I, Spy? (16 page)

“I can hear you,” I said.

“Well, I am right here.”

“No, I mean here.” I took my hand from his shoulder and placed it on his chest. “I can hear your heart beat.”

Luke looked into my eyes and we slowed almost to a stop. I could hardly breathe. He was going to kiss me again.

“Time’s up,” he whispered, and released me.

Bastard.

We took the lift up to the third floor and the atmosphere was tense. Gray’s Hotel was movie-set grand, panelled in gleaming wood with faded gilt everywhere and lots of dark, aged paintings. But I hardly noticed, because every sense I had was desperately attuned to Luke walking easily beside me.

“Knock,” he said to me when we reached the door. “If he’s still awake, go in and wait for him to sleep.”

“What if he’s not drunk the champagne?”

“Propose a toast.”

I took a deep breath and knocked. Nothing. I knocked again. “David?”

“Oh, he’s David now?” Luke mocked under his breath as I tried the handle, with no success.

Luke pulled something from his pocket, a little wire, and picked the lock.

“Please show me how to do that,” I begged.

“You planning on breaking into a lot of places?”

No, I just got locked out a lot.

“Hey, if you know it, I should know it. Spy training and all that,” I whispered as Luke pushed the door open and reached for the gun holstered under his immaculately cut jacket.

We were immediately hit by the sound of snoring. I couldn’t keep a straight face.

“Oh, is that the welcome I get?” I said.

Luke grinned. “Wouldn’t catch me sleeping,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, look at this.”

We stood and looked at Wright, who was flaked out completely naked on the huge four-poster bed.

“Oh, that’s just not pretty,” I said, holding up my hand to shield my eyes.

“Definitely not,” Luke agreed, holstering his gun and going over to Wright. He slapped the sleeping guy’s cheek, and Wright snored louder. “Right. You keep an eye on the door. You never know, he might have invited lots of revellers up here.”

Charming thought.

I stood by the door, listening hard for footsteps, while Luke did a lightning sweep of the room. I was gratified to see he checked all the places I had the night before, in Rome. Suitcase, briefcase, drawers, checking for hidden compartments in each.

Then he went over to the laptop. There hadn’t been one of those in Rome.

“This could take some time,” he said.

“Why, computer illiterate?”

He gave me a withering glance and took a USB stick out of his jacket pocket.

What the hell else did he keep in there?

Every minute he spent searching and downloading I was sure Wright was going to wake up or someone was going to come in. I was practically hopping with nervousness when there came a knock on the door.

“Shit,” I said to Luke, who nodded and quickly ejected the disk and pocketed it.

“Answer it. Make them go.”

Heart pounding, I crossed to the door and when I opened it, I nearly fainted.

“Harvey?”

“Sophie?” He looked as amazed as me. “What are you doing here?”

“I, er, this is my room.”

Harvey looked at the number. “Really? Your room?”

“I, er…”

“No,” I felt a hand on my shoulder and another at my waist, “our room. Sophie, honey, friend of yours?”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

I looked back at Luke, whose fingers were firm on my shoulder, then at Harvey, who looked speechless.

“You’re sharing with your brother?” he asked eventually, and I could have kicked Luke. Hadn’t he heard me say that?

“Is that what she called me?” Luke said easily. “Bad girl, Sophie, telling lies like that.”

Harvey looked between us. “You’re a couple?”

Looked like it. “Yes,” I said. “But it’s a secret.”

“Sophie, could I talk to you a second?” Harvey said tensely, and I extracted myself from Luke and slipped out of the room before he could protest.

“What’s up?”

Harvey folded his arms. “You didn’t tell me about him in Rome.”

“No, well, erm, like I said, it’s a secret.”

“So secret you came back to my room?”

I blushed.

“Is that why you left?”

“Sudden attack of conscience,” I said meekly. “I’m sorry, Harvey. It’s…it’s complicated.”

That was becoming my catch phrase.

Harvey shook his glossy head. “And I thought he was your brother,” he said as the door opened and Luke came out.

“He’s
not
my brother. My brother is in Essex. You remember, Luke, I was talking to him when we were on the phone the other day…”

“Oh, so you do have a brother?” Harvey said.

“I thought he was your boyfriend,” Luke said.

“I thought
he
was your boyfriend,” Harvey said, pointing at Luke, looking confused.

“Who? Chalker?”

“Who’s Chalker?” they both asked.

“Yeah, who is Chalker?” asked Alexa in my ear. I’d forgotten about her.

“He’s my brother,” I said firmly.

“So who’s your boyfriend?” Harvey asked.

“No one,” I said.

“That’s not what you told me,” Luke said.

“You said it was him,” Harvey said, pointing again. Didn’t the boy know it was rude?

“You told me it was the other guy,” Luke said.

“
What other guy
?”

“The one you were talking to. At your parents’.”

“That was my brother!”

“You’re sleeping with your brother?” Alexa said. “How Greek.”

“Not this guy?” Harvey pointed at Luke, and I grabbed his hand to stop him.

“No. This is Luke. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not my brother. He’s just my… my tormentor.”

“So who am I?” Harvey asked, reclaiming his hand and massaging it pointedly.

