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“It was not a date,” she said, taking off her jacket and throwing it at him, hoping to wipe the stupid grin off his face.
But Styx enjoyed teasing her too much. “Did he kiss you goodnight? Did you get butterflies?”
“Don’t even.” Because just thinking about it turned her stomach. “Byron and Hugo left.” Throwing up both arms, she dropped onto the corner of the bed. “Bastards.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Home,” she whined without disguising her envy. Sliding back on the bed, she pulled off each shoe to throw them on the floor and fold her legs in front of her. “Just like that, they’re leaving the country.” She sighed. “Wish I could just up and leave the country.”
“Maybe you can,” Styx said, retreating toward a table by the window.
She pushed higher to peek over the second bed parallel to the one she occupied. “Can I? Oh, God, please tell me I can.”
With a single finger, he moved aside a brochure to pick something up by its corner. Within seconds she recognized what dangled between his thumb and forefinger.
Her excitement came out in applause. “Oh my God, is it…?” she asked, opening both arms. “Show me!”
Rather than come over, he frisbeed it across to her. It was like every Christmas and birthday came together at once as she opened it up. A passport! Real? No. She’d never had a real passport, but it looked damn good to her.
“Not an easy thing to do these days. You’re in the system and everything.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, looking at the picture of herself that Styx had taken earlier in the week.
“That I had to do a little cross-Atlantic negotiation. It doesn’t matter. It’ll get you into the country. But I can’t promise you can use it more than once.”
“Why not?” she asked, frowning at him. “It looks so good.”
“Yeah, but you’ll only need to use it if you’ve run from Zeus,” he said. “If he takes you home, you don’t need to use that.” Obviously, and she couldn’t let him know that it existed. “If you run from Zeus, he’ll find out you went home and will want to know how. If he finds that in the system… which he will…” He sat on the far side of the parallel bed. “He has the resources to get you on the most wanted list. Putting you on a no-fly list will be cake… And if you’re detained at an airport, escaping isn’t easy, especially if you’re by yourself.”
All made sense and she appreciated the warning. “Thank you,” she said, clasping it to her chest. “Truly. You’ve been amazing.”
“Comes easy to me.”
So did being easy. Nothing fazed Styx. He was sort of like Danny that way.
“It might not matter anyway,” she said. “Byron said something yesterday which gave me a glimmer of hope.”
“What’d he say?”
“That I might only be here for another couple of weeks.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “He said that?”
Her head bobbed side to side. “Hmm… Not exactly. He said that him and Hugo are going to recruit the new Two and Five. Six is going to be there too.” The mention of the Six member who’d revealed Zulu to Zeus brought a growl to his expression. “I know. But I asked if they were coming back here after their meeting. He said it could take a few days or a couple of weeks.” Opening her mouth, she took a deep breath. “But then he said the next time we see each other will probably be at the beta site.”
“The beta site,” he said, taking a few seconds to think about that. “Olympus Beta. You’re thinking if the negotiations will run for a maximum of two weeks, and the next time you’ll see each other is at the beta site, that the two are linked? What’s to stop him taking two weeks for negotiations, then doing his own thing for six months before Beta?”
“I choose to be optimistic,” she said, flopping onto her side, propping her head up with a hand. “When I walked in and saw the suitcases in the hall. My God, I almost screamed. I thought that was it; that I was going back. Thank God I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you don’t want Zeus to know how desperate you are to get away from his hospitality.”
“Did make me think about you though.”
“Me?” he asked, shifting on the bed to sit on the side closest to her, his feet on the floor. “Not in bed this time?”
She grabbed a pillow from above her head and tossed it at him. On a laugh, he caught it.
“I was thinking that if I have to leave in a hurry,” she said, “or if you do, that we don’t have a contingency. We have no way to communicate Stateside.”
