I know it’s for me, and I almost stop him. Tell him I can walk.
But the receptionist glances my way, back to Alex, and smiles. “Of course, sir. A short delay, then.”
In the end, it doesn’t take them long, and we’re soon heading outside. The tarmac’s lit by floodlights, and the jet waiting for us gleams white. Alex helps me into the cart, and up the airstairs when we reach them. Sleek outside, refined inside, the plane has only a few comfortable-looking leather chairs, and I’m grateful to see a bed beyond a half-pulled curtain. Our luggage has already disappeared somewhere, and we’re met by a smiling flight attendant, shown to our seats, and served drinks.
I ask for a water, my throat clenching as I wait for it to come, and don’t hear a word Alex says to me until I’ve got the glass in my hands. It hurts to drink, my throat sore, but I don’t care. I’m through the first bottle before the engines have fired up, and halfway into the second before I can slow down.
Alex is watching me with concern, but the attendant has left, granting us some privacy. He probably did that; I didn’t even notice.
I give him a shaky smile. “I’m all right now.”
“You’re far from all right. Do you want to sleep?”
I do. Very much so. But there are questions that won’t wait. “Not yet.”
He nods, concern in his eyes. I quite like seeing it, even though I don’t, too. It reminds me that I’m his focus now.
Unless he gets bored of me again.
But I push that thought away. Hekilledfor me. That has to count for something.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, voice low. “Any… regrets?”
“Many,” he says candidly. “But not from how this evening went, if that’s what you’re asking.” He shakes his head. “Aside from parking too far away and being late. Those are high on the list.”
So Haynes’s death isn’t bothering him. Perhaps that should disturb me, but it doesn’t. Maybe that’s the most disturbing thing of all, but I can’t bring myself to care. Haynes didn’t strike me as the kind of man to have kids around somewhere, now fatherless, and if he had a wife, she’s probably like Amelia, thanking us in absentia.
Alex is sitting opposite me, too far away to reach, and I’m feeling too weak to make the effort. But I need his touch.
I gesture to the chair beside me. “Would you sit here?”
He gets up and moves without hesitation or asking why, and that’s better. I can reach him now, my hand in his.
We wait in silence for the aircraft to take off, sitting like that, both of us tense. I finish my second bottle of water, glass by glass, and Alex orders a third. Then at last the aircraft moves, and minutes later we’re in thesky. Leaving New York behind.
I wonder if I’ll miss it, but it doesn’t feel like I’m leaving a home. My life has been Alex these past nine months. No, ten now. The rest of it has faded all too easily into obscurity, proving its loss didn’t matter. Only Carol was consistent, only Carol mattered, and she paid the price.
I dash tears away with the heel of my hand, seeing again the raw marks left by Haynes’s ropes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep?” Alex asks.
I shake my head and take a shuddering breath. “Let’s start with why we’re here. Why are we running? What’s so bad that you’ve lefteverything?”For me.
“I’ll give you the short version,” he says. “The details you can have whenever you want them, butafteryou’ve slept.”
Fair. “I’m listening.”
“DeLuca recruited me into a secret part of Cadrion Holdings,” Alex tells me bluntly, his voice pitched low for my ears only. “Illegal dealings, high reward, high risk. Failure had a steep punishment.”
“The finger thing?”
He nods. “The finger thing.”
“So you’ve quit? Resigned? You’ve left them?”
“In the interest of simplicity, I’ll say yes to that.”
I suppose that will do for now. “And Van Wyk?”
