She shook her head. “He never went anywhere at strange hours. He has been coming home as usual.”
Oh.
So Dmitri left without his bodyguard.
“Thank God,” I said as though the information was a minor footnote and not a door swinging open onto a hallway full of new questions. I lifted my cup and let the coffee warm my throatwhile my mind started sorting them by most alarming.
When I lowered the cup, my gaze settled on Caitlin’s face. Specifically, the faint discoloration beneath her left eye was a bruise. The makeup over it was good work, but the light in the cafe was honest.
“What happened to your eye?”
Her fingers stilled around the cup. “What?”
“The bruise,” I said. “You nearly covered it.”
She looked down, as if the question had caught her off guard and left her without an answer. Her smile resurfaced a beat later, but it arrived slightly misaligned, the corners not quite reaching where they were supposed to go. “You noticed,” she said. “I thought I’d done better than that.”
“The light in here is unforgiving,” I offered, and she traced the rim of her cup with her thumb. “Was it from the day we got attacked?” I asked.
“No.” A small laugh left her lips. “I walked into the fridge door.”
I hissed through my teeth. “Awful. Sorry.”
She nodded, and we moved on to another conversation easily. She didn’t seem okay talking about it anyway.
The cafe filled and emptied twice over before either of us thought to check the time. The afternoon dissolved the way good afternoons do, without announcing itself. One conversation folded into the next. Caitlin was easy in a way I hadn’t expected to find her. I was glad I had made a friend with whom we could talk so easily.
She checked her phone and groaned. “I should go before Ivan convinces himself I’ve been kidnapped.”
I smiled. “Do you need an extraction team?”
“Please. He’d lead it himself and spend the entire drive complaining about the traffic on the bridge.”
We laughed and pushed back our chairs, gathered our bags,and stepped out into the evening air. Anton had already brought the car and opened the back door for me.
Caitlin glanced at him, then back at me, grinning. “Very subtle.”
“Practically invisible,” I agreed, and we laughed again at Anton’s expense, who, to his credit, showed nothing.
She adjusted the strap of her purse and turned to me. “Thanks for this. I was going slowly mad at home.”
“We should do this more often,” I said.
“We absolutely should.” Her eyes brightened. “Actually, I have some designs I’ve been working on. I want your opinion on them.”
“You design?”
“I love fashion,” she said. “You’d be the first to see them. Don’t tell anyone. Ivan especially cannot know.”
She laughed, but I caught the thread beneath it, the instinct to keep something private away from a particular person. I filed it beside the bruise and said nothing about either. “Our secret then.”
She nodded and glanced toward Anton. “You should go. That man has been standing there long enough.”
I stepped forward to hug her, and she held on for a second before letting go. After the hug, she was easily swallowed by the street crowd, her purse swinging at her hip. I watched until she disappeared before turning toward Anton.
“Ready to go, ma’am?” He asked.
“Yes.” I slid into the car, and Anton closed the door for me.
