That woman could have been her...in a different life.
“There,” Eli said, pulling her back. “She’s at the far stand.”
There, barely visible through the throngs of people who walked among the stalls was a tall woman with slender hands. She was pointing at something Zoey couldn’t see. The woman was wearing face-shielding sunglasses and a checkered scarf over her hair, giving her an Audrey Hepburn–esque look.
The word classy came to mind. Followed on its heels was kidnapper, but it seemed like a word that would only be used when explaining what happened to a woman like her, not something the woman was capable of.
In a way, the woman reminded Zoey of herself, all the contrasting parts of her life. On one hand, she was capable of being so incredibly strong and resourceful, resilient in the face of extreme odds and hardship. And yet, when it came to her personal life, she was a bundle of nerves. Eli could almost bring her to her knees with the simple touch of his hand to her cheek.
Strong and sensitive...and completely unsure of herself when it came to pulling the trigger. Maybe she wasn’t as much like the bureaucrat’s daughter as she believed. The woman standing in front of her would probably kill in an instant.
“We have to get to that apartment,” Zoey urged, spinning around on her heel and moving away from the woman.
Eli stopped her with a touch of his hand. “What if we took her?”
She stared at him, hardly able to believe his suggestion. “If we kidnap her, we are no better than them.”
“It’s not about who is better or who is worse. It’s about keeping your brother safe. If we grab her, at least we can negotiate a trade. Right now, all we have is the vague hope of finding your brother in that building. But what if he isn’t there? What if he’s been moved?”
She wasn’t a fan of his plan, but he made a good point. If they took her, at least they had access to whoever was holding her brother. “We don’t even have a place to stay. If we grab her, what are we going to do with her?”
“Just because we had to check out of our hotel, doesn’t mean we don’t have a place to stay. We can figure this out.” He was already moving in the direction of the woman.
She let him walk ahead of her. He feigned interest in the stalls as he meandered toward the woman in his best attempt to not look suspicious.
As they drew nearer, Zoey stopped at the fruit stand and picked up an orange. She handed the vendor some change, but didn’t take her eyes off their target. Eli glanced back at her, checking her position before he advanced.
Shaye turned toward them as she completed her purchase. She dropped a few Euros into her purse, the same purse from the video. This was definitely their target, but the woman seemed almost at ease flitting through the market stalls.
Shaye drifted to the next stall and smiled at the man standing behind his table of trinkets. She picked up a keyring and inspected it.
She acted nothing like a woman holding a man hostage.
There was something wrong. Something just didn’t feel right.
Eli made his way to the woman, but instead of taking her by the arm and dragging her into an alley, he stopped beside her and picked up a hand fan.
From where she stood Zoey couldn’t hear what Eli was saying, but as he spoke the woman smiled.
Zoey had never been an accomplice in a kidnapping before, but she wasn’t sure that smiles and laughter were supposed to be part of it. An odd sensation of jealousy crept through her as she watched the woman lean toward Eli and touch him gently on the shoulder.
Zoey glanced around, searching the crowd for anyone that appeared to be standing guard for the woman, or anything that would help her make sense of why Eli was flirting rather than grabbing her and making off like a caveman.
He had to be seeing something different than she was, something that made him use this approach. Zoey wished she had been more adamant in her refusal of kidnapping the bureaucrat’s daughter.
She dug her nails into the skin of the innocent orange. Sure, it hadn’t done anything to her, but it was the nearest thing to a stress ball she had.
The skin popped under her nails as she pried it loose in one complete, long peel. Dumping the peel in a bin, she popped the first bite into her mouth. The tangy citrus flavor exploded in her mouth. It tasted of the sweet, warm sunshine and dark, languid earth.
There was a forbidden quality to the acidic nectar that dotted her lips, and as she licked the flavor away, it reminded her ever so slightly of Eli’s kiss... A kiss she had momentarily claimed, but had no future hold on.
Besides, it didn’t make sense to listen to the gnashing, teeth-baring lioness that roared with anger within her. There was no call to be jealous. Zoey had released her claim on him and with it she had also released the right to feel anything beyond civility toward the man.
He glanced in her general direction and the smile on his lips disappeared. A thin layer of sweat appeared on his forehead, but it couldn’t have been from the fall heat.
Eli said something to the woman and, taking her hand, he escorted her toward a small café that sat at the corner of the intersection. He sat down with Shaye at a small metal bistro table and picked up the menu like they were on a midmorning date. Shaye took off her headscarf and flipped her hair back over her shoulder as she sat down with her back to Zoey.
Though they weren’t close, Zoey could make out the ring of the woman’s laugh as she crossed her ankles and leaned into Eli.
Enough was enough.
Unable to hold back the roaring lioness any longer, Zoey pushed her way through the crowd, garnering more than a few frowns and mumblings in Spanish from strangers, but she didn’t care. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it wrong.
