It was almost midnight, and I stood across the street from the airport. I was in the shadows behind a service vehicle, a concealed position from which to watch the entrance. The sliding glass doors opened, and from where I stood, I had to wait a few seconds before I saw a couple move out onto the sidewalk.
It had absolutely crushed me to watch Blaire disappear into the airport. The odds were high that Pierre would whisk Blaire to the safety of the Canadian embassy, but that was mostly why I let her go.
This mission was doomed. I knew it. I think Drake knew it. And it would probably result in my death and the deaths of Andrusha and Olivia. It had gone against the grain of every cell in my body to let Blaire walk out of my sight, but I had knowingly sent her into the arms of another man in hopes that there might still be a chance to save her. Even if the rest of us were royally fucked.
The ten aimless hours that I waited for her return felt like sick hope. It was the kind of hope that you’re pretty sure isn’t going to pan out, but you hang onto it anyway because it’s all you’ve got.
Now I was looking for anomalies, signs that the local authorities were searching for me, but either they were very good at stealth or no one was on my tail.
The sliding glass doors opened, and another three seconds passed before two uniformed pilots exited, pulling their functional airline-issued travel bags behind them.
She’s ten minutes late. I ignored the accusing voice in my mind and focused on my next steps.
I assumed for the moment that she had been captured and taken back to Canada. That meant I would need to get to Singapore on my own. Since I didn’t have enough money to smuggle myself out of the country, I would have to come up with an alternative payment to get my passport finished. Would Hiroto let me pay him with stolen goods? Tonko would have let me, but I doubted this guy would be that hospitable.
Almost fifteen minutes late.
I didn’t have time for this shit. I could hold up Tonko’s replacement at gunpoint, but I didn’t want to risk killing the one person who could finish my passport.
The sliding glass doors opened, and I waited three agonizing seconds before some American-looking backpackers traipsed outside. They stood, studying their phones before heading toward the bus station. None of them looked in my direction. None of them seemed capable of lifting their gaze from their screen.
There was a slim chance that I could save Andrusha and Olivia if I managed to get to Singapore, board that ship, find the USB drive, get off the ship alive, and then get back to Canada. That would be my plan of action—it was the only way forward, and even if it was a suicide mission, it was our last hope. Why did I have the urge to head to Hong Kong? Did I think I could waltz into that airport undetected, without a passport? And what would I do if I caught up to her? Save her?
I was the one who’d dragged her out of her bed and into this nightmare. I was the one who had been hauling her deep into this dangerous world. I was the person she needed saving from.
Is she safe? Will they take good care of her?
Time was of the essence, and I should have been focusing on how I was going to get to Singapore, but instead I waited.
How long would I wait?
All night.
I knew I was being completely irrational, but I couldn’t seem to fight my way back to being smart about this. I knew she wasn’t coming back. But I couldn’t seem to rip my eyes from those doors.
Hong Kong or Singapore? That was my only question now.
The sliding glass doors opened, and she shot out of the airport doors and stopped short, looking both ways. Looking for me. It shouldn’t have surprised me that she appeared exactly like she had ten hours ago, but her familiarity felt both foreign and sweet.
I forced myself to walk, not run, toward her. She stood off to the side, looking worried. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked in all directions.
When she saw me, she gave a little squeak of joy and then pitched herself toward me. My arms, without my permission, grabbed her and lifted her off her feet in a big bear hug. Her arms wrapped around my neck and we embraced for only seconds before I reluctantly set her down.
I cupped her face with both hands and tilted her face to mine so I could selfishly get a better look at her face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
Since I hadn’t believed she would return, I had no plan in place. We stood there. “How did it go?”
“It went well, because I have the money,” she murmured. I was drowning in her gaze.
My relief at having her safely within reach gave way to the realization that she had not only returned but brought funds, which would put this mission back on track.
I would no longer need to hold Tonko’s replacement at gunpoint. Her very presence would help get us onto the cargo ship.
We had a fighting chance again. I realized that I needed to get my head on straight. Pulling my gaze away from her, I looked around. Standing in front of the airport made us vulnerable. I would take her back to the room I had rented.
“Come on,” I told her, grabbing her by the arm. “We have to go.”
She didn’t speak or make a single complaint when I took evasive action and forced her in and out of three different cabs before letting the last driver drop us off three blocks from our destination. When I walked her up three flights of external stairs to a cramped and dingy hotel room, she didn’t bat an eye. The room was so tight there was barely space for us to maneuver.
She looked around the room with interest. “You didn’t expect me to come back.”
“You don’t know that.”
