by Zoe Chant
That meant her text notifications were all visible on the screen while she was washing her hands, and she couldn’t help reading them; there were enough from Daniel to fill the screen, and just one from Sasha: wtf how does he remember the town where my aunt lives???
Poppy felt cold. If Daniel went after Sasha, or her aunt... She scrolled through the rest of the texts, all smarmy promises and thinly-veiled threats about how she didn’t want to miss this trip with him. Bright and early, or else.
It was going on five now. He didn’t expect her to meet him until half-past six. There was time to... to what? She wasn’t going anywhere with him, wasn’t doing him any favors—not in an airport, where she risked getting grabbed by security and disappeared into terrorist-detention if she figured out what he was doing and tried to tell them.
But if it was something like that, she had to try to stop him. If there was a chance of people getting hurt, maybe killed, and she heard about it on the news and realized she could have stopped it and instead she’d gone back to bed with Tristan...
She had to do something, but right now she didn’t know enough to do anything useful. So she had to find out what the hell Daniel was planning.
There was always a plan at the back of her mind for how to leave wherever she was: take the most important things, leave anything that might slow her down. She could be at the nearest Tube station in five minutes, and her pack was right here in the bathroom. She was getting dressed before she thought about anything else, and then she started pulling the most important stuff out of her bulky hiking pack.
Her passport and enough cash for transit in small bills and coins, that was in an inside zippered pocket. The plastic in-case-of-emergency bag with contact information, the handful of actual photos she kept with her, and her own real phone, the one she’d turned off a couple of days ago so she could have some time to herself. Wrapped up in her fleece, her few pieces of jewelry and other little mementos that she really cared about, her stuffed bunny, and her backup cash. Her good boots.
She stopped then, looking down at the stuff she’d pulled out and thinking about what she was about to do. If she was going toward danger... She had to leave most of this stuff here. If something went terribly wrong while she was trying to figure out what was going on with Daniel, she wanted most of this stuff as far away from her as she could get it.
And this hotel, with Tristan, this was the safest place she knew right now.
She dug into her pack again, pulling out a different assortment of stuff—dress, raincoat, shoulder bag, some random stuff that would look like she might genuinely have packed for a short trip. Nothing special, nothing she cared about. She couldn’t avoid taking her passport and some cash, but she left behind her other ID, including the tattered photocopy of her passport, and everything else with any value.
That had only lost her ten minutes. She could still get to the airport before Daniel would expect her to be there. Watch for him, figure out what his plan was before he spotted her, and then, when she had something she could actually tell security or the police or someone... then she could do something about it. Before he did anything to Sasha, or anyone else.
She just had to get out of the hotel room, first. She tucked the phone she’d been using into her raincoat pocket and slung her bag on her shoulder, picked up the pair of sandals she would wear, and slipped out quietly into the room.
She didn’t let herself look toward the bed. Tristan would wake up or he wouldn’t, and she didn’t have time to hesitate.
Her hand was on the door handle when she heard a sharp movement behind her and looked back. Tristan was sitting bolt upright in the bed, and her eyes had adjusted enough to see that his eyes were wide.
“Go back to sleep,” she said, low but not whispering. “I just have to go do something, and then I’ll be back.”
“Poppy,” Tristan’s voice was very calm, as though nothing about this situation surprised him. “Don’t do this. I can protect you from him.”
Poppy couldn’t help a little smile, her heart beating faster at the way he obviously, instantly understood. But she had to do this, and she didn’t want to drag Tristan into whatever this was when she didn’t know anything for sure. It might be nothing, and it might be something horrific, and she needed to know that what she left behind here—not just her things, but this man—would be safe, waiting for her right where she left them, so she could come back.
“I know.” She sounded almost as calm as Tristan, somehow. It helped, knowing there was somewhere to come back to, someone who would wait. “But being safe isn’t the only thing that matters, is it? You’re a secret agent, you know that. And I won’t be in danger, really. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be back, safe and sound.”
“Let me help,” Tristan offered after a pause. “Even a secret agent doesn’t go into a mission without backup.”
She shook her head. “It has to be me, and I have to be alone, Tris. I’ll be okay. I’ll be back soon.”
She had to believe that part. She had to believe there was something to come back to.
“Tell me,” Tristan started, but Poppy shook her head.
“No time. I’ll be back, I swear. I’m not running. It’s just something I have to do. Please, just—wait for me, okay?”
Tristan moved like he was going to get out of bed, and Poppy knew she couldn’t drag this out any longer. Even if she could possibly explain it to him, just waiting for him to get dressed was more time than she could spare.
Poppy shook her head, blew him a kiss, and then darted out the door.
*~*~*
Halfway to Heathrow, Poppy transformed herself into someone Daniel would never recognize. It didn’t take much—men like Daniel didn’t look closely. To him Poppy was red hair, lots of pale skin showing, giggly, dancing girl.
