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Zoya held his gaze. “What’s going on?”
Court sat up now, and she did the same. They put their backs to the wall of the otherwise empty closet, their feet sticking out into the bedroom. He said, “I don’t know. It’s just…everything’s great…”
“But?”
“But…doesn’t it kind of feel like the clock is running out on all this?”
“All what?”
“Peace and quiet. The walls are closing in. I can feel it.”
While Court seemed unsure, Zoya was resolute. “Well, I can’t. We’ve been smart. We’ve kept mobile. We’ve stayed off the radar.” Pointing a finger towards the balcony and the town beyond, she said, “We hunker down here a few more days, then we move on. Same as before. I was thinking we could head overland towards Honduras next. We’ll stay lost.”
Court nodded a little, but he seemed unconvinced.
“No?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. But…but the enemy gets a vote, too. I’m not worried about our strategy, I’m worried about the adaptability of our adversaries.”
“Christ,” Zoya said with a little laugh. “You just woke up two minutes ago and you’re already talking about the adaptability of our adversaries. You remain one dialed-in son of a bitch.”
“It kind of seemed like you started this conversation.”
She put a hand on the side of his face. “We’re solid. We’re running nonstop countersurveillance, and we’ve had no problems. Not here, not in Bolivia, not in Ecuador. In Peru we spooked, we’ll never know if we were being overly cautious or not, but we got out of there, and since then we haven’t sensed anything. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“We have everything to worry about.”
She ignored the comment. “We’ll keep up the vigil, and if we do smell anything we don’t like, anything at all, even if the hairs on the back of one of our necks stand up like they did in Cusco…then we bolt.” She added, “What else can we do?”
Court nodded. “Okay.”
She eyed him another long moment. “There’s something else going on with you, isn’t there?” she asked.
His eyebrows furrowed. “No. Nothing.” He brightened suddenly and looked into her eyes. “I love you.”
She didn’t return the smile. Still, she replied, “I love you.”
They kissed, and then he asked, “What’s on the agenda?”
“There’s an agenda?” She said it jokingly, but she knew when Court was trying to change the subject. After a moment she let it go. “I have to run to the market. We should grab lunch after at that place by the lake we saw yesterday.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “It’s fine. They have a courtyard, masonry construction. We put our backs to the wall facing the entrance, we scan for trouble, we eat our lunch and enjoy our day.”
“Backs to the wall. Sounds like a plan.”
“Enjoying our day is the plan. ‘Backs to the wall’ is just a tactic.”
Court climbed to his feet, helped Zoya up, and kissed her again. His right hand brushed her left forearm, and she felt him run his fingers over a ragged gunshot wound there. He traced his fingers up to another scar on her arm and then felt around to two more small scars on the left side of her back.
“Four months ago tomorrow,” he said softly.
“Still get that nerve tingle in my elbow every now and then, but that’s to be expected. Doesn’t hurt. When I caught an AK round to my hip a few years ago, that sucked much worse.”
“Yeah.” He raised her forearm and looked at the wound there, then kissed it. “You really need to stop getting shot.”
She shrugged. “I’ve made it four months in a row. Shooting for five.”
“As long as no one is shooting back.” He brushed her hair back behind her left ear. Holding a strand and looking at it, he said, “I’m still not used to you as a blonde.”
“I’ll dye it purple next. See how that strikes you.”
