“You’re like a dream that’s so good, I don’t want to wake up,” she says, her eyes shining. “But I know eventually that I’ll have to. And the longer I stay dreaming, the worse it’ll hurt when I’m finally awake.”
Fuck. If my heart didn’t already burst in the shower, it would shatter into a million tiny pieces now. I have to stand there and breathe for a few seconds before I can speak. When I do, my voice is rough with emotion.
“Life isn’t always unfair, Mariana. Lots of bad shit happens, but good things happen, too, and you need to be able to recognize the good when it comes along. You need to be able to accept it and deal with it, same as you deal with the bad. Love is as real as hate. You know how to survive. But that’s not the same as living.”
She stares at me, swallowing, the color high in her cheeks.
“And if what happened in the shower turns out to have consequences, we’ll deal with it,” I say more softly. “Together. Now make your phone call, woman. I’m gonna make us some chow.”
I kiss her forehead as I walk past her into the kitchen.
The sound of her faint laugh follows me as I go.
Nineteen
Mariana
“Reynard,” purrs a cultured British voice on the other end of the line.
Flooded with the same relief I always feel when I hear his voice, I close my eyes and rest my forehead in my hand. I’m sitting at Ryan’s glass kitchen table, my nose filled with the delicious scent of frying bacon. My heart feels like a grenade with the pin pulled inside my chest.
How do people live like this? How can anyone survive this feeling, this agony of tenderness and hope? It’s madness, I know it is, and yet…
“Hello, Reynard,” I say quietly. “It’s Dragonfly.”
A brief pause follows before he asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yes and no. Mostly yes, nothing to worry about.”
Another pause. “It certainly sounds like something to worry about.”
I chew my lip, thinking. “The job was…difficult.”
This time, his pause is deafening. “Have you completed it?”
I clear my throat. “Yes. And no.”
“How esoteric,” he says drily. “Care to elaborate?”
“I’m just calling to find out if you’re safe. Are you safe? Are you well?”
“Of course. Whatever are you going on about, my darling?”
When I don’t respond, his voice turns dark. “Oh, bollocks. The American.”
I let my heavy sigh serve as my answer.
Reynard turns businesslike, his tone clipped. “If I’m not mistaken—and I never am—your deadline is in forty-eight hours. Do you need an extension?”
“I want you to promise me something, Reynard.”
I can almost hear him pull himself up short. “Good God. That sounds bad. Let me sit down. All right, go ahead, I’m sitting. No, wait, let me get my flask.” Through the phone comes the sounds of a gulp and some lip smacking. “There. Sorted. Tell me.”
I open my eyes and look at Ryan, frying bacon in a pan at his ridiculously enormous stove, and listen to what my heart is emphatically telling me.
“If Ryan McLean contacts you for any reason, I want you to promise to do exactly as he says. No questions asked.”
At the stove, Ryan freezes.
A bristling silence, then Reynard speaks flatly. “He’s taken you hostage. That bloody grinning idiot is holding you hostage, isn’t he?” His voice rises. “He has a gun to your head right now, doesn’t he? Put him on the phone! That colossal wanker! I’ll give that smiling arsebadger something to stew on—”
“Reynard—”
“Does he have any idea who he’s meddling with?” Reynard shouts. “That smarmy, second-rate John Wayne impersonator! That swaggering, insufferable, cock-swinging, pathetic excuse for a man—”
Wincing, I hold the phone away from my ear. Reynard is still going. I wait until I hear a pause, then I put the phone against my ear again and loudly interrupt the tirade.
“No one has taken me hostage, Reynard. No one is forcing me to say anything. I’m asking.”
Ryan stands perfectly still at the stove. It doesn’t look like he’s even breathing.
“Why are you asking?” Renard says, cool and controlled again.
Wavering one final time, I bite my lip so hard, I almost draw blood. Then I jump off the cliff that’s in front of me, hoping against hope that somehow I’ll fly instead of smashing face-first into the ground.
“Because I think we can trust him. And I think we’re going to need his help.”
I’ve stunned two men, thousands of miles apart, into shocked silence. After a while, Reynard makes a sound like he’s choking on his tongue.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I exhale in a gust. “I don’t like it, either, believe me! But it is what it is. We’re going to trust the American. This is the new normal. I just decided right now.”