She pulled out an envelope full of cash and offered it to me. “Here is thirty thousand. Pierre thought we could use the extra cash, so he slipped in an extra ten grand.”
Who was this guy? “It’s your money, you carry it.”
“It’s our money, and it’ll be safer in your hands.”
I reluctantly took it from her. “Tell me about Hong Kong.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was walking to the restaurant and dreaming about what I would order from the Lime Garden when Pierre grabbed me from behind and pulled me through a clothing store. He thought someone from his flight was following him.”
“Did he say who?”
“A woman, but he couldn’t be sure.”
“Did you see her?”
“No, he lost her before he connected with me.”
“Did he ask you any questions?”
“He didn’t have time.”
“What happened?”
“He gave me the money. While I hid in a changeroom, his plan was to make an inconspicuous show of going in the opposite direction. I waited for a long time and then I went back to my boarding gate and waited in a corner for my flight to board.”
“Did you see anything or anyone unusual?”
“Nothing. No one even glanced at me.” She looked with interest around the room. “You know how I know you didn’t think I’d be back?”
“Tell me.”
“One bed.”
I gritted my teeth. “Your odds weren’t good.”
She looked faintly hurt. “You thought I would abandon you and my grandfather?”
“No, I thought that you’d get escorted back to the safety of Canada against your will.”
She squinted up at me. “But you still showed up at the airport.”
I shifted. “I told you I would.”
She lay back on the bed and shut her eyes. “I hope our plans include some food and some sleep.”
“That’s the plan—after we fly to Singapore.”
“We have to fly tonight?”
“It will give us time to get prepared.”
She groaned. “I bet you’re one of those people who shows up on your vacation with a typed itinerary. Everyone wants to lie on the beach with a few cocktails, and you’re raring to go on a hike.”
I loved how she often veered into the fantastical. “What would you be doing?”
Keeping her eyes shut, she smiled. “I’d be at the beach, wearing my bikini and drinking a mint mojito—probably in the shade. And I’d take the occasional dip in the water just to cool off.”
My brain nearly short-circuited at the thought of her in a wet bikini. “I like cocktails.”
“You’d be bored.”
I’d be happy. The thought startled me. “Not necessarily.”
“You’d need to incorporate some spearfishing or Jet Ski competition into our vacation.”
Our vacation. I swallowed hard as I stared down at her. Two hours ago, I thought I would never see her again. And now she was lying on my bed, taunting me with a fantasy that sounded so good I wanted to drop to my knees and start begging. “Would it bother you if I wanted to Jet Ski?”
It was a loaded question, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
She slowly opened her eyes and looked directly into mine. “It wouldn’t bother me.”
She was killing me. “Then I wouldn’t be bored.”
Her smile was slow, but worth the wait. “I think we’d holiday well together.”
I bent over my bag, mostly to hide how much this conversation was affecting me. She made me want things I knew I could never have. “How could you know that?”
She turned one of my phrases back on me. “I just know.”
It had been years since I’d allowed myself the luxury of a real vacation, and suddenly I wanted exactly that—but only if this woman was by my side. “You’d need to learn to pack faster.”
She laughed. “Or maybe you could do something really radical and slow down.”
Our eyes met. Something crackled between us, a warning zap that promised sparks and electricity. “I’ll think about going slow.”
Her eyes widened. “And I’ll work on moving faster.”
She was making it almost impossible to resist her. With willpower I didn’t know I had, I turned away from her gaze.
“Don’t even think of falling asleep.”
“You know, I missed your bossy ways.”
“We’re leaving in ten.”
On our early-morning flight From Ho Chi Minh to Singapore, I sat three rows behind Blaire and one row over. We both had an aisle seat, so she was clearly in my line of vision. Without shame, I had been staring at the side of her head for the past hour. Between picking up my new fake passport and waiting at the airport, neither of us had grabbed more than a couple of minutes of sleep.
Now Blaire’s head was lolling to one side, indicating that she had fallen asleep. I had insisted that we sit apart and pretend we didn’t know each other, but now I regretted that decision. I wasn’t beside her to tuck a pillow under her head or cradle her neck while she slept.
I scoffed at myself and tried to quell this urge to attend to her every need. No one who knew me would recognize my behavior. I rarely gave thought to my own comfort, much less anyone else’s. Now Blaire’s safety and comfort seemed to be my only obsession.
I shifted down in my seat, working to stretch my legs while pulling my hat further over my eyes. It was safer that we were traveling apart. Anyone looking for us would be looking for two people. Splitting up made the most sense, but I regretted not having the foresight to buy her a neck pillow. Every time she jerked awake, I winced.
