He arches a brow. “Do they, now? That’s news to me.”
I nod. “They haven’t told me that, but it’s in the way they look at each other and interact.”
“I’ll trust you on that, so we’ll cut both of them out of this. I’ll prep Nathan to talk to Gallo when he returns.” He studies me a moment, lacing his fingers together on the table. “Trigger told me nothing more than what I’ve told you. I promise.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t have to. Did that wall of memories you created in the closet help you remember anything?”
“I just put it up, so no. Not yet, but I do feel like I’m starting to form real memories about things that aren’t requiring flashbacks.”
“Anything you feel is important?”
“Well, it’s not the location of the necklace, or any time or place that places me as a CIA agent.” My brow furrows. “Actually, maybe that’s not completely true.” I shove my plate aside and rest my arms on the table. “Aside from the combat training memory I had, there’s one of David back in Paris. As I told you, we had a fight and he left. I slammed the door and leaned against it. I ripped off the necklace, and then scolded myself for playing my character too deeply.”
Kayden’s eyes sharpen. “Are you saying he was an assignment?”
“No,” I say, certainty in my reply, “yet I see why that memory makes you assume that.” Frustrated that I can’t remember more, I push to my feet and walk to the coffeepot, removing two cups from above the sink. And right when I reach for the cups, I remember more about that night with David. I’ve just ripped the necklace off, and I’m staring at how truly stunning the stones are. It’s beautiful, and I ripped it off and for what? This is a character I’m playing. I suck in air with that thought and then shut my eyes, and silently plead with my mind to give me more.
I squat beside the necklace and reach for it, noticing the piece of paper hanging out of it. Snatching it up, I note the address written on it. “Damn it,” I murmur. I’d already decided he was a dud assignment, a man mixed up with someone else, and I’d be pulled off it any day now, yet clearly I was wrong. He’s using me, just like I’m using him. I stare at the piece of paper, obligated to investigate, but I’m not doing it right now. I’m here not for him or for my job. I’m here to follow up on a name and address I found in my father’s copy of Carrie by Stephen King.
My eyes pop open. “I was wrong. He was an assignment.”
“You sound more certain than ever,” Kayden says, stepping beside me.
I face him, both of us resting our elbows on the granite surface, while I quickly recap my memory. “I thought of him as an assignment, Kayden, and that explains why I’d jump all over the crazy drunk proposal. That’s how that happened: he was drunk and he proposed. I was like—great, Paris. I need to go to Paris, and the CIA won’t be suspicious. They assigned me this guy.”
His jaw sets and he turns my back against the counter, his hands coming down on either side of me. “Answer every question I’m about to ask you with the first thing that pops into your head. If David was an assignment, why not call the CIA for help when he died?”
“I was looking into my father’s death, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t being set up.”
“Why?”
“It was a gut instinct.”
“But you were desperate to escape Neuville. You never called them at all?”
“Once, from an untraceable line. But the number I was to call into wasn’t working. That’s when I surmised that someone at the CIA was working with Neuville, hence why no one had come to save me or kill me.”
“Where’d you hide the necklace?”
“I don’t know yet, but I keep thinking about this one chocolate shop in Paris. I went there that night. It has to be there or close to there, and I don’t know why I just can’t remember this.”
“There’s something your mind still thinks you can’t handle.”
This is not an idea I welcome. I’ve relived my father’s murder and I keep reliving what Neuville did to me. What could possibly be worse?
thirteen
sara
It’s raining.
The bed is warm.
Chris’s hard body wrapped around mine is even warmer.
I can hear the storm pelting the windows of our master bedroom, see the dark sky beyond the panes peeking through the small part in the curtains. I’ve come to know that rain in Europe is not like rain in the United States. Here in Paris, when they say it’s going to rain, they mean a steady, all-day-and-all-night drenching that you cannot escape. I’ve also come to know that when Chris holds me this way, with his leg tangled around mine, he can’t escape the tragedies of his past or the demons they’ve created. Demons that once would have driven him to a dangerous need to use physical pain to drive away the emotional pain.