Serious Moonlight(42)

“I’m sure James Bond has utilized a potted plant or two for cover.”

“Oh, so you’re James Bond now?”

He gestured at himself. “Suave, dashing. Can fistfight on moving trains. And this skinny weakling body is irresistible to the ladies.”

“Did you say resistible?”

He clutched the front of his shirt and made a pained face. “My tender male ego . . . shattering . . . into a million pieces.”

I extended my leg and playfully kicked at him, but he caught my foot and trapped it between his knees. I had to stifle a laugh and tried to squirm my way loose. “Let me go or I’ll kick you in your tender male ego.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I so would!”

He held on to my foot harder. “Don’t make me pull out my 007 spy-gadget thingamabob and obliterate you right here behind this potted palm tree. It will—”

The elevator dinged.

We froze. I came to my senses and scrambled out of his grip. He signaled me with a finger in front of his lips and craned his neck to see through the tree branches. In the distance, someone was talking, probably on the phone. It was brief, and something was odd about it, though I couldn’t quite make out why—too far away—but now the person was getting closer, approaching us. Fabric swished . . . and then paused.

I carefully turned to my side and peered through the potted greenery. A tall, pale man in a suit with slicked-back hair was inserting his key card into the door lock. It beeped pleasantly, and then he was heading inside, rolling a black carry-on suitcase.

When the door closed behind him, Daniel said, “Who the hell was that?”

I thought for a moment before realizing. Of course. “It’s Ivanov.”

“That’s who checks in? It’s not a pseudonym? That’s . . .”

“That’s who Darke is meeting,” I finished.

And sure enough, the elevator dinged a second time, and along came a second man: Raymond Darke. No mistaking him or his blue baseball cap. But he was accompanied by a blond woman with sharp eyes and model-long legs, striding beneath the hem of a wispy dress. She was younger than Darke, perhaps in her early forties, and something about the way she carried herself conjured images of multimillion-dollar mansions and black-tie parties.

Darke stopped at room 514 and knocked on the door three times. It opened, and the man inside greeted the couple with a peculiar accent.

Russian?

Daniel and I listened intently while the door closed again. Daniel was filming the hallway with his phone, and after a few moments he signaled that he wanted to move closer to the room. Two fingers pointed toward his eyes, then me, then the hallway—he wanted me to be lookout.

He crept to the room, ducking out of the sight of the peephole, and pressed his ear to the door for what felt like an excessively long time. Long enough for my neck to ache from swinging it back and forth down the hotel hallway. And long enough for my imagination to run wild. What was going on inside that room? Were they filming high-class porn? Was she a prostitute? A lawyer? A film agent? Maybe he was discussing high-stakes foreign rights for his books.

Or were Daniel and I on the right track when we joked about Russian arms deals? Was Ivanov a Russian mobster? Had Daniel been closer to the truth than we knew, joking about James Bond? WAS THIS SOME KIND OF INTERNATIONAL SPY RING?

Just when I didn’t think I could take it anymore, Daniel lunged away from the door and took four quick steps. He slipped behind the potted tree alongside me as Darke and the woman exited the room.

I stared at their retreating backs. We couldn’t follow them. Not that I needed another reason not to do so after the incident in the park. But attempting to trail two people seemed so much more dangerous—especially when one of those people could recognize Daniel’s face.

So, what now?

I gave Daniel a wide-eyed look. He gave me one in return, and then picked up my hand and placed it over his sternum. His chest rose and fell; his heartbeat pounded fiercely under my palm. Not like my frightened-rabbit heart, but strong and sure: Thump, thump. Thump, thump. He lifted both brows at me, as if to say, See? I’m about to die of a stroke. Or maybe, See? We’ve lost our minds, getting involved in an international spy ring. And when I didn’t move my hand away and his eyelids grew heavy, it almost looked as if he were trying to say: See? There really was something between us.

He let go of my hand, so I moved it away from his chest quickly, embarrassed, but soon realized that he was only trying to focus on the hotel room again, where Ivanov was now leaving with his suitcase. When the man’s lanky figure turned the corner to head toward the elevators, I whispered to Daniel, “Did you hear anything? What were they doing?”

“Only voices. The doors are too thick. I’m sorry, but it’s a bust.”

“Nothing at all?”

“The woman laughed once toward the end. They sounded happy. That’s it.”

I tried not to allow disappointment to sink in too deep. And then an idea hit me. “Let’s follow Ivanov out of the hotel.”

“Seriously? After the park incident, with the entire Seattle-fucking-PD after us?”

I rolled my eyes. “It was one cop, and we never even knew for sure he tried to follow us.”

“I know for sure that Darke saw my face, and maybe you haven’t noticed, because you don’t stare at me often enough with yearning and devotion, but I’m a little recognizable.”