If Ryan can do it, then I can, too. Gut, you better be on track with this, or I’ll cut you out of my body myself.
“Are you mad? Reynard hollers. “You only have one job left! One! After all these years, freedom is within reach, and you—”
“The diamond is a fake, Reynard. What do you think Capo would do to me—to us—if I gave him a fake? Do you think he’d believe me when I said I had no idea? Do you think he’d be forgiving?”
Reynard’s voice drops an octave. “Who told you it was fake?”
My gaze flashes up to Ryan’s back. He hasn’t moved an inch. From the pan of bacon, smoke rises in billowing gray plumes. It’s started to burn.
For a moment, I fall through a bottomless chasm of pure panic, but I wrestle it into submission long enough to answer. “That’s not the point.”
“Au contraire, my darling, it’s exactly the point. Take a moment and consider who you’re dealing with. This stranger you’ve decided to trust.” He says trust sarcastically, like he’s putting air quotes around it because the concept is so ridiculous. “Take a moment to consider what his motives might be. What his endgame is.” Reynard’s voice turns hard. “Wipe the stardust and rainbows from your eyes and think.”
Anger crawls up my neck in a hot, prickling rush.
I really detest being patronized, and that’s twice in ten minutes.
“My eyes are wide open, Reynard. Sometimes I wish they weren’t, because life would be easier, but they are. Now here’s something for you to think about: what if Capo knew the diamond was fake? What if he set me up to fail? You want to talk about motives and endgames? Let’s talk about Capo’s. Let’s talk about what he really wants, because we both know it isn’t more jewels!”
A buzzer sounds. It’s a smoke alarm. Ryan finally breaks his statue impersonation and jabs his index finger into a button on the hood above the stove. A fan starts to suck the smoke from the burning bacon into a vent, lifting it in eerie, ghostly whorls.
It reminds me of the way the smoke rose over the avocado fields the night my parents were murdered.
I can’t sit any longer. I jolt from the chair and start to pace around the table, chewing my thumbnail as I go.
“You have forty-eight hours to get that diamond and get back to London,” Reynard says flatly. “Capo’s expecting you. If you don’t arrive, he’ll kill me. That’s not so alarming, I’ve been expecting it for years, but what should alarm you is that he will hunt you down, using all his considerable reach and power to find you. And when he finds you, my darling…” His voice darkens. “He’ll take his time with you. He’ll make you beg for death long before it arrives.”
My hand lifts to my throat. I think of the girls with collars, the red stains on Enzo’s handkerchief, and all the blood drains from my face.
“You’re suddenly so interested in trust?” asks Reynard, chillingly soft. “Trust that. Trust in the dependability of evil, because unlike lust and infatuation, it will never fade. It will never let you down. Unlike handsome American Marines, evil always keeps its promises.”
I inhale a soft, shuddering breath, my entire body going icy cold.
Ryan finally turns from the stove. He takes one look at my face, and thunderclouds gather over his head. He strides over to me, holding out his hand, his eyes burning.
“Gimme the phone.”
“What?” I say, startled.
“Woman. Give. Me. The. Phone.”
I decide now isn’t the time to be my usual sassy self. I silently place the phone in his hand.
He lifts it to his ear and growls into it. “Listen up, you snobby motherfucker! I don’t care how much Mariana loves you. If you ever say anything to her again that makes her look like she does right now, I’ll break both your legs!”
My lips part, but the man has rendered me incapable of speech.
On the other end of the phone, Reynard says something unintelligible. All I hear is a bark.
To which Ryan barks back, “Yes!”
He listens for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then thunders, “You better fuckin’ believe it!”
I drop my face into my hands and groan.
A pissing contest. Divine.
After a moment, when I don’t hear any more barking, I peek through my fingers. Frowning furiously, Ryan listens to whatever Reynard is saying. He nods, says a curt, “Mmhmm,” huffs out a breath, looks at the ceiling with his nostrils flared, then nods again. Then he proceeds to answer what must be a series of rapid-fire questions with a series of rapid-fire answers, punctuated by jaw-clenching pauses.