As she neared the table, he excused himself and headed her off, grabbing her by the arm and leading her inside the café and out of view of the woman.
“What are you doing?” he fumed, as he glanced over his shoulder in the direction of his waiting date.
“Seriously, what am I doing?” She glared at him.
He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and he let go of her hand. “I couldn’t just grab her off the street. How would that look—a woman kicking and screaming as I drag her away from the crowd? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up in a Spanish prison. I don’t have to kidnap a woman to keep her occupied.”
“And just how do you plan to keep her occupied?” she spat. “You think she’ll bring you to her apartment as her new lover?” She tried to not sound bitter, but she couldn’t keep her feelings from flecking her words.
Eli reached down, took hold of her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “I don’t want a new lover. All I want is you. You know that. Or at least you should know that. From the moment this all started, all I’ve wanted is you.”
And with just a few words, she once again felt cut off at her knees.
She sucked in a long breath and followed it with an equally long exhale. “Then what are you thinking?” she asked, sidestepping around his declaration. Though it had been exactly what she had wanted him to say, she wasn’t prepared to respond.
“I want you to go to this address.” He slipped her a note with an address. “There you’ll find a friend of mine. A guy from my Watch Dog team. He will go with you and together you can get into the apartment. I’ll keep her busy.”
“There is no goddamned way I’m letting you go off alone with this woman while you foist me off on some stranger.” She wadded up the piece of paper and threw it on the ground.
If they were separated, there was no telling what would happen. For all they knew, the bureaucrat’s daughter knew exactly who they were and Eli was walking straight into a trap.
“I’m staying right here,” Zoey said. “That is, unless you are trying to get her to take you home.”
His face reddened. “Actually, if you’re
so adamant that you won’t go to the apartment without me, what better way could there be to get into her building to look around for Chad?”
Screw that. She hated the idea of them flirting their way toward the bedroom.
“Not gonna happen.” She shook her head like she could shake away the image.
“You aren’t jealous, are you?” he asked. “I told you how I feel about you.”
She didn’t want to be needy, or to make a scene, but she felt herself steadily approaching a precipice. If they were going to be a team, she was going to have to trust him. He had said he cared only for her, that he wanted her. It may not have been a proclamation of love and forever, but it was more than she had expected.
She bent down and picked up the address he had given her and stuffed it into her pocket. Though she had no intention of going to a stranger to get help, she would do what she had to do to ensure they all remained safe...or as safe as they could be.
“I’m not jealous,” she said, feeling the weight of her lie as she forced herself to stand tall in front of him. “You go ahead, but instead of taking her back to her apartment, keep her here.”
His eyebrow rose as he must have seen through her dishonesty. It wasn’t pettiness, but the primal need to protect the thing she cared for most...even if that thing—rather, that person—was a full-grown man.
He nodded, but said nothing and instead stared at her like he was waiting for a “but.” Instead, she said nothing. She would choose to trust that whatever happened in that café was for Chad’s benefit.
“Do whatever you need to do to remain safe.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him with a slight shake of her head. They didn’t need to talk about her unspoken meaning.
“Call my friend. His name is Frogger.”
“I’ve got this.” With that, she turned, walking out of the café and away from the faux date.
With every step it felt as if her heart were a piece of putty being stretched and pulled into a long strand that connected them wherever they went. No matter what, no matter how thin the thread became, or how immense the distance, she would never let their bond be broken.
Chapter Sixteen
The last time he had seen Zoey look that torn was the moment she had told him she was pregnant. He could feel her confusion like it was a fog that had rolled in off the sea and settled over them. It had been stupid of him to befriend the prime minister’s daughter, but it was the only thing he could think of in a pinch.
He wanted to run after Zoey, to make sure that she wasn’t walking out of his life again, but he stopped himself. Desperate was never a good look on anyone. She had to know that he never wanted to do anything that would compromise their burgeoning friendship. If anything, he had been the one to lay himself out there and tell her that he wanted her, and she had said...nothing.
If anyone should have been walking off, hurt by the other, it was him. He was here for her. He was always there for her. He would give everything that he owned to be with her. And she was always breaking his heart.
All he wanted, and had ever wanted, was to be hers.
He rubbed his neck as he walked back toward Shaye. He wasn’t sure how, but now he was even more at a loss than when he had chatted her up. At that moment, at least he had his best friend at his back. Now, he was alone. And he was the one who had sent Zoey away.
He was screwing it up all over again.
He sat down and forced his face to smile. “Sorry about that. I saw someone I knew from college.”
“Oh, yeah,” Shaye said, twisting her pearl earring. “Where did you go to school?”
“Notre Dame. In the States,” he lied. He had never gone to college, not with a father like his; instead, he had been forced to go into the military or get a job.
How little he had known about the world then.
