Chapter 99 PROTECTING ZARA

Chapter 99 PROTECTING ZARA


Adrian's POV

We were out of the hotel in seven minutes.

I called Dominic while Zara packed and he answered on the second ring and I told him what was happening and he said he'd have a car at the back entrance in ten and I said we'd be there and hung up and looked at Zara pulling her notebook and laptop into her bag with quick efficient hands.

"Leave anything you can't carry easily," I said.

"I'm not leaving my notes," she said.

"I know," I said. "That's why I said easy, not everything."

She looked at me briefly and kept packing and I took her bag from her when it was done and she didn't argue and we went down the back stairwell and through the service corridor and out into the alley where a black car was already waiting, a local contact Dominic had called, and we got in and the driver pulled out immediately.

Zara sat beside me and held her bag on her lap and looked out the window and I looked at my phone and tracked the messages coming in from Dominic's team.

"How did he find out about me that fast," she said without looking away from the window.

"He's been watching us longer than we realised," I said. "Probably since London."

She was quiet for a moment and then said, "eight months of work."

"It's not gone," I said. "You have everything you built. He can't take that."

"I know," she said. "I'm not scared. I'm angry. There's a difference."

"I know there is," I said, and she looked at me and something in her face softened slightly.

We drove in silence for a while and I thought about the hotel room and her hand covering mine and the way she'd kissed me, careful and deliberate, nothing performative about it, and the way she'd settled against my side after and I'd covered her hand and felt something settle in me that hadn't been settled in a very long time.

The car stopped at a safe house on the north side that Dominic's Chicago contact maintained and we went inside and the driver left and it was just us in a clean, quiet flat with two rooms and a kitchen.

Zara put her bag down and sat at the small table and opened her laptop and I stood near the door and watched her pull up her files and start checking everything was intact and I thought about the fact that we were here, safe, and the adrenaline was coming down and what was underneath it.

"Come and sit down," she said without looking up.

I went and sat across from her and she kept working for a few minutes and then closed the laptop and looked at me.

"I need to ask you something," she said.

"Okay," I said.

"In the hotel," she said. "Before everything went wrong. Was that just the situation or is it actually something."

I looked at her and said, "it's actually something."

She held my gaze and then nodded once and said, "okay," and that was it, clean and direct, no performance around it.

"I don't do this well," I said, because she deserved honesty. "I've been in other people's situations for twenty years and I keep nothing for myself. My sister says it all the time."

"I know," she said. "I've been watching you for eight months, remember."

"That should probably bother me," I said.

"You've been watching me for three weeks," she said, "so we're even."

I almost smiled and she did smile and it changed her whole face and I looked at it and thought that I had been very careful not to notice things about her and it hadn't worked at all.

She got up and went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of water and sat down again and said, "what happens now. Practically."

"We stay here tonight," I said. "Morning flight back. You come back with us and stay somewhere Kade's people can't access."

"And my story," she said.

"Your story runs when this is over," I said. "Exactly as you planned it."

She nodded and drank her water and we sat there in the quiet flat in Chicago and the night moved around us and I looked at her across the small table and felt the thing from the hotel room still sitting between us, not resolved but not going anywhere either.

She reached over and put her hand flat on the table between us, palm up, just left it there, and I looked at it and looked at her face and she was looking at me steadily and I put my hand over hers and her fingers curled around mine and we stayed like that.

"I don't usually let people in," I said.

"I know," she said. "That's why I put my hand on the table instead of waiting for you."

I looked at her and she looked back at me and I leaned forward and kissed her and she kissed me back and her free hand came up and held my jaw and it was slow and certain and entirely different from the almost-moment in the lobby because this time neither of us was going to pull back.

She moved around the table and I pulled her onto my lap and kissed her properly, my hands in her hair, her hands on my face, and we stayed like that for a long time, kissing slowly with no urgency behind it, just present in it, and she tasted like the water we'd just drunk and something underneath that was just her.

She pulled back eventually and rested her forehead on mine and we both breathed and she said, "we should sleep."

"We should," I said, and didn't move.

She laughed quietly and I felt it against my jaw and she said, "Adrian."

"I know," I said, and let her go and she stood and went to the bedroom door and looked back at me and said, "come on," and I got up and followed her.

My phone buzzed and I looked at it and it was Dominic.

"Ava went to find Luca alone. She's not answering. I don't know where she is.”