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I was glad for the enthusiastic response, but we weren’t in the clear yet. If the skating officials weren’t convinced, we might still be banned from Worlds.
I glanced around at the crowd, bracing myself for another round of questioning, but instead my gaze caught on a figure bursting past the door at the back of the stands. Ursula hurtled down the steps with her straggly blond hair flying behind her, only slowing when she noticed the milling group of reporters around us.
At the sight of the tension gripping her face, my stomach flipped over. I ducked behind Quentin and hustled over to the steps. Ursula dashed down to meet me a little apart from the crowd.
“What are you doing here?” I murmured urgently.
She made a face. “I tried to text and call you, but you weren’t replying. I didn’t think this was news that could wait.”
I winced. I’d left my phone in my purse—and on vibrate—while we warmed up and hadn’t checked it since. It wasn’t as if I had a pocket to keep it on me when I was in my skating costume.
“Sorry. What’s going on?”
Ursula flicked her gaze toward the reporters and dropped her voice even lower. “Your mom just arrived in Tokyo with a bunch of her people. What I’m hearing is that she’s determined to take you out of the equation once and for all, and to do it herself—she’s pissed about the ‘spectacle’ you’ve made of the family or something like that. It sounds like she’s gone even more off the rails than before.”
My heart plummeted with a sudden desperate chill. Mom was right here in this city—and out for my blood? We’d just publicized our location all over the news.
We had to get out of here.
Niko sidled over to join us, his expression darkening as he took in my own. “What’s the matter, Angel?”
I swallowed thickly. “We’ve got to leave—fast. My mom could be on her way to start a bloodbath right now. Can you give the reporters some kind of excuse to explain why we need to head out?”
Niko’s eyes widened. “Not a problem. Leave it to me.”
He strode back to the crowd and said a couple of brisk sentences in Japanese, followed by an English translation: “We appreciate that you’ve spent this time with us today, but my skaters have an important appointment to get to. We look forward to talking to you more after their next performance!”
As the reporters started to file out, I hurried over to take off my skates and grab my bag. Jasper took in my face and clenched his jaw. “That bad, huh?”
I nodded. “We have to head out as quickly as possible. And find someplace to strategize that we’re absolutely sure my mom couldn’t know about.”
Niko hefted his own bag. “I can think of a spot where no one is likely to be looking for a group of skaters. Are we taking Ursula and Dámaso with us?”
“Yeah. Text the directions to Ursula so they can follow us.”
We marched up the steps and out to our SUV. Rafael fell into step with me halfway across the parking lot. I shot him a look and simply said, “My mom’s here.”
From the twitch of his expression, I could tell he understood just how dire our situation was.
I scanned the parking lot before leaping inside, relieved to see no sign of Mom’s presence yet. For all I knew, she was still at the airport going through customs.
But she wouldn’t stay there for long.
As Niko hit the gas, Quentin gazed at the streets beyond the SUV’s windows, his face paler than usual. “Do you really think she’ll be able to figure out where our new apartment is? We just moved there.”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. But I think we should take every precaution just in case. We don’t know all the resources she might have in this country.”
Niko drove through the city with focused intensity and pulled the car into a parking garage. We followed him out onto the sidewalk, where Ursula and Dámaso caught up with us, and up to a building with neon signs glowing in the windows and vibrant paint splashed across the building’s face.
“This is a love hotel,” Niko said as he motioned us to the front door. “We don’t need ID, and we can pay by the hour. No way for anyone to know we’re here unless they spot us going in.”
I couldn’t restrain a hitch of a laugh. “Imagine how much trouble we’ll be in with the figure skating organizations if they get wind of this hang-out.”
His logic made sense, though. We let Niko handle the room selection and payment, and within a matter of minutes, we were filing into a large hotel room with an obvious rose theme. There were fake roses smothering the walls, rose-print sheets and duvet, roses in a vase on the side table, and a thick rose scent clogging the air.
Dámaso sneezed. “This is… This is really something.”
“It is,” Niko said, chipper as ever, but his eyes had darkened. “I suppose we need to decide what we’re doing next?”
