, there we go. Tan underwear. More peach than beige.
I lean toward peach because that’s what I imagine Dina Ferrar would taste like.
“We don’t have an elevator,” she says from the top of the steps, having reached the second floor.
“Once I’m up, I have no plans on coming back down for a while.”
She bites her lip. “My dad stops by often.”
“You’ll tell him you have a new boyfriend.”
She sighs. “You think quick on your feet.”
She’s sassy. I raise an eyebrow.
Dina waits for me and offers me her shoulder. “You can lean on me if you’d like.”
She feels bad that she made fun of my crippled leg. I don’t want her sympathy. I shake my head. “And miss the opportunity to look up your skirt? Not in a million years. Ladies first.”
As we continue up the steps, she says, “You’re such a man.”
I shrug. “If you say so.” Her words carry weight. I’m aware she’s going through a divorce, and her ex might’ve wronged her.
In my limited experience, women are loyal to the men they marry, even if they don’t love them. I can’t say the same about the men. My father was a bastard, born out of wedlock to Grampa’s mistress. My father whored out my mother and made money off the men who wanted her.
“You’re in pretty good shape,” Dina comments as she digs into her purse for the key to an apartment with a green door.
The one across has a blue door with a white swivel stripe.
A nod to the local soccer team. Dina’s door must not sit well with the neighbor.
The opposing team’s colors are green and yellow.
I hook a thumb over my shoulder. “How is your neighbor during soccer matches?”
Dina looks up from her purse. Her eyes are pretty.
Deep dark brown, not a fleck of yellow. Like chestnuts.
They appeared burgundy in the sunlight on the road earlier, but that’s because of the tousled, shoulder-length brown hair Dina colors deep red.
One of her earrings is a large yellow hoop, the other some sort of Christmas ornament.
When she doesn’t answer but keeps staring at me, I raise an eyebrow.
Dina blinks. “Oh. Sorry. Paki is bad on most days. Insufferable during soccer matches.”
“Is he nosy?”
“He keeps to himself.”
“Good.”
Dina digs into her purse some more. “I can’t find my… Here we go.” She pulls out a single key. “Ta-da. Found it.”
“Lucky me,” I mumble in my native tongue. I’m from Couldermouth, a town on sovereign land that’s not on this coast. My mother grew up around here and taught us the language before my dad killed her. I’m forced to speak it with Dina; otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.
“Did you say something?”
I shake my head.
Dina turns the key and locks the apartment instead of unlocking it.
“Forgot to lock it again,” she says, but I doubt she locks her door at all. When it comes to crimes like robberies, this neighborhood is safe. I bet kids can kick a soccer ball well into the night on the streets here, and parents don’t have to worry that someone will hurt or steal their child.
Dina lied about locking the door because she’s scared. She wants me to think she locks her apartment. Many people in this part of town don’t because everyone knows everyone. The expats who have infested the city of late don’t come here. Selnoa’s natives won’t rent to them.
People who grew up here have been called out for discrimination against the expat community. But the natives turn off the noise, saying labeling them as villains won’t work. Expats raise the cost of living and bring along the destructive habits they ran from when they moved here.
I follow her into a remodeled apartment, and the calming smell of lavender instantly makes me want to relax, giving me a false sense of safety.
My injured ankle has a pulse of its own now that the adrenaline has worn off.
Pain serves as a reminder that I’m far from safety, stuck in an apartment with a stranger in a city I never want to be trapped in.
I’m cut off from my family, and I can’t reestablish contact until I know it’s safe to do so. Right now, with the federal, international, and local law enforcement sitting in helicopters, combing the city for people involved in the shootout at my father’s mansion, my family and I must go silent.
I’ll lie low and pretend I’m one of the residents. That’s Dina’s job. To help me pretend.
Dina takes off her sandals and slides them into the wooden shoe closet attached to the wall right by the door and under a coat hanger.
I keep my shoes on. Barefoot, she pads to the kitchen on the right.
The entryway leads into a living space with a cream-colored couch, a small table, and a red wall.
The color choice for the wall makes me pause. The red wall matches her hair. I peek down the hallway and see a set of pillows against the headboard of a bed. That’s the bedroom. The door before it leads to the bathroom. I hear water that probably shouldn’t be leaking coming from that area.
Behind me in the kitchen, Dina is opening a drawer. I don’t turn around to see what she gets from it, but proceed to the screen door that leads to the terrace. Even with the (red again) umbrella open, blocking the view from above, I don’t step outside.
“One bedroom?” I ask, hoping conversation will deter her from attacking me. She might’ve grabbed a knife from the drawer.
“There’s another room that you can access from the terrace. My daughter stays there when she’s with me.”
“Does your husband have access to this apartment?”
“Sergei isn’t my husband anymore. It’s just paperwork that hasn’t caught up yet.