It was a stark contrast to his reality now. The only perspective that hadn’t changed from his formative years was that the world was a deadly and evil place, and the scavengers were always waiting in the shadows to pick his bones clean.
“Eli?” Shaye asked, sounding as though she had asked him a question he had failed to hear.
“Sorry, what?” He forced himself to concentrate on the woman sitting across the table from him.
“Who’s the woman?”
He could feel the blood rushing from his face. “Huh? What woman?” he said, trying to play dumb, but looking in the direction that Zoey had disappeared.
“You know, the woman you are thinking about?”
He sat dumbfounded, saying nothing as he stared at Shaye.
“It’s okay.” Her English was accented with the slightest trill, and the effect made her sound like something out of a fairy tale, nothing like the big bad wolf that they had made her out to be. “I know the look of love in a man’s eyes. I have seen it many times in my life.”
“It sounds like you’ve been incredibly lucky in love.”
As she took a sip of her espresso, her hand shook, making a dribble twist down from the corner of her mouth. Her cup clanked against the plate as she put it back down and wiped the offending drop from her chin. “I suppose my success would depend on who you asked,” she said daintily placing her linen napkin back in her lap.
“I must admit, when I first spotted you at the market, I thought you were incredibly beautiful and vaguely familiar.”
She looked at him for a long moment like she was trying to decide whether or not he knew who she was. Like Icarus, he had flown too close.
“You belong on a runway rather than sitting here with me,” he added, hoping he could keep her from shutting down on him before he got the information that he needed from her or worse, leaving and going back to the apartment and compromising Zoey’s position.
He had to keep Shaye here as long as he could in order to keep the woman he loved safe. It felt strange being on a pseudo date with a bureaucrat’s daughter, but thinking only about Zoey. Oh, the things he did for her.
“Actually, I’m here in Spain with a man.” She picked at a piece of bread the waiter had left at the table, rolling the dough between her fingers until the bits became shaped like little grenades that she could use to destroy him.
If he had been on a real date with her and hadn’t known the story behind her appearance in this marketplace, he would’ve been hurt that she was shooting him down.
“And who is the man?” Eli asked. “You love him?”
She tore off another piece of bread as she dropped the first doughy grenade on the table. She must have wanted to create a full arsenal.
“It doesn’t matter who I love.” The waiter strode over and placed a bowl of olives beside the bread.
They each gave him their order, for him paella and her a caprese salad. As the waiter strode from the table, Eli turned back to her. “If you’re here with another man, why did you agree to have lunch with me?” he asked, hoping that the question would sound like a man who wanted to date her.
She looked torn, but he didn’t know why. Perhaps it had something to do with Chad, and knowing that she was holding him hostage somewhere. The thought reminded Eli that regardless of how amiable the woman seemed, or how pretty her face, he was dealing with a potential killer. It was often the ones like her, women with an abundance of physical assets, who flew well above anyone’s radar.
But he couldn’t forget.
“I agreed to come along with you because you looked interesting.” She moved slightly in her seat, turning her knees away from him as though she were closing a part of herself off.
He’d seen people use this subtle body language many times when he had been tasked with interrogating. It was the body’s equivalent of saying there wasn’t a chance in hell of his getting whatever information he wanted—the interrogation was over.
He had to get her to open up to him again.
“I looked interesting, huh?” He tried to give her his sexiest grin. “I’ll take it.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Has anyone ever told you that you are not a humble man?”
“I hear there are worse things to be.” He popped an olive into his mouth and chomped on it like it was a grain of truth.
Shaye laughed. “I’m glad I’m not in danger of falling for your charms.”
“If I were a lesser man, I would be deeply hurt. However, I believe I do love a woman. You are safe from whatever charms you think I have.” Eli looked down at Shaye’s hands, half expecting to see something that would give away all the evil things she had done. Instead, she had the long, manicured nails of a woman who wasn’t accustomed to manual labor.
These were not the hands of a woman who had cut off Chad’s finger. However, just because she hadn’t wielded the knife, didn’t mean she wasn’t the one responsible for the amputation.
“What do you think of corporal punishment?” Once again, he could feel his wings starting to melt as he neared the sun.
“Well—” She sat in stunned silence for a moment. “It appears you are far more interesting than I had initially assumed. Now, I cannot help wondering if I should have stayed far away from you. I fear you are a dangerous man.” She stood up, picking up her scarf from the table and swiftly wrapping it over her hair, like a symbolic white flag.
He fell back down to earth. He stood up and threw a bit of money on the table as he moved after her. “Stop, please,” he called.
She didn’t even look back at him as she strode away in the direction of the apartment. Eli wasn’t sure if he should go after her and grab her, as in the initial plan, or if he should simply let her go. For all he knew, Zoey was in her apartment with Chad right now. If Shaye found her there, and if Chad wasn’t already dead, she would likely kill them both.
Her Assassin For Hire (Stealth Series Book 3) Page 13