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“For the love.”
He grinned. “Okay, so here’s the plan. I’m going to leave, take the garbage out, and I’ll meet you outside in five.”
“Should we sync our watches?”
“If that makes you feel better.”
“What would make me feel better is a decent dinner, a glass of wine, and a bath.”
“I can do two out of three.” He winked and picked up the trash. Headed for the door.
Sorta made a girl want to quit her job.
What? No. She’d worked too hard to throw down the flag.
She briefly searched for her jacket and found it in Gennie’s bedroom. Gennie was sitting on her bed, watching her tablet.
“You going to be okay?” She gave the girl a hug. Then a fist bump. “Big girls can cry, but then they wipe their eyes and keep going, okay?”
She nodded. “Oh, by the way, your phone rang.”
Her phone. Iris put on her jacket, then found the phone in her pocket. Unknown number, not the Marshall Field Winery she’d called earlier. She debated calling it back, then dropped the phone back into her pocket. Didn’t want to keep Bourne waiting.
Oh shoot. She was so in over her head.
“See you in a couple days,” Yannick said as she lifted a hand to him.
Camille met her at the door, gave her another hug. “Keep in touch.”
Iris nodded, then stepped out into the hallway and called the lift.
The sun had peaked, then arched overhead, falling toward the backside of the day. Maybe Hud was right about dinner, but she’d like to take a red-eye to Milan.
And suddenly, the danger of the past week seemed ages away, despite the boat, the bombing, the bullets, and now Abe. With her conversation with Yannick, and even crazy teasing by Hud, it all seemed…
What if they were just overreacting? What if all of this was coincidence, that no one wanted to kill her? Maybe the stove in the boat had overheated, and the bullets had simply been debris from the bomb, and Abe had simply eaten bad fish.
Really bad fish.
The lift opened on her floor, and she got on, then closed the door and pushed the button. It shuddered its way down to the bottom floor, and she stepped out.
Garbage bins would be not on the street but in the back of the building, near the courtyard and the parking area.
She turned and found her way through the building to the back and stepped outside.
No Hudson. Walking through the courtyard, she found the trash, but the bins were locked. She turned, then spotted more trashcans through an alleyway.
She headed toward them, picking up her pace.
And maybe because thick shadows fell across the courtyard, and maybe because she could still hear the echo of Hudson’s voice—What if this is bigger than you?—whatever the reason, she picked up her pace.
Started into a jog.
And of course, that’s when a voice lifted, carrying across the cobblestones, bouncing off the buildings and following her down the alleyway—
“Hey—there she is! Don’t let her get away!”
Iris didn’t look back and simply ran for her life.
