In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(70)

At the airport, Sam grabbed Sveti’s arm when she made a move toward the check-in kiosks to print out their boarding passes.

“Not here,” he said. “We’re getting new tickets.”

“What? I just bought these yesterday! They’re not refundable!”

“You’ve been on that manifest for a full day, and you babbled about the flight times online,” he said. “We’re taking a different flight, routed through a different airport. There’s one that leaves a half hour later, routed through London. We’ll take that one.”

“I did not babble! I sent one e-mail! This is so wasteful!”

He pulled her up to the ticket counter, flanked by Kev and Miles.

Sveti overheard his conversation with the ticket agent, of course.

“First class?” she exploded. “Last minute? You’re joking, right?”

Sam turned to her. “I am in a serious f*cking mood, Sveti,” he said through his teeth. “Do not fight me right now. You will lose.”

Sveti’s face was hot pink. “At least let me pay for my own!”

Sam pushed her card back. “It wasn’t your decision. I pay.”

“It’s safer,” Kev offered cautiously. “It’s exactly what I would do.”

“Me too,” Miles said, still sweeping the crowd with his eyes.

Sveti fumed all the way down to the security gate, but once there, she mellowed out enough to hug Miles and Kev.

“Thanks, you guys,” she said, voice quivering. “For everything.”

“For what? I didn’t get to shoot anyone. Or even thrash anyone.” Kev sounded disgruntled. “It would have been a privilege to pound on any piece of shit who messed with you, sweetheart. You take care now.”

Sam herded Sveti through the airport security routine. Tablets, phones, laptops. Liv’s ring clattered into a plastic basin and went through the X-ray machine without a hiccup. Hell and damn.

He started to breathe a little easier when every passenger had filed past, observed and X-rayed by his eyes as they passed. Sveti was tucked into her window seat, and the plane doors were shut. Ahhh.

She was still sulking about his alpha dog posturing. They’d been tense with each other ever since the soul-baring sex last night. His umpteenth declaration of undying passion. He had to scale those back.

At this point, she could barely look him in the eye.

She put her earbuds on as soon as they got under way. He was dismissed. Just as well, as he could use a little downtime. Before they had left Tam and Val’s house, he’d scanned the photos of Sveti’s parents and a translation of Sonia’s letter. He took the documents out to study. Sweet relief, to throw himself into data crunch mode.

He’d compiled a list of lenses through which he’d looked at them. Poets’ dates of birth, dates the poems were published, stanzas in which the lines appeared, etc. He’d read all the historical context. Nada.

But he could feel the puzzle’s desire to be solved. It was a subtle quality of energy, pulsing, trapped, and wanting to flow free. He was attracted to it. That was why he was a detective. Hell, that was probably one of the reasons he was nuts for Sveti. That woman was a knot needing to be untied if ever there was one.

Sveti had caught the thought wave. She glanced over at him as if he’d spoken her name. She pulled out the earbuds. “What?”

“Didn’t say anything,” he said.

“What are you looking at?” Sveti leaned over to peek, and let out a pained sound. “Oh, God, at those? Why?”

“What else have I got to look at? You got a better idea?”

“I flogged those to death years ago! Let them rest in peace!”

“Fresh eyes,” he said. “You never know.”

She was shaking her head. “It’s a dead end, Sam.”

“You just can’t stand the way it makes you feel,” he said. “But I don’t have any of that baggage. I might as well take a look.”

“I did not run away from it!” she said, stung. “I could write a master’s thesis on any one of those poems and their social, linguistic, and historical context! I gave those damn quotes everything I had!”

“Don’t get uptight. I won’t hurt anything by looking at them.”

She tossed her hair and settled back into her seat, tucking her earbuds into her ears. Dismissed again. He gazed at her. Admiring the way her jeans fit, the way her hair swung. Liv’s ring looked heavy on her hand, resting on the table. He admired her slim fingers against the open flight magazine. Saw the title of an article. Something about TSA.

Acronyms. Yeah. He looked at the poems again. Typed in a new category. Tried the first letters in every quote, the first letters in every word, the second letters, the third. All gibberish. He was getting out into total derivative obscurity, but hey, whatever. It was a long flight.

He typed in the poets’ names, in the order Sonia had listed them. Made an acronym of their first names. PRJEV. Last names. RLLRL.

There it was. That tickle. An itch wanting to be scratched. Tangled up energy wanting to be soothed, smoothed.

When you don’t know which way to turn, look to the source.

What was the source but the poets themselves, in this context?

He reached out and tapped Sveti’s arm. “Hey.”