Wicked Intentions(53)

“Where is he? The person who ordered the milk! Who is he, and which way did he GO?” I grip her arm so hard, she lets out a little scream of panic.

“I don’t know! I didn’t see who ordered it! My manager told me—”

She jerks her head toward the squat, black-haired man with a beak of a nose steaming toward us from the kitchen. He obviously is not happy with me right now.

“Monsieur!” he shouts, wagging his finger as all the restaurant patrons look on, agog. “Monsieur, we have had enough of you! Get out! I can no longer tolerate this kind of—”

I grab him by his lapels and drag him against me so we’re nose to nose. Then I thunder into his face. “WHO ORDERED THAT FUCKING GLASS OF MILK?”

He blinks, once, exhaling a terrified breath, then blurts, “A woman, a woman in a black veil. She came in and ordered it, she said to send it to your table, she said you would know what it meant, she tipped me one hundred euro—”

I shake him so hard his eyes roll around in his head like marbles. Pounding through my veins is a drumbeat of a woman, a woman, a woman.

“WHERE DID SHE GO?”

The manager points to the front door. “Sh-she disappeared! I don’t know anything else! She didn’t say anything else!”

I shove him aside and sprint out the door. On the sidewalk, I turn in every direction, frantically hunting for any glimpse of black. Everything is spinning and I can’t see straight. My heart is a firecracker, my pulse is wildfire, and electricity blisters my skin.

Then, around the corner of a building half a block away, I see something dark billow and snap like a sail in a breeze before disappearing from sight.

The hem of a long black veil.

I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life. I’m a bolt of lightning crackling over the sidewalk. I’m a supersonic sound wave.

I’m Lazarus, risen from the dead.

When I round the corner, panting and out of my mind, I see a figure draped in black far ahead on the crowded avenue. The figure walks briskly, looking straight ahead, her gait purposeful as she weaves through the throng of strolling pedestrians. She ducks into an alleyway just as I break into a run.

When I reach the alley, I find it deserted except for a pair of reeking Dumpsters and scattered trash. Windows in the tall brick buildings on either side stare down like blank eyes. A lone pigeon pecks at the ground, wings beating in a panic when I run past it with a bellow of frustration.

But in my rush, I’ve missed something. There’s a door halfway up the alley, a door cracked open so light from inside spills out onto the cobblestones in an inviting yellow slice.

My heart in my throat, I slowly backtrack and push open the door.

I step into an art gallery. It’s bright and airy, filled with stylish couples mingling and chatting, drinking chardonnay. I move like a dream walker through the gallery, gazing in cold shock at all the colorful framed oils hanging on the bright-white walls.

In every painting, the subject is a dragonfly.

“Mr. McLean? Excuse me, sir, are you Ryan McLean?”

I turn toward the voice. It’s a woman I’ve never seen before, an elegant redhead in a tailored ivory suit. She’s very beautiful, with milk-pale skin and secretive eyes, her fiery hair coiled in a low chignon. She smiles at me, waiting for a reply.

“Yes,” I say gruffly, finding my voice. “I’m Ryan McLean. Who are you?”

“Genevieve,” she replies, as if the name should mean something to me.

I swallow, fighting to maintain my composure when everything inside me is howling wolves and hurricanes. “Where is she? Where’s Mariana?”

Genevieve’s smile deepens. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name. But I was instructed to give you this.”

She holds out a folded piece of stationery. I take it, my hand shaking like a leaf.

“Good luck to you both, Mr. McLean,” Genevieve says warmly. “She was always a favorite of management.”

Without another word, the redhead turns and melts into the crowd.

I stand with the note in my hand until I become aware I’m garnering a lot of curious glances. Then I unfold the paper and read the words written in precise, slanting black ink.

I can picture you there, among the date palms and veiled women.

I can picture you stealing into a locked room at dawn

with the morning call to prayer echoing over the empty medina,

the sun on red-tiled rooftops already hot.



I recognize the words instantly, because they’re my own. And now I know exactly where I’m going.

I drop my head back, close my eyes, and inhale my first real breath in months.





Thirty-Seven





Mariana





Morocco


Once upon a time in another life, I was a little girl.

