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I sat there brooding, staring out of the window for a full half hour before some gear meshed just right in my brain. My back straightened and I drew in a long, slow breath.
What if there was a third option?
It was a huge gamble. It made an already risky plan even riskier and if it went wrong, I’d lose four hundred million dollars, plus I’d be sent straight back to jail for the full quarter-century.
I looked down at her again. Brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, and made my decision.
“Olivia,” I said, gently shaking her. “Olivia? Wake up. I’ve got something to ask you.”
21
OLIVIA
I came awake slowly, grudgingly surfacing from the best sleep I’d had in a week. My sleepy brain half-remembered wild, uninhibited sex with Gabriel. The man still haunted my dreams…
Then I registered the warm muscle under my cheek. It wasn’t a dream.
I sat up and pulled my sleeping bag over my nakedness, self-conscious in the pre-dawn light. It was weird to finally see the room we’d slept in: there was a huge painting on one wall that must have been too big for the looters to take, and high overhead, a glittering chandelier.
There was a look in Gabriel’s eyes I’d never seen before. He wasn’t teasing, for once. He looked solemn and uncertain. I’d never known Gabriel to be uncertain about anything.
“I’ve got a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it,” he told me. “Olivia…”
He stopped. He looked like he was groping for words, but that was impossible: this was Gabriel. I’d only just woken up and my mind was still playing catch-up. Was this the dreaded morning-after conversation? My chest tightened. The one where he said it had all been a mistake?
“When I met you,” he said, “I wanted—I needed—to fuck you.”
I felt my face heat.
“But the more time I spent around you, the more things changed. I started to—” He sighed and looked me right in the eye. “I started to fall for you. Even back at the prison.” He swallowed. I’d never seen him so vulnerable. “I’m crazy about you, Olivia.”
A cloud of warm, sparkling bubbles rushed up inside me, threatening to lift me right off the bed. “I’m crazy about you, too,” I blurted.
“I kept away from you, when I realized we had feelings,” he said. “I didn’t want to sleep with you and then leave.”
Leave?!
He took a deep breath. “Olivia…I have to go.”
I listened, open-mouthed, as he told me about the stolen gold and his plan to slip away from the team and escape.
Reality set in. I’m going to lose him. Just as we’d gotten together. “But—” I shook my head, trying to put it into words. “But—”
He took hold of my shoulders. “I know,” he said firmly. “Me too.” He took a deep breath. “That’s why I need you to come with me.”
I gaped at him. What?!
“When the chopper lands at the airfield, you slip away with me. The guy who’s getting me out can get you out, too, I’ll pay him double. He can get you false papers, a whole new identity. We’ll get out of the country, go and get the gold…” He grinned, his eyes glittering. “Olivia, we’ll have four hundred million. We can live anywhere we want. Any country you want!”
“Any country?” I asked in a small voice.
“Except one,” he said gently. “We can never come back to the US again.”
“Never? Not even in a year? Not even in ten years?”
“It’s four hundred million dollars,” he said sadly. “They’re never going to stop looking for us.”
I’d never see my family again. I’d never see my country again.
But I’d be with him.
I got up and walked to the window, wrapping the sleeping bag around me. I was shaking: I couldn’t stop shaking. The decision was just too big, and I only had a few minutes to make it. I could hear noises from the other rooms: people were getting up, getting ready to go.
Gabriel got up from the bed and slowly approached. “There are so many places I want to show you,” he said. “So many new experiences. We can do whatever we want, we’ll never have to work again.”
I’d be a fugitive, always looking over my shoulder.
But I’d be with him!
I stared out at the jungle. It took a long time for me to make a decision, but much longer to summon up the courage to turn around and tell him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I want to. But I’m not like you. I can’t.”
22
GABRIEL
I thought I was prepared. I thought I was braced for it. I was wrong.
No?! No, as in, I’m never going to see her again?!
I wanted to tough it out but something inside me just broke and my eyes begged her. Why not?