“Yes, who is he?” Luke asked.

“We met in Rome,” I said.

“Oh,
you’re
the guy.” Luke folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, looking Harvey over.

“What guy?” Harvey asked.

“Yes, what guy?” Alexa asked.

“No guy!” I half yelled. “We had dinner. That’s all.”

“Not totally all,” Harvey said.

“I love this,” Alexa said.

I looked at Luke. “Can we go now?”

He shook his head, looking highly amused.

“We have popcorn,” Alexa informed me.

“Is there a boyfriend?” Luke asked.

“No!”

“Then why’d you say there was?”

“To piss you off!

“Why?”

“Because you were being annoying.”

“So why did you—” Harvey began, but I’d already had enough. I started walking away.

“Sophie, wait,” they both yelled.

I suppose under other circumstances it might be nice to have two handsome men running after me, but I’d had a really long day. The week seemed about eight days long already. My feet were truly killing me—her Ladyboat’s shoes were too small and not really designed to be worn this much.

“No,” I said, determined not to cry although my eyes didn’t seem to know that. “I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”

“Can I take your number?” Harvey asked hopefully.

“No,” Luke and I said at the same time. I glared at Luke and carried on walking. I was almost at the lift now.

“Sophie, calm down,” he said.

“No, I will not.”

“Look, I’m sorry—”

“But you’re not, are you, Luke? This isn’t funny. You keep laughing at me and none of it’s funny. I’ve had enough, I’m going home, goodbye.”

“How?” Luke asked.

“What?”

“How are you getting home?”

“Same way I got here.”

“Last train leaves Liverpool Street in ten minutes. You’ll never make it.”

Shit. I hadn’t realised it was so late. Damn Angel, making me take my watch off.

“I’ll—I’ll get a taxi.”

“It’ll cost you a fortune!”

“I’ll manage.”

“After Rome and everything? Do you even have any cash on you?”

I said nothing. The lift doors opened and I stepped in.

“I’ll figure something out,” I said.

“I’ll give you a—”

“No,” I said. Luke tried to follow me into the lift and I glared at him. “Go away.”

“No.”

He was just like Chalker. So I did what I do with Chalker. I gathered my skirts and planted my heel in his chest.

I just had time to see his astonished face as the lift doors closed.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror as I pulled out my earpiece and switched off the wire. I no longer looked gleaming and expensive. I looked tired and miserable. Luke and Harvey would probably be fighting over who didn’t get me.

Well done, Sophie. Well done.

I stomped into the ladies, where the attendant probably thought I fancied her or something, and peeled the contact lenses off my eyeballs. They were making my eyes sting.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

As I left the hotel, I tried to figure out my route home. Maybe if I got the tube back to Liverpool Street I could get a taxi and it’d be cheaper. Or maybe a night bus. Or something.

I stood on the steps of the hotel, shivering, the wind blowing bits of my hair around, trying to think.

A car pulled up in front of me.
A silver Vectra. Luke’s silver Vectra.

“How did they even let that in the car park?” I said as he rolled his window down and leaned over to me. “Don’t they have a fifty grand minimum?”

“I showed them my badge. Come on, Sophie, get in. I’ll take you home.”

“Who says I want to go home? Maybe I’ll go and find Harvey and get a room.” I started walking and he cruised along beside me.

“Because that worked out so well last time. Look, you need sleep.”

“I’ll make my own way.”

“I have a CD changer.”

I almost smiled at that.

“What’s on it?”

“Led Zeppelin—”

I held up my hands. “I’ll walk.”

“Nickelback. Avril Lavigne. Madonna. S Club Juniors. Dolly Parton. Pavarotti. Use the radio. Just get in the bloody car, will you?”

I hesitated. On the one hand, giving into Luke, which I really, really hated to do. On the other, spending hour upon hour trudging around in someone else’s deadly shoes, alone, unarmed, in London—all right, Kensington, but it was still dark and cold and lonely.

I let out a big sigh as if it was the biggest chore in the world and got in. The car was warm and quiet, a cocoon against the outside world. We slid out onto the road again.

“You don’t really have S Club Juniors in here, do you?”

He grinned sheepishly. “I don’t even have a CD changer.”

See? I knew he was a liar.

I must have dozed off some time before we hit the M11, because the next thing I remembered was Luke shaking me by the shoulder and saying we were home. I looked at the clock on the dash. It was well after midnight.

“Thanks,” I said as I got out of the car. “For the lift and everything.”

“No problem. You want me to see you in?”

“I think I can manage,” I said with as much sarcasm as my tired mind could gather. According to my roster, I should be on an early shift today. Starting in about four hours. I stifled a yawn.

“I’ll call in sick for you,” Luke offered. “You already had today off.”

“They’ll love me,” I said.

He got out of the car and walked me to my door without me asking. It was very sweet of him, but if he was expecting anything more than me passing out as soon as I got horizontal he was going to be very disappointed.

“You’ll be okay?” he said as I unlocked the door, and he looked kind of adorable in the light from the security lamp.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, opening the door and shoving inside. A wave of hot smell hit me. “Jesus, Tammy, what have you brought in?”

