The Espionage Effect(104)

So simple. And yet, he held no judgment in his expression, only conviction—as if he already knew who I was, knew I would trust it once I discovered it.

“Good-bye, Alec.” I stood there, memorizing every hard plane of his face and the tenderness in his eyes that he tried so doggedly to keep hidden from the world. And as I did so, something vital deep inside me began to rend apart.

I did nothing to stop it, grew certain I deserved it.

Then before the earth opened up and swallowed me whole, I turned away and trudged up the beach, devastated.

And, blessedly or not, he let me go.

Life held no promises of being easy. Maybe that was the point of its beautiful charade: The sugar coating made the bitter pill worth swallowing.

And maybe at the core of what I felt unraveling deep in my chest would be the person I needed to find: me.





The standing breakfast order sat under metal-domed plates on a tray that was perched on the shelf inches away from the mocking DO NOT DISTURB sign that still hung in ridiculous innocence from the doorknob.

As if Anna and I hadn’t been kidnapped from this very room.

As if resident royalty hadn’t had his house bombed by me a mere hour ago.

As if my world, in spite of stupid signs and countless lies, hadn’t imploded.

I ripped the sign from the handle, breaking its string and exploding a couple dozen colorful beads in every direction. With an infuriated growl, I threw the worthless laminated instruction over the balcony. “I’ve been disturbed!” I shouted both at no one in particular and the entire world.

Then as I stood there in a damp bra and underwear, I stared at the slot above the door latch. It waited patiently for a key card. A key card I didn’t have.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I spun around. The door to the neighboring room was closed, its pretty little DO NOT DISTURB sign intact.

With zero deliberation, due to every random thread tangling in my mind in simultaneous chaos, I jogged down the curving tiled staircase and ran around the back. When the trunk of the coconut palm came into view, I took a running leap at its shaved surface and grabbed on to the side of the building for leverage.

My hip screamed in agony and the rough bark scraped my skin, but the pain only fired my determination. Nothing would stop me. From doing what, I had no clue.

After half-shimmying and half-climbing for five huffing seconds, my hand came within reach of the upper edge of the balcony wall. I gripped it while pushing off the trunk with my bare foot. Then with a grunt, I hoisted myself up, hiked a leg over, and leapt down onto the tiled floor.

“There. No stumble. I’m already doing better than you, Alec,” I grumbled to myself.

Not that it had become a contest. But with every passing second, the world had a different cast to it. Now it held both darkness and color, shadows and light. Every facet and hue seemed more vividly defined with the contrast.

And I was about to make my mark on it.

On a slow exhale, I shoved open the french door. Then I scanned the room. Inanimate objects filled my vision. A lot of fragile objects.

The first sacrifice? My dead-calm gaze landed on Anna’s computer. The one that gave us away to Miguel. The one Alec had used as a penlight perch while examining blueprints. Right under my nose, evidence there all the time for me to find—if I hadn’t blindly trusted.

I picked it up, opened the screen, then heaved it at the wall. The plastic shattered on impact, the device crumbling into several large pieces and countless gray splinters. A two-inch wide Shift key skittered across the tile until it hit my big toe. Then I stared at the tiny dent left in the ivory wall plaster.

“Not enough,” I growled.

Not nearly enough.

With a wood-jarring yank, I pulled open the TV armoire, eyeing the barware. With a derisive snort, I skipped the sturdy shot glasses and reached with both hands for the wine glasses and tumblers. Launch after launch, glass shattered against the wall over the initial dent I’d made, adding divots and pock marks to my rage-driven mural.

The hotel phone began to ring, its red light tattling, as if calling me to the proverbial principal’s office. I yanked the damn thing off the nightstand and threw it at the wall too, its thin cord jerking from the socket seconds before the clunking impact.

Frenzied to the point of no return, I plowed my way through the room, jerking paintings off the walls to whiz them away like Frisbees and lobbing ceramic lamps to smash to their deaths on the tiles. Even the TV hadn’t been spared, toppling to the ground with a satisfying crack.

Breathing heavy, but unable to function without keeping the momentum going, I ran into the bathroom. Then I stared at the mirror. A wild-eyed mess gawked back at me, hair plastered to my head, skin pallid, eyes red rimmed.

With a pang in my chest, I remembered Alec’s reflection in that mirror the night we’d officially met and his snarky comments as I stitched him up. At the unexpected trigger, my gaze drifted down to my hip, to the dark-pink spiral scar that had formed because Alec had injected me with his Hail Mary Field Cocktail.

He’d saved my life.

For what?

“Argggh!” Angered beyond measure, I spun around. Scanning the open closet, I spotted the dozen ludicrous pairs of designer shoes Anna had toted down here. Grabbing the ones with metal heels, I overhand pitched them at the mirror. The first impact made a hole. The second one shattered a spider web of cracks across the image.