“How could I forget,” she said dryly. “In all her drunken, naked glory.”
“After you left, she said she thought the Vice President was going to make an investment through a series of shell companies in some enterprise connected to Idris’s father. And she mentioned that your father was the money man. It sounded suspect. In fact, it almost sounded like the VP’s son, Idris, and you are straw men—the public face of whatever deal this is to protect your fathers from scrutiny and scandal. Maybe the information you have is related to that?”
Marielle’s tone was light and conversational, but her meaning was unmistakable.
The color drained from Hanna’s face.
“Like you said Poppy was plastered.” Hanna’s said in a thin, wavering voice. “She didn’t know what she was saying. She was confused, or trying to start trouble, or —.”
She stopped speaking, pressed her lips together, and stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the stone floor. Before Omar could react, she left the kitchen. Her footsteps sounded, quick and light on the stairs are she raced to her room.
Omar and Marielle sat in silence, the half-eaten meal spread between them.
“I probably pushed her too hard. She’s terrified,” Marielle said finally.
“You didn’t. And she should be.” He reached for the pitcher of kir and topped off both their glasses. “Whatever she knows, it’s worth killing for. Idris proved that.”
“So did whoever compromised the safe house.”
He met her eyes across the table. That was the piece that kept nagging at him. Idris’s men were a known threat—they worked for a wealthy criminal with resources and reach. But the U.S. government turning against operatives it had hired? That would be something else entirely. If it was true.
“Come on.” He stood and picked up the pitcher and what remained of the food. “Let’s take this outside. I can’t think in here.”
Marielle collected their glasses and followed him through the cheery kitchen to the back door and the patio that sat on the other side.
Seven
On the patio, Omar bypassed the mosaic tile table with the umbrella and carried the pitcher and the food to a weathered wooden pergola with a built-in bench and a small wooden table. Jasmine vines climbed the structure’s posts and twisted through the slats overhead like ribbons. As dusk deepened over the village, dozens of tiny solar-powered fairy lights woven through the vines’ glossy green leaves winked on.
Marielle sank onto the striped bench cushion and drew in a slow breath. The evening air was layered with scent—the jasmine and lavender’s heady sweetness, the herbaceous sharpness of rosemary, the tang of citrus, and beneath it all, the briny exhale of the Mediterranean.
Beyond the low stone wall marking the property’s edge, the sea moved in lazy swells, its surface burnished copper and rose gold in the fading light. The horizon had deepened to aubergine, and above it, the first stars punctured the gauzy twilight like pinpricks.
The setting was lush, romantic, and completely wasted on them. They were here to strategize. She settled back against the bench and Omar sat beside her. The kir caught the fairy lights, glowing like liquid quartz in the jelly jars.
She sipped her drink. “How’s your headache?”
“Gone.”
He answered too fast, but she believed him. The brackets of tension that had framed his mouth on the trail had smoothed away, and those dark, watchful eyes were no longer pinched. He looked like the Omar she knew, and she was glad for that.
“Good.”
They sat without speaking for a long moment, listening to the murmur of voices drifting up from the village square; a burst of laughter, bright and untroubled; faint piano music; and the put-put-put of a Vespa navigating the coastal road. Somewhere in the trees, a common nightingale whistled his mating song.
“We need to stay the course. The only way to keep Hanna safe from Idris’s men is to go to the safe house,” he said finally.
She disagreed. “We can’t do that until we figure out if our own government is working against us. They were willing to burn Hanna. What makes you think they won’t do the same to us?”
Beside her, he leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands loosely clasped. Through her flowy linen pants she felt the heat radiating from his body.
His jaw tightened. “On our way to Marseille, we’ll reach out to Trent’s team through the official channel. Jake might have more intel by now. Maybe Olivia’s warning was premature, the system flagged something that’s already been neutralized.”
Marielle shook her head no. “Or maybe the threat is worse than we know. Maybe going to Marseille means walking straight into a trap.”
“We can’t hide out here indefinitely. Idris knows we took Hanna. If he really wants to find her, he’ll check every village between Marseille and Cassis. Eventually his men will hit this one.”
“You’re right. Staying here is a stopgap, not a solution. But going to the safe house when Olivia explicitly warned us not to?” She held his gaze, willing him to understand. “That feels like choosing the firing squad over the noose.”