“Need to turn that heating down,” Luke said, making a face. “Something’s rotten.”

“It’s Tammy. When she’s feeling unloved, she brings dead things in…” I trailed off. Tammy was still at my parents’ house. So unless something had crawled through the cat flap and died…

I kicked off the torturous shoes and rushed over to the post I’d discarded yesterday, scooping up today’s on the way. No manilla envelopes, but one fat Jiffy bag, and the free charity pen…

I got my rubber gloves out and tore into the charity envelope. There was no pen. I opened the Jiffy bag. Nothing pleasant there either.

Luke and I stared at the two festering fingers. Bile rose in my throat.

“Okay, this is gross,” I said. “Get me a, get me a sandwich bag for them or something. This is disgusting.”

I didn’t know where to put them—I sure as hell wasn’t messing with the sleepy village policemen at this time of night—so I ended up shoving them in the freezer, well away from anything I might ever want to eat again.

In fact, I was thinking I might clean out the whole freezer when something caught my attention. Luke had been studying the printed “charity” envelope as it lay on the counter. I picked up the Jiffy bag.

“This wasn’t postmarked,” I said. “There’s no stamp. This was put through my door. Someone came to my house and put this through my door.”

I started to shudder. I was past fear now. I was tired and, weirdly, I was hungry, and I was damn annoyed that on top of Luke and Harvey and Wright and the Brownie twins, someone was sending me the severed fingers of someone whose murder we were miles away from solving.

I jammed my feet into trainers, strode over to the door and glared into the yard, as if I thought I might see something there.

Then I did see something there.

At least, I saw something moving beyond the fence. Not thinking, I ran straight out there, Luke yelling after me, and saw someone—not a cat or a fox or anything small, an actual person—disappear into the semi-abandoned building site across the car park.

“Sophie, what the hell are you—” Luke began, but then he stopped. “Soph,” he said quietly. “There’s someone there. Come back.”

“The hell I will,” I said. Probably it was just some kids on their way back from the pub.

On a private driveway, two hours after last orders.

I held out my hand. “Give me your gun.”

“The hell I will.”

“There’s someone there. Give me your gun.”

He’d reached me now and held onto my arm. “Stay here. I’ll go.”

“No.” I wrenched away, invincible with anger, and walked straight into the building site, picking my way over the rubble, Luke swearing behind me.

Then there was a loud shot, very close, echoing and pinging around my ears, and then a crack and a shudder, and then something smacked the back of my head and the world vanished.

Unconsciousness is nice. Dark, dreamy, restful. Like sleep, but without the dreams. A nice place to stay. All warm and comfortable.

But unconsciousness is like watching TV or reading a really good book. People never let you do it for long. Someone wanted me awake.

The next thing I heard was Luke’s voice, urgent and distant, and the next thing I saw was a lighter kind of darkness as he lifted something off my face.

“Sophie? Jesus, Sophie, say something.”

I stared up at him, winded. “I think the dress is fucked.”

He pushed more bits of rubble away from me. “Can you move? Can you feel your fingers and toes? Can you move them?”

I worked hard to catch my breath. There was too much stuff on me, I’d fallen into a pile of rubble or something. Or…had the rubble fallen on me? “I can’t move at all.”

Looking really scared now, Luke started shoving bigger bits of brick off me. I was covered in pieces of timber and brick dust and bits of concrete. I freed one arm, then the other, and tried to sit up. That… Was it a shot? Had someone
shot
me? It had knocked down half the building site—most of it, or so it felt, onto me.

Luke heaved a bit of wood off my legs and grabbed my calf. “Can you feel this?” He ran his hand up and down my leg. “Sophie, can you feel it?”

Oh, God, yes. Probably this was entirely inappropriate, but I was feeling other things as well. What he was doing was starting to make me feel dizzy. Not that I was desperate, but it had been a pretty long time and, well, you should see him.

I nodded silently, staring up at him. He was a little bit blurry. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves and he was dusty and frightened and he looked incredible.

“God, Soph.” He pulled me against him. “I thought you were gone. I thought…”

I put my arms around him. “I’m right here,” I said, and Luke kissed me. And then his hand went back down to my leg, moving up over the transmitter and garter belt, doing very inappropriate things that I begged him not to stop. And then he pulled the rather ruined dress off me and I pulled his clothes off him, and then we were naked and once we were naked we got pretty hot and pretty happy, and then…

God, I can’t believe I had sex in the rubble.

Afterwards I clung to him, breathless and sweaty and absolutely filthy and not caring at all, and he raised his head and kissed my nose and said, “You okay?”

I smiled dreamily. “I’m
great
,” I said. “How’ you doin’?”

“Only, you are lying in the rubble, and a building did just fall down on you.”

I’d sort of forgotten. It was that good.

“I’m okay,” I said, and Luke frowned. He moved away from me, and I was weak as a newborn, trying to stop him. He got something out of his jacket—what, was it made by the Mary Poppins Carpet Bag Co.?—and flashed a bright light in my eyes.

“Ow!” I pushed the torch away. “What’s that for?”

“I think you have a concussion.” He hit himself on the head, which I thought was pretty funny. “Shit.”