“Flight response overriding everything else?”
She nodded.“I followed him here.He was already in his room when I arrived.Xane, he’s proper freaked out.Pacing.Rambling.I thought about calling security, but—” She shook her head like she knew that wasn’t the right course of action.On that point, they agreed.
“Coming to me was a much better plan.Thank you for that.”
She frowned and shrugged.“Spook trusts you.I’ve no reason not to.If it wasn’t for your help in the past…”
Xane caught hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze.He had been instrumental in getting them together last July.“You said he was rambling.What about?”
“I don’t know.He’s doing it in Swedish.”
That there was another neon warning sign.Spook had been UK resident for so long that he said he thought in English these days.Xane knew some of that was a deliberate strategy on his friend’s part.A way of pushing trauma into a past so removed from his present there was a language barrier.
“I don’t suppose you remember any of it?”
The strain of recollection showed in her pretty eyes as she sought to retrieve the words.“Förbövelen?Helvete?He was saying that a lot.And something idiot.”
“Din javla idiot?”
“That sounds like it.”
“So, you fucking idiot, and a string of fucks.”
They passed the bank of lifts and kept on going.He and Spook appeared to have been given suites at opposite ends of the hotel.
“I didn’t know you spoke Swedish.”
Xane scoffed.“I can swear in Swedish.Just don’t ask me to order you anything.”That earned him a brief smile.“Anything else.Anything at all?”
“Sif… Sieve…” Her brows drew together tight.“Something like that.”
“Siv?”
She nodded.
Please, fucking hell, no.
“The woman.What did she look like?”
“A flasher,” Alle said, startling a tense laugh from him.“Well, she had on a pale coloured mac and a baseball cap.”
“Blonde?”
“Very.”
Please don’t let this be who I think it is.Please, God.Please.It wasn’t like he implored the Almighty very often.Not that he even believed the bugger existed, and anyway, she’d practically confirmed the woman’s identity already.
“Tell me again what she said.Say it how she said it.”
Alle shrugged.“I really don’t remember the Swedish.But she called him Jan.That’s what she said first.It stood out because I’ve never heard anyone call him that.”
“That’s because no one does.”Jan was a relic.A persona consigned to history and legal documents.
Her!
Xane quickened his pace.He’d have sprinted, but any sign of agitation and security would descend.The men in black were dotted about at strategic points.There’d been a guy lounging by the lifts.
He supposed there’d always been a risk of it every time Black Halo toured here, but out of a population of ten million, how likely was it to stumble into one particular person among them even over the course of a decade?
