“Yes. He waited with me while I called my credit card companies and found out they were cancelled.” And like a snap of fingers I am back in the hotel lobby, the moment after I’ve discovered my last card is as dead as the other three. Neuville steps in front of me, looking like Mr. Tall, Dark, and Prince Charming in a finely fitted suit, his dark hair slicked back:
“Your key,” he says, offering me a small envelope.
I don’t reach for it. “What do you mean?”
“I paid for two weeks for you. That gives you time to replace your passport, and hopefully have dinner with me at least one more time.”
“I’m a stranger. Why would you do this? The room is expensive.”
“The money is of no consequence to me,” he says. “You being on the street, however, I find, is. Take the key, Ella.”
“This doesn’t mean I—”
“Of course it doesn’t. There are no strings.”
Only there were strings, I think bitterly, though I know bitterness is a dangerous emotion. “He paid for my room for two weeks and promised it came with no strings,” I say, shaking myself back to the present. “Which, of course, we now know was all about building a façade of trust.” The way I’d built the one where I was a schoolteacher by trade, I think before adding, “Getting back to David and my flashback—I don’t know how I found him. Maybe it was the address in the necklace. Did you check it out?”
“I did,” he says. “It’s a large building with residential and commercial tenants. The unit in question is vacant.”
“Vacant? That makes no sense.”
“It sounds like a drop location for the necklace.”
“Who owns the property?”
“Neuville.”
“Of course. So everything that happened to me was a setup. Do you have photos of the building? Google Maps or something else that I could loo
k at? I’m wondering if that’s where David died, since that’s the last place I remember having the necklace.”
He opens a drawer in the desk and pulls out an iPad. I stand and lean on the desk next to him, and he hands me the Google Maps view of the building and street around it. I give a quick shake of my head. “That’s not where David died.” I step in front of Kayden. “If the address was a drop location, why would David leave me with the necklace and with no money or place to stay?”
“I told you. It’s a decoy.”
“And yet he told me not to give it to ‘him’ as he died. That makes no sense.”
Kayden sets the iPad on the desk. “But I’d argue it as fact.”
“Based on what?”
“We know that Neuville being there in that hotel, and your needing his help, wasn’t an accident. And if that necklace was real, he would have taken it from you.”
“Unless I’d already hidden it.”
“At that point, you didn’t seem to know what was going on.”
“I’m smart enough to know everything wasn’t as it should be, and I darn sure knew there was a note in the necklace. I also knew that wasn’t normal. And you said that address was a drop location. David left the necklace with me.”
“He went to negotiate a higher price, and it backfired.”
“He left the necklace with me.”
“And checked you out of your room.”
“He also begged me not to let ‘him,’ whoever he is, have the necklace. Why would he do that if it was a decoy?” My stomach knots. “Unless . . . he didn’t. Neuville either set all of it up or he intercepted David and whoever he was working for.” I press my hands to my face, frustrated with myself. “I have to remember.”
Kayden steps to me and lowers my hands, his covering mine, now resting between us. “You will. And talking about it seems to fill in holes for you.”