She went heavy on bronzer and then covered her hair in a black scarf, wrapping it closely around her throat and tucking it into the collar of her raincoat, which she buttoned right up to her throat. She unbelted the raincoat, folding up the belt and tucking it into one pocket where she could reach it easily. The dress she’d pulled on was dark blue and brushed the tops of her feet, and her raincoat fell to her shins—one advantage of being short. She darkened her brows and did her lips in a dramatic shade that would have clashed with her hair if it was showing, slipped on a pair of big dark sunglasses, and voila, she was invisible to Daniel: someone he would never bother to hit on and therefore a woman his eyes would pass right over.
She got a coffee and texted Daniel as she scouted for a good spot near the doors into the International Departures area. Just leaving, so excited! Where should I meet you? Xx
Daniel texted her back almost instantly with—well, a lot of nastiness that she took to mean she was making him nervous, and then a door number.
Poppy went over to the next door down from that one and sipped her coffee, periodically holding her phone to her ear and snapping out angry questions about where are you? And, My mother’s surgery will not wait for your breakfast! I will get on that plane without you! in heavily accented French.
It was only a few minutes before Daniel got out of a car, pulling one discreet black carry-on and carrying one ostentatiously pink gift bag with a cheap bouquet stuck in the top.
Then three more guys got out of the car, which Poppy got a picture of while grumbling at her phone like she was checking her flight’s status. The three guys all looked about as big and mean as Daniel, but none of them were carrying luggage. They spread out without Daniel giving them instructions; one walked right past Poppy to enter through the door she was standing by.
Daniel, meanwhile, pulled out his phone to text her again. He kept his own carry-on bag between his feet while he did, but he never let go of the gift bag at all, even though it was big enough to be kind of unwieldy. He kept it tucked close against his body, even crumpling it a little, as he texted her.
Not a bomb, Poppy thought. He wouldn’t clutch a bomb like that—and of course
it wouldn’t be a bomb, really. Now that she wasn’t panicking in a dark bathroom that seemed kind of obvious; Daniel was into whatever he was into for profit, and to feel like a big bad guy. Some kind of airport attack wouldn’t do that for him.
And it meant that there was some object in the bag that was important, vital. He wanted Poppy to smuggle something, then, maybe drugs, maybe something stolen. So it wasn’t about getting Poppy—or Sasha, or any woman—to go somewhere with him. He just needed someone who looked less suspicious than he did to get whatever was in that bag through airport security.
And he had three guys watching to make sure it went right, which meant that Poppy couldn’t just waltz up to him and ask what was in the bag and then take off. She remembered his grip on her arm and thought that she really, really didn’t want to get within grabbing distance of him anyway.
She still didn’t know what was in the bag, though. And she still really didn’t want to let him get away with whatever he was planning—even if he didn’t manage to get at Sasha as a Plan B or just to punish her and Poppy for messing up his plan, he didn’t deserve to have this go well. She was right here, after all, there had to be something she could do to ruin his day without ruining her own ten times worse.
Poppy lifted her phone to her ear and repeated her well-worn, Where are you? You’re supposed to be here by now! in French.
Right behind her, Tristan said softly, “I’m here, of course.”
*~*~*
Chapter 7 - Tristan
After making love to his mate for the first time—after telling her how he felt about her, if thankfully in Valtyran so that she didn’t run screaming away from him—Tristan had felt truly content for the first time in a very long time.
Lying there, holding Poppy, let himself drift into dreams of their future together. He would show her the beauty and wonder of Valtyra—reunite her with her family. Further on, he was standing on the edge of a mountain lake and watching Poppy wade into the water holding a tan-skinned toddler by the hand, the child’s dark auburn curls hiding their face.
He wanted to walk closer, to lift his child into his arms and see the color of their eyes, see their smile, but he didn’t give in to the impulse. He stayed still, watching at a little distance. Instead of feeling furious with himself for failing to reach out, he thought, No, best to leave a few surprises.
He realized he was dreaming then, and opened his eyes to find that Poppy was indeed out of his reach; the sound of waves was the sound of the bathroom fan running. He lay drowsily still, watching the line of light and thinking how strange, how wonderful, it was that his body already knew and trusted his mate so well that he had not been wakened by her slipping out of bed.
But she had not come back to bed. When she stood there with her hand on the door and told him she had to go, that she had to do something alone, he had been unable to make her understand that he couldn’t let her go. His tiger had roared and raged within him at the thought of his mate in danger, unprotected, but Tristan himself had just sat there, calm and quiet, never raising his voice, never telling her how he felt about any of it.
When the door closed and he was alone, at least he could move. Tristan rushed into motion, pounding on the door to wake Peter as he yanked on his clothes. All the time he had been aware of the feeling of Poppy getting further away—his tiger had her scent now, and he knew the sound of her beating heart better than his own mother’s voice. He could track her anywhere, even in this crowded place.
He would not lose her again, even if he had been unable to break through his own control to make her stay.
Still, there was no way he was going to let her down. He was only a handful of minutes behind her when he rushed out of the hotel. I wasn’t hard to guess, between his sense of her and the logic of the situation, that she would have gone straight for the Underground station. It was more or less directly across the street from the hotel.