I had a little girl’s dreams of fairy tales and handsome princes. I had parents and a sister and a scruffy yellow dog named Dog. I went to school in a ramshackle schoolhouse with a dirt floor and woven banana leaves for a roof, and picked avocadoes on my parents’ farm. I didn’t know I was poor, or powerless, or cursed.

Once upon a time, I was happy.

Then…I grew up.

I grew up and learned that happiness is like heaven, a thing everyone yearns for but few ever find. I learned about death and betrayal and sex and longing, about hunger and sadness and fear.

I learned that dreams are only for dreamers.

I learned to survive.

Then one day many, many years later, I learned about love.

I discovered love was nothing like a fairy tale. It was more like a bad poem written in indecipherable meter by a drunken poet who couldn’t keep a job, so he lived with his mother his whole life while writing the most outrageous roadblocks and outcomes, based on nothing but the whims of his own inebriated brain. It had an awkward beginning, a wildly improbable middle, and an awful, painful end. And nothing rhymed.

Love was the worst.

Inconveniently, it was also the best.

I didn’t trust it from the get-go.

What I didn’t realize is that love isn’t like Tinker Bell. Love exists whether you believe in it or not.

And whether you believe in love or not, it believes in you.



* * *

He finds me on the third day. Three long days, three unending nights, and then I look up from my mint tea and he’s there.

Standing across the medina, his gaze fixed on me, a bare glint of yearning bright in his eyes, he’s there.

He looks terrible.

Like he’s been sleeping on park benches and dining on scraps from trash cans to survive. Like all he’s ever known is heartbreak and brutality. That I’m the cause of the pain he’s wearing like a second skin makes all the broken parts inside me grind together and bleed.

I rise from my table, shaking and breathless, my nerves channeling fire. Between us, the square is a riot of color and noise, food stalls, trilling laughter, dancers and dusty barefoot children. Freshly dyed silks flutter indigo and saffron in the breeze. I turn and make my way through the winding alleyways, draped in carpets and thick with people, until I reach an azure door.

I push through the door into a quiet courtyard, Ryan’s presence behind me so vivid, it’s almost like touch.

Past a splashing fountain, up a winding staircase to a quiet room at the top with a view of distant mountains and walls painted the same blue as the door. By the window, I turn and wait, holding my breath.

He eases into view in the open doorway, moving carefully, silently, as if approaching a wild animal trapped against a wall. When he sees me, his eyes flare. He inhales through parted lips and stands staring at me for a long, silent moment, drinking me in, his hands trembling at his sides.

“How?” he asks in a low, hoarse voice.

“There was a submarine on the yacht. A little two-seater. That got me as far as Tunisia. From there, I took the train to Casablanca, then a bus here.”

His brow creases in confusion.

“I had the captain take me. He knew how to operate the sub…and how dangerous a gas leak on a yacht loaded with munitions would be. He knew what to do to make it look accidental.”

He processes that, then slowly takes a step forward over the threshold. His gaze darts around the room, questioning, cataloging the furniture, the high, timbered ceiling, the colorful pillows on the bed. Then it snaps back to me again, as if magnetized.

When he doesn’t speak, I do. “The crew on the yacht were prisoners. Forced to work for free, their silence guaranteed because their tongues were cut out. When I explained to him what I wanted to do, the captain was more than willing to help me. He wanted to disappear, too. Become someone else. Live a different life. We parted ways in Tunisia.”

Ryan takes another few halting steps toward me, then stops, the tremor in his hands getting worse. He’s focused on me with an extraordinary intensity, his eyes burning with questions and need. He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. There’s a pulse of heat like a heartbeat between us.

With a break in his voice, he says, “Why?” and I know what he’s really asking.

Why did you make me believe you were dead?

“I went a little mad,” I whisper, closing my eyes. “When I found out Reynard was Vincent’s father—”

Ryan’s sharp intake of breath makes me open my eyes. I nod at his expression of disbelief.

“Yes. And I loved him. My whole life, I loved him, and he’d been lying to me about everything. It was all a test.”

I have to stop and breathe around the vise winching closed in my chest. “He was grooming me to take over as his heir,” I say when the pain eases and I can speak again. “He said it in front of his men, so I knew that if they didn’t think I was dead, I would be hounded. Hunted. Cosa Nostra doesn’t let people go. So I died. Only I didn’t. And now I’m here…”