I watched as she stretched and then rubbed her face. She did another bigger, faker yawn before looking over her shoulder at me. Her eyes widened when they met mine. Then she gave me a little smile and a wiggle of her fingertips before turning away.
God, she was the sweetest human being I had ever met.
I was acutely aware that our journey would soon be coming to an end. Tomorrow, everything was coming to a head. Even if we made it past tomorrow and I somehow managed to keep both of us alive until the end, I would still be forced to release my control and let her go live her own life. Once the danger passed, there would no need for me to stand guard over her.
Blaire was probably counting the moments until this nightmare ended, but I dreaded relinquishing my unwanted protective services. I knew that right now she was imagining Jet Skis and mojitos, much like she fantasized about rugged gardeners, but the picture she painted, no matter how appealing, was pure fantasy. Our real worlds would never mesh, and there wasn’t any point in pretending they would. Once this mission was over, we’d go back to our separate lives. Wanting something else wasn’t even close to any reality I knew or understood. It would be enough to know that I had gotten her through all of this in one piece.
And that was now my only goal.
“Look at how nice this room is.” Blaire wandered into our Singapore hotel room ahead of me. “It even has a balcony that overlooks the pool.” She looked over her shoulder and gave me a smile.
The room wasn’t anything special, but compared to the trashy dump hotels I had recently brought her to, it was a big step up. “I’m sure you’ve seen a lot better.”
“This room has a mini fridge.” She walked across the room and opened it. “With alcohol.”
“We’ve really moved up in the world.”
She grinned at me as she tossed her bag on one bed. “It feels like it.”
“Are you hungry?”
She yawned. “Just tired.”
“You should sleep.”
“But I will be hungry tonight,” she suggested lightly. “What’s for dinner?”
I knew what she was suggesting and I chose to ignore it. “I’m heading out to check out the docks. I’ll pick something up on my way back.”
“Maybe we can go out for dinner?”
“No.”
She started to unpack her bag into those tiny little piles again. “How do we get on the ship?”
“I’m supposed to call Drake a few hours before, and he’s going to give us all the details.”
“That doesn’t leave us a lot of time to do any planning.” She sat down on the bed. “Is it going to be dangerous?”
We had just spent the last week fighting to get to this point, but the reality was that tomorrow could be a death trap for both of us. And every part of me wanted to whisk her away, back to the safety of her life. But three people’s lives depended on my ability to override those feelings.
“Is it going to be dangerous? Probably.” I roughly zipped my bag shut. I had never been scared of a fight before in my life, and I didn’t fear death. But the thought of putting Blaire’s life at risk filled me with newfound terror. “You sure you want to go through with this? Say the word and I’ll have you on the next flight out of here.”
She reacted as expected. “Are you crazy? This is the only way to save your friends and my grandfather.”
“I can’t guarantee anything tomorrow.” I was having difficulty even saying the words. “I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Something crossed over her expression before she covered it up with a light smile. “Well, if tonight is my last night, can we do better than takeout?”
Her last night. The thought of her dying tomorrow made me so angry I wanted to destroy something. I couldn’t even process how bad that thought made me feel, so I took it out on her with a cold tone. “This isn’t a game, Blaire.”
She moved to stand in front of me and then tilted her face up to mine. “I know that.”
In some weird twist, she had come to accept the reality of our situation much better than I could. I couldn’t understand why she remained so calm when I felt violent over the fact that I couldn’t protect her. “We’re not going on a dinner date.”
Even those words didn’t rattle her. “Maybe we should. Maybe we should just enjoy ourselves as much as possible. It’d be a shame if we didn’t.”
I worked to breathe evenly through my nostrils as temptation roared through me. I knew what she was suggesting, and I had no idea how I was still resisting. “That’s not what you want, even if you think it is.”
“You have no idea what I want.”
I wrapped my hand around her waist and yanked her tight against me, loving her little gasp.
“Is this what you want?” I lowered my mouth to hers and hovered, so close our breath touched. This was what I wanted, but I was too cowardly to admit it to either of us.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Part of me feared that if I gave into any of this, I would never let her get on that ship tomorrow. I released her and stepped back. “No.”
She blinked, unfazed. “I know what I want, even if you don’t.”
“We need to stay focused.” I stepped back. Every cell in my body wanted to wrap my arms around her and never let go. I needed to get out of here before I did something unforgivable.
I picked up my bag and walked toward the door. “Lock the door behind me and, no matter what, don’t open it.”
“Viktor.” Her voice was quiet, but it was her understanding and her patience that were nearly my undoing.
Without looking at her, and with deep regret, I walked out of the hotel room.