The Kingdom of Denmark had its embassy only a few blocks up the street, and Tristan was on the phone to their designated liaison with the Kingdom of Valtyra while he was hurrying down to the train platform. Poppy would be headed toward Heathrow, of course. She hadn’t denied it when he implied she was going to meet Daniel, and he had wanted to take her on some trip this morning, “bright and early.” This train would take her straight to the airport, and Tristan was going with her.
The train arrived before he found her in the crowd on the platform, so he boarded near the back. His sense of her was still too far away, but she didn’t seem to move any further away while they were on the train, so Tristan occupied himself with making sure he looked presentable and making sure that Peter and some backup from the Danish Embassy, with proper credentials to flash around at the airport, would be following him there.
He touched the pocket of his jacket that held his passport, and then the other pocket—which held a Danish passport for Poppy, indicating her diplomatic immunity. If things got really bad, he could bail her out of just about anything with that, and the officers from the embassy would back him.
If it came to that, the main problem would be explaining it all to Poppy, and he wouldn’t have much choice but to haul her back to Valtyra, since no one in England was going to very pleased with either of them.
Poppy would be least pleased of all.
But she would understand, in time. She would forgive him. He would find a way to make her understand, to make things right with her. She was his mate, and he couldn’t do less than everything. He would find some way to show her, prove to her, how he needed her, how he loved her.
I love her. For a few seconds Tristan just stared down at his hands and thought of it. I love her. She is my mate, and we will be together, and even if she doesn’t now, someday she will love me too.
As long as I keep her safe and don’t scare her worse than that scumbag.
Tristan found his lips twitching toward a smile; it was a little effort to make himself perfectly straight-faced again when he got off the train at the airport, once again following his sense of where Poppy was. It took him a moment to spot her, but by the time he saw her slim, lovely hands paying for her coffee, he knew she was the one in the long, loose coat and black headscarf. It was a good disguise; he could see the way people barely looked at her, and he knew Daniel would never look closely enough to recognize her.
Still, he recognized his mate in the way she moved, though her hair was covered and her slim shape was obscured. He would know her anywhere.
She obviously had some sort of plan that didn’t involve going anywhere with Daniel, so Tristan hung back and watched the way people watched her and moved around her. He meant not to approach her until she seemed to have some need of him, but he could help drifting closer as he worked at blending in with the other passengers. He made a show of looking from monitors to his phone, not letting anyone see him take an interest in the woman with the headscarf who kept speaking French into her phone.
By the time he understood what she was saying, he was barely out of arm’s reach of her. It was much closer than he had meant to come, and he knew he had to tell her he was there, if only to avoid spoiling her plans by startling her.
Besides, it was too good a line to resist. When she demanded, Where are you? Tristan answered her: “I’m here, of course.”
For a second Poppy froze—not fear, he knew, but caution. He glanced around and realized that he could see Daniel waiting for her, holding a pink gift bag and standing careful guard over his own luggage.
Tristan’s tiger growled a threat, but Tristan showed nothing, staying perfectly still.
Poppy tilted her head to her left, and Tristan murmured, “Of course,” and turned to walk that way, keeping his eyes on an airport monitor. Poppy followed, coming to stand beside him in a spot where Daniel wouldn’t be able to see from his position. Tristan didn’t look over at her.
“He’s got three accomplices, which is a little more than I was expecting,” Poppy murmured with no preamble. “One in the gra
y jacket on your left, eight o’clock.”
Tristan glanced reflexively at the time before realizing that Poppy meant clock-face position. He glanced at the reflection in his phone screen until he’d identified the man.
“The other two I’m not sure where they are, they went the opposite direction. Pictures.” Poppy held up her phone and thumbed quickly through a series of pictures: a car, Daniel and three big men getting out.
Tristan nodded. “Anything for me to do at all, Miss?”
He saw Poppy smile slightly in his peripheral vision. She slipped her sunglasses off, tucking them into her bag and withdrawing a small kit.
“Well, now that I’ve got my secret agent backup on the scene, I’m going to go tell Daniel to his face to go to hell.” She took something from the little kit and wiped her face, returning her skin to its usual paleness, her lips to their natural pink. “If he tries to drag me to a plane, do you suppose you could get him arrested for assaulting me?”
“I would like nothing better,” Tristan said, still watching in fascination as she applied different makeup to replace what she’d removed, lining her eyes and glossing her lips. “Although I don’t think I could let him lay a hand on you.”
“Well,” Poppy said, smiling wider as she examined herself in the mirror. She tilted it so that their eyes met in the reflection, and her tone turning to one generously dispensing a treat. “That seems fine. Then you can press the charges, right?”
Tristan nodded, and tore his gaze from Poppy’s reflection to alert the Danish attaché to his exact location and the likelihood of his becoming entangled in a—possibly quite extensive—fistfight in the next few minutes. Then he looked around for Peter, and found him standing perhaps fifty yards away, watching intently.
Peter gave him a firm nod. Tristan had no doubt he would have been able to hear Tristan and Poppy’s conversation from there, with a shifter’s senses all attuned to them. Tristan nodded back; he knew he should have conveyed confidence somehow, to let Peter know that he trusted him. He ought to have been able to express it, to reassure Peter that they both knew this wouldn’t be like the last time they were both involved in a brawl.