To start from the beginning go here.
Tired and disoriented, once through the door of the apartment I turned to the hatrack to say hello. I was still remembering it had been broken in Sophie’s struggle with the pimp when she strode down the hall to hug wrap her arms around me. Despite Cheryl’s voice telling me not to be an ass, I felt myself harden at her touch, unwilling or unable to let go of my anger.
When my arms didn’t leave my side, she let go. I barely acknowledged her to push past, headed to the bedroom. I only said, “If anyone asks, I left in the car with a Russian,” followed by the same brief description I had given Max, but with no name. “Just don’t go to mentioning the pimp,” I added, as if Sophie actually needed instructions to not volunteer information about a murder she had committed then we covered up. I collapsed into the bed, kicking up a cloud of noise and dust. I covered my eyes with my forearm, blocking out the lights and so I didn’t have to look at Sophie or any mirrors. I wasn’t sure when the sun was coming up and I just wanted to sleep.
I felt Sophie hover near the bedroom threshold, floating on her own cloud of guilt and questions. If she wanted to say something, she didn’t. In a past life I had been married long enough to recognize the inhalation of breath that recaptures a spoken word or the hesitant step forward that turns into a retreat. Whatever barriers those were meant to overcome, they never did.
I wasn’t actually angry at Sophie – there was one less asshole in the world and his corpse was now burning with two other assholes. As I tried to remain still and control the poison of my emotions, I realized I shouldn’t have come home.
The fatigue I was trying to surrender to wasn’t enough to overcome the anger and fear I had ridden the entire night. Instead of laying on the bed I would have been better off walking the streets of Old Town and their relative safety until I had released enough of my pollution that I wouldn’t have brought it all home to Sophie. So why didn’t I do that?
Opening my eyes I could see Sophie sitting on the couch in the other room, inches from where we had maneuvered a corpse only hours before. When she made eye contact over the paperback she was reading, I realized I hadn’t gone stalking the streets because I wanted, for at least a few hours, to feel safe. And here, with her, I did.
That internal admission must have changed something in me because Sophie got up and walked into the bedroom and lay down beside me. This time, when I felt her arm around me, I closed my eyes and drifted off.
It didn’t last. There were too many things to worry about. A few hours later my eyes snapped open as my brain reminded me of all of them. First and foremost was that I needed to meet Mitnick. I doubted one of his men going missing for a few days would stir up much suspicion, but that logic didn’t make the situation feel less dire. I only had two hours till noon.
I got up and walked the apartment floor like a drill sergeant conducting an inspection. The splinters of the coffee table were gone, any fibers of the carpet had been swept up, and the floor underneath it was freshly scrubbed. In the corner near the bedroom, Sophie’s and Jardin’s clothes from yesterday were in a trash bag. Sophie had been busy.
As I stuffed my own clothes into the bag, an aroma of acrid sweat and heavy perfume rolled in an odor of something like chlorine. For whatever reason, it made me wonder what it would be like if we were normal people who could have just called the police and claimed self-defense in regard to the greedy and stupid man who had come for Sophie.
That would have been nice. But sweeping him into the dustbin of history took less time and produced less notice than bringing in law enforcement. The nebulous nature of my own freedom and residency in France also wasn’t something I was looking to have closely examined.
I was disappointed to add the peacoat in the bag, but I did anyway.
Sophie, still lying on the bed, was watching me roust about the apartment. When I noticed, I confirmed her intentions with the bag by holding it up and asking, “Bruciatura?”
She yawned around a nod and said, “Si.”
I dropped the bag and strode to the bed, kneeling by it. I remembered that I had never told her so I took her hands in mine and said, “I have to go meet Mitnick.”
Sophie was always able to transition from asleep to awake with a speed that I envied and she did it now. “Perché?”
“When I called about the car, he said he wanted to meet. Today.”
“Dove?” she asked. “Where?”
“At the cathedral.”
Sophie’s eyes broke from mine long enough to dart to the freshly cleaned floor of the living room, then to the door. When they came back they didn’t contain any of the joy that I thought of as inseparable from her. “What if you do not return?”
The question made me consider bringing her with me. But if Mitnick had an entourage with him, which he almost certainly would, someone might recognize her from the party. More importantly, it might give Mitnick himself a chance to lay eyes on her and I didn’t want that. There was a chance he might not yet know that Sophie and I were together and I wanted to keep it that way.
I brushed the hair out of her green eyes and thought about telling her to go to Atwell or leave the country, but I knew she wouldn’t do any of that. So I just said, “Then you do what you gotta do.”
A small frown crinkled a corner of her mouth. “Stupidi Americani.”
For some reason this made me feel better, light enough that I was able to come up from kneeling easily, giving her my own smile as I did. “Yeah,” I agreed.
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.
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