“And you didn’t tell the rest of us?” I fumed. “She’s being hunted by Mirror, Mirror!”
“We’re all being hunted by Mirror, Mirror now that we helped her escape,” Bash replied reasonably. “They wouldn’t just take her. She’s probably getting a massage or something.”
I couldn’t believe the nonchalance, as if they’d already forgotten what had happened in Iceland.
“Put Dan on the phone.”
I could hear Bash mutter something to Dan. When a voice spoke into the phone again, it was Bash, not Dan.
“Never mind,” Bash sighed. “Stay where you are. We’re coming to you.”
* * *
Again, the seven of us were together in the room we’d allotted for Sasha but she was nowhere to be found.
In the time I was waiting for Bash, Dan and the others to come back, I’d called the desk to see if she’d booked an appointment at the spa or if anyone had seen her.
“I do believe she left in the middle of the night, sir,” the concierge kindly explained, her thick Scottish brogue softening her words but the sting of their implication burned into me all the same. “If I had to wager, I would say near the hour of four.”
“Left?” I echoed in disbelief. “How? Was she with anyone?”
“No, sir. She was alone and with one single bag. I did not see nor order a hackney for her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I hung up the phone without thanking her but I was fueled by shock.
She had left in the middle of the night but not by taxi? How the hell did she get anywhere if not on foot?
I ran to the wardrobe and threw it open.
It was empty.
All of the new clothes we’d purchased for her, the three pairs of boots and two pairs of shoes, gone.
She’d disappeared without a word to any of us.
I was incensed and sick to my stomach. None of it made any sense.
“How could none of you woken? She cleaned out the closet for Christ’s sake! Are you all on drugs?” I howled at my companions, knowing my anger was misplaced.
“Uh, you didn’t wake up either,” Dan reminded me tightly.
“YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?!” I fumed. There was enough blame and guilt for all of us.
“We need to find her,” I huffed, pacing around the room. “She can’t have gone far without transportation. Maybe her friend Alex knows where she went.”
“Graham, if she wanted us to know where she was, she would have told us,” Dan told me reasonably. “Since she didn’t, it’s safe to assume that Alex isn’t going to help us either.”
“We can’t just stand around and let her fend for herself!” I roared. “How can you guys be so damned stoic about this? Doesn’t she mean anything to anyone but me?”
That caused a charge of furious energy among the others and they all tensed.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Jim snarled. “Just because you’re making the most noise doesn’t mean you love her the most! She’s a part of us, all of us.”
“Then we need to find her and fight for her.”
“Graham, be reasonable for once in your goddamned life,” Dan barked. “Can’t you see she was running away from us?”
I stared at him blankly.
“Why? Why would she run from…oh…”
In my worry, I hadn’t even stopped to consider that maybe Sasha had figured it out, that she knew we were employed by the very company that wanted to see her dead.
“She knows who we are,” Dan sighed and I hung my head, shaking it in disbelief.
“This is all your fault!” I spat at Dan. “If we’d told her from the beginning like I said—”
“And when would we have done that, huh, Graham? When she was bleeding from Jim’s bear trap? When she was getting bathed by Bash? Felt up by Harry? When were we supposed to tell her when our contract is protected by an NDA? For all we knew, she was sent to us to spy on us and make sure we were doing our job!”
“We could have told her when we got here!” I cried. “You outvoted me but I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Bash said quietly. “The outcome would have been the same. She would have felt betrayed.”
“But at least if it had come from us, we could have talked it through! Instead—”
“You’re beating a dead horse, Graham.” Harry put his hand on my shoulder to calm me. “You need to be rational.”
“How the fuck do you expect me to be rational when Sasha is out there, alone, without money or contacts and a death warrant?”
I looked at him.
“Well?”
Harry had the decency to look away and I grunted, wrenching my shoulder away from his touch.
“What should we do?” Jim asked but he was talking to Dan, not me.
“We need to go after her,” I answered anyway. “See if we can at least talk to her.”