“Were not leaving, Marie. Not yet,” I say to her gently.
I can hear her breath coming out in small gasps as she follows behind me. At the top of the stairs Roman looks down the hall and then takes three steps to the first doorway and pushes it open. There's a huge four-poster bed in the center with an upholstered bench at the end of it and large, ornate dressers on either wall.
“Is this your room?” I ask her. She nods mutely.
With a shrug, Roman enters and drops his boxes abruptly on the bench, then turns on his heel and heads back for the stairs to go get more.
Immediately I start sweeping the room but I hardly have to. I can see the tiny black cameras in opposite corners. Somebody didn’t even bother to hide these.
“Well, you must have been very good in this room,” I say as I pull them down. “It was smart of you to keep your catting around to more, uh, discreet locations.”
Her cheeks redden dangerously as she chokes back an outraged gasp.
“Don’t worry, kitten,” I assure her with a wink. “I won’t tell. You got another bedroom here somewhere?”
She nods again but doesn't seem to be able to tell me anything so I just walk down the hallway until I find another door and open it. Nope, a bathroom. A nice bathroom, though, with a marble shower big enough for at least three people. So that's good. The third door I try opens onto a bright, sunny room with shimmering silvery curtains and a king sized bed in the middle of it.
“Well, this will do,” I say, mostly to myself at this point. Though I would love to press the point and just move into her bedroom, maybe I should take it slower. Give her more time to adjust. I don’t want to wake up with a knife in my back right away, anyway. “This will do quite nicely.”
I can hear her follow me into the room as I come in and push my box into a corner. The RF detector indicates this room is clean so I finally nudge the antenna back in and slide it back into my pocket. The baggie full of tech shards is useless now. I just drop that in my box.
I really don't have that much to unpack and it's only going to take a few trips. I sure hope she regains the power of speech by the time I'm done, or it's going to be a very long night.
Her fingers press at her bottom lip and her lower eyelids are glistening with tears. This basically shoots an arrow through my chest and for some reason I feel horribly, terribly sorry, then slightly irritated if I'm telling the truth.
“All right, what is it?” I sigh. She doesn't say anything for a few seconds and that is just starting to get on my nerves. “Marie? If you want to say something, please say it.”
“Leave…” she whispers pitifully. “Please, just leave.”
My hands fall helplessly against my thighs. “I can't, darling. You know this. Besides, who will protect you if we’re not here?”
"Well, Nuncio, Paulie...”
“All gone.”
She startles, fluttering her eyelashes. “Gone?”
I nod, giving her a few seconds to let that sink in. “All gone, Princess. Gone for good. It's just us now.”
Shaking her head, she holds herself tightly around her middle. “No, that's not possible,” she whispers. “Daddy would never —”
“— did you think that your daddy's people were going to stay here forever? You’re a married woman now, Marie. You're not just a little Princess anymore. You’ve got a husband now… Well, two —”
“Oh my God,” she gasps. "This is crazy. This is crazy!”
Okay, what am I supposed to do here? For a second I think that she's actually going to just lose it right in front of me. Like, actually tremble herself into tiny little pieces on the floor.
“Marie,” I sigh, keeping my voice as gentle as possible, “darling, it's all right. Everything is going to be fine.”
She presses her lips together but her eyes seek mine, begging me silently to tell her again. Now I understand. That's what she needs, someone to tell her everything is going to be all right.
I give her a few seconds and then fold my arms around her. She melts against me, sending that same series of arrows through my heart. Jesus, this one really does get to me. I drop a kiss against her forehead, lingering for just as long as I dare to.
“Marie, it really is all right. Let's just try it, okay? We’re all in this together now.”
“Try what?” she says, muffled against my shirt. The sensation of her breath on my chest is really quite intense.
Roman comes clomping up the stairs again and pauses in the doorway. He cocks an eyebrow at me and then takes a couple of steps into the room. “What are we doing?” he says gruffly.
“I was just explaining to Marie that we are going to try to be here… Together. While we figure this whole thing out.”