the second location
LEXI
The elevator doors opened, and Clementine swished out into the lobby ahead of the security guys and me. “Come on! Keep up!”
I followed, but the guys got more and more twitchy as Clementine strode for the dark-glassed doors to the sunlit street.
“Miss Kaas,” Ueli said. “Current standard security protocols do not allow?—”
“My cousin thinks I’m not a good driver,” she said with a flip of her moonlight blond hair. “He’s wrong. I’m an excellent driver. You have to be aggressive when driving so the other drivers will respect you.”
Dusha rounded in front of her and stopped dead in his tracks, standing so that she almost ran into his broad chest. “That’s not how it works at all, Miss Kaas.”
“Of course,it does. Everyone knows that.”
“Did you rent a convertibleagain?”
“Andagain,I say,of course.Everyone knows you need air exchange. America is full of sick buildings and hermetically sealed cars. Europe would never allow such stale, moldy environments.”
Dusha’s wide shoulders rose until they were practically around his ears. “Miss Kaas, surely you can see why convertibles are not allowed under our present heightened security protocols.”
“You’re always at DEFCON Five or whatever you call it. You swarm around him like attacking bees, all the time. You don’t allow Nico to live his life at all.”
I stepped backward, away from Clementine and Dusha, like a kid when Mom and her boyfriend were fighting. Nope, I was not getting in the middle of that. “Hey, we can just wait a minute for Nicolai. He’s probably right behind us.”
“His position is very different than yours. You can’t compare—” Dusha told Clementine.
“Icanand Iwill.So he can never ride in an open car his whole life?—”
“Maybe not.After the incident in Paris?—”
“Everyone has ‘incidents’ in Paris. That’s not even unusual.”
They bickered, not fondly like an old married couple, but with the surgical ferocity of siblings, each going for vital organs with words like scalpels.
“Miss Kaas, Paris wasveryunusual in that?—”
“Oh dear God, Dusha. You don’t have to tellme.But he can’t live his whole life cooped up in an SUV, being driven from one security-approved activity to the next.”
“That is not how we operate. You have to admit that. He went to the nightclub last night, where several of our operators were put in harm’s way, and God only knows what would’ve happened if the principal would have been in the garage when it happened.”
“Even at school, he was enrolled under that ridiculous pseudonym, and everyone pretended not to look at him or at me when we studied the Russian Revolution in World History and how to hold onto generational power. He can’t live his life with youblack crowsfluttering around him all the time!”
“His security is our responsibility.”
“Maybe if he were allowed to live his life, he wouldn’t have to ditch you people in order to have one night of fun.”
“Maybe you could tell him tostop doing that.”
Behind us, the elevator dinged. The people coming out skirted our heavily armed, arguing group and headed for the smoked-glass front doors.
Dusha slapped his hands on his thighs. “And it is different now that he has been officially recognized as?—”
“Nip! Nope! Enough!”
“Miss Kaas!”
“You are not the boss ofme,and you are not the boss of Lexi.” Clementine grabbed my elbow and yanked me against her side with surprising strength.
