The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(61)

“Why?” Ashley echoed.

“The answer is the elephant, Ashley. The answer is he didn’t let me go. I never escaped from the Company, except once, when I gave you the slip on the plane.”

“That’s crazy,” she said. “Alfred, you’re . . . you’re being paranoid. That’s understandable, but I told you—”

“Right. I own you. I’m your assignment.”

“No, not like that. Not that way.” She shook her golden hair and it swirled around her tanned face, which didn’t look so tan right then.

“Who assigned you to me, Ashley? Was it Director Smith or the Operative Nine?”

I pressed the red button. Her whole body went rigid as the display sprang to life: 30 . . . 29 . . . 28 . . . 27 . . .

“See, I’m pretty confident I know,” I said. “So confident I’m willing to bet my life on it.”

She lunged across the table at me. I sprang from the chair and it thumped onto the germy carpet.

19 . . . 18 . . . 17 . . . 16 . . .

“Who is it, Ashley? Me or Nueve? Who really owns you?”

I tossed the box at her. She dropped the gun and caught it in both hands. Her shoulders shook as her thin fingers danced over the keypad.

The red light went black.

I picked up the fallen chair and sat down. She slumped into hers in front of the door, the gun lying forgotten at her feet as she cradled the box like a newborn baby in against her chest.

“Now tell me some bull crap about that being a lucky guess,” I said. “In love with someone you shouldn’t be. I guess so. Guessed wrong the first time, guessed right this time.”

“It isn’t what you think,” she whispered. She wouldn’t look at me.

“You don’t have to explain anything, Ashley.”

I got up, went into the bathroom, and came back out with a few sheets of toilet paper, which I tried to hand to her. She said, “I won’t wipe my face with toilet paper, Alfred.”

I pushed the paper into my pocket. “Okay.”

“I really do want to protect you,” she said. “And I really do—I really do have feelings for you. That’s the reason, Alfred. The only reason I agreed to any of this.”

“Where is Nueve?” I asked.

“I have no idea—” she started. Then she stopped herself and said, “On his way.”

“How soon?”

“An hour, maybe two—”

“I want a head start.”

“There’s nowhere you can go where he can’t find you.”

“We,” I said. “Say it. We.”

“We,” she said.

“A friend of mine is in trouble. I’ve got to save him before some very bad people do a very bad thing to him or his family. So I’m leaving, and you’re going to let me.”

“I can’t let you, Alfred.”

I gently pried the box from her fingers.

“You’re not going to wake up Sam. You’re not going to come after me. You’re going to sit here and wait for your boyfriend and when he gets here you’re going to say I took the box and bopped you over the head with it. I’ll bop you right now, if you think that’ll make it more believable.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” I said. “That it’s something you really don’t want to do.”

I stepped around her and unlatched the door. I heard a clicking sound behind me. Turning around, I saw the gun in her hands, and the gun was pointed at the center of my thick forehead.

“Were you lying?” I asked.

“You know I was.”

“Not about Nueve,” I said. “Not about your assignment. About the right thing still mattering. Were you lying? Does it still matter? I think it does. Sometimes I get confused about what the right thing is, but in all this, in everything that happened since I found Excalibur, I always tried to do the right thing. Like now my right thing is trying to save my friend. Your right thing is giving me the chance to save him. That’s the right thing, Ashley. The thing-that-must-be-done. Sometimes the thing-that-must-be-done and the right thing are the same thing for both people. Sometimes they’re not, like Samuel putting a bomb in my skull. Right for him. Wrong for me. But just because something like that happens doesn’t mean you stop trying to do the right thing.”

I was feeling a little dizzy and a lot tired. I needed to leave. I said, “So you do your thing and I’ll do my thing and maybe in the end everything will turn out just fine.”

I opened the door and cold air poured into the room. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Maybe from the cold, maybe from the fact that Ashley was pointing a semiautomatic at my face.

“At least tell me where you’re going,” she said.

“Where it began,” I said, and then I stepped into the night and the door swung closed behind me.

I walked across the parking lot, and the muscles between my shoulder blades twitched, expecting the bullet. I knew she had to be watching me through the window, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to me at that moment was Mr. Needlemier. The world wasn’t in jeopardy this time, just one person in it, and that’s just as important.