” Dina is sneaking up on me while I pretend not to pay attention.
I consider asking her to back off and calm down, but then decide she’d be better off if I allow her to attack me.
In my line of work, I profile people quickly, and she’s the kind of girl who learns from her mistakes.
She needs a lesson, or she’ll keep trying to stab me, which would annoy me greatly, and I might return the favor. I would rather she lived. I’m not in the business of executing innocent women.
The cold barrel of a gun presses against the back of my head.
Correction. I’m not in the business of executing innocent women unless they try to murder me.
“Tsk. Tsk.” I’d hoped she wouldn’t use a gun. I’d hoped she would use a knife. A woman threatening me with a knife doesn’t turn me on. But a woman with a gun pointed at the back of my head, daring me to turn, does.
I lift my hands in the air.
“Put your hands on the screen and spread your legs,” she says.
This is not helping my growing erection. I do as she asks, but my ankle won’t oblige. I lift my foot slightly off the ground and let it dangle. It’s so painful that I might pass out. That helps with my erection.
“Give me my phone,” she says.
She just wants her phone? Really? I go to retrieve it from my pocket, but she barks, “Slowly!”
I wasn’t moving fast at all. I’ll show her fast, so she learns the difference. Just not right now. Now, she needs to think she’s in charge, or I fear she’ll lose it, and then I’ll have to tie her up or, worse, shoot her. If she doesn’t know my identity, she can live.
She knows nothing at the moment. Besides, she hit me with her car, and for all she knows, the accident injured me, not the fall from the guard tower.
I hold up her phone between my fingers. The phone is in my right hand, which is the same hand she’s gripping the gun with.
In order for her to take the phone, she has to twist her body and reach out with her left hand.
Or she could ask me to switch hands. Or to toss it.
She won’t pick the latter. She’ll try to grab it.
I drop the phone.
Instinctively, Dina tries to catch it.
I snatch her gun before the phone drops to the ground. I drop the magazine, unload the chamber, and fieldstrip it in four seconds. That’s fairly fast. It should’ve taken me half that long, but I’m slightly out of sorts. Not that that’s any excuse for underperformance, but here we are.
In my line of work, in matters of true life and death, not just the perceived bullshit, underperformance leads to death.
If she were a colleague of mine, I’d be dead by now.
Then again, I never would have sat in the car with her if I hadn’t calculated the risk of taking her hostage.
Dina doesn’t even know she’s my hostage.
I pocket the pieces of her weapon as Dina backs away toward the front door.
“Do you have any other weapons?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“In the bedroom?”
“No.”
“Why not? You should have one there. In the bathroom too. In fact, if I were you, I’d hide them around my apartment like Easter eggs.”
Dina glances at the front door.
I put together my hands as if in prayer. “Please don’t run.”
Dina stops and glances at her phone on the ground.
I step back. “Go on. Pick it up.” I lift my hands. “I’m not going anywhere, and I won’t try anything.” Unlike you. But I don’t say that. That would be petty.
Dina retrieves her phone and makes a sad face when she sees the screen broke in the fall.
“I can fix it,” I say.
“You don’t even know what’s wrong with it.”
“The screen cracked, no?”
She nods.
“I can fix that.”
“The screen is the least of my problems.”
“Yes, but it’s a problem that’s easiest to fix, so let’s focus on that.”
She bites her lip. “Do you really plan to stay here with me?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. I won’t try anything with you.
I’ll take your daughter’s room and stay out of your way.
” I drag my leg as I walk up to her, wincing at the pain in my ankle.
Sweat beads my brow, and I wipe it away before it falls on my nose.
“Be smart and adult about this, and I promise you, once I’m healed, I’ll disappear from your life forever. You’ll never see me again.”
I allow her time to stare into my eyes. I was born with heterochromia, and people often stare. I wear contacts when I scout or work because my eyes are easily remembered. I don’t want people to remember me. While working, I don’t want to be noticed.
Master Yi, the instructor I trained in ninjutsu arts with, almost sent me back to Endo when he saw me. Said my eyes were like tags. People would remember me.
I told him that was precisely why I needed him. I wanted to learn the art of ninjitsu so I could pick and choose the people I would allow to remember me. He laughed at that and, over the course of three years, taught me everything I know.
“I need a place to stay. You need assurance that you’ll be safe, but I can only give you my word. You’ll have to trust me.”
“Trusting a man has never worked out for me.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me.”
A smile tugs her lips. “Touché. Do I have a choice in the matter?”
“You can accept the fact I’m staying or fight it.” I simply hold out my hand, waiting for her to return the phone. “Please accept. State your terms. Let’s negotiate this like adults.”
“Are you?” She puts the phone on my palm.
Good girl. “Am I what?”
“An adult.”
She’s cute. “I’m twenty-six.”