He turned back to Micah.“Well, shit.”
Micah threw his hands in the air, a sigh of exasperation Tristan had seen more than once in their friendship that had spanned over half their lives. “Yeah, and that’s why the two of you need to stay together. If you let her go off somewhere, they’ll get to her. If she’s with you, you’ve got a chance of either getting away or getting them to back off.”
Colleen yelled at Micah, “Hey, I get a say in this, and I said I’m buying a plane ticketon a different airplaneand getting the hell out of here!”
They both looked down at her, a furious little ball of cute.
She flung her arm out from her side while pointing at Micah, and water drops flew off her fingertip and splattered on his shirt.
Micah looked down at the spreading spots on his white dress shirt.
Colleen yelled, “Just because this new guy made something up doesn’t make it true.”
Tristan wanted to take her in his arms and pat her dry, but she might bite his head off. “Yeah, but he’s right. The Butorins are murderous assholes, and I’m sorry I got you involved with them.”
“You don’t know what they’ll do.No one knows that.”
Tristan gestured. “Maybe not, but Micah’s right. You’re safer with me than if you go off alone. Come on. Stay with me. I need my coding consultant. I’ll double my previous salary offer.”
Her sweet brown eyes were huge, and she was panting like she’d already run miles and yet she was desperate to keep running. “You don’tneedme, Twist. I heard what those guys were saying about you. You coded two highly advanced pieces of software. I was thinking about the worm that keeps you anonymous. I can think of some ways to do it, but I’d get caught. Mine wouldn’t work because antimalware programs would kill it immediately. You don’t need a junior coder with half of a bachelor’s degree to doanything.This is too much for me. I should leave.”
5
In the Hangar
Tristan
Tristan ran both his hands through his dark hair.“Micah, can we have a minute?”
He rolled his eyes.“Fine.Yous guystwalkit out. You should listen to reason, Colleen. You would be safer with this guy than out there alone.”
Twalk.
For just a moment, Micah’s carefully enunciated American accent had broken, and a hint of New Yorker had come through. Tristan hadn’t heard that from him for years. He must be perturbed.
Micah walked through the darkness toward an airplane hangar cowering over the small heliport.
Tristan unclenched his fists from his hair and angled his head to look down at Colleen. “Don’t go. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
“It seems like a lot more.”
“We can clear it up. We can talk it out.”Invested in.“I know that we only met a few days ago, but I feel like we could have something here if we want it, if we don’t just let it go so easily.”
She scowled at him with her jaw clenched as she ground her teeth. “We only met each other a few days ago. It isn’t like we’ve been married for twenty years. Our so-called relationship is way less than a week old. We don’t have to‘fight for’forty-eight hours of bumping uglies.”
“It’s been three glorious days, Sailor Moon, and this misunderstanding is something we can get over.”
“You act like banging is a big deal or something. Just let me go.”
Tristan shook his head. “I’ve dated a lot of women in my life. If you want full disclosure, six days before I met you at the Devilhouse, a friend of mine’s sister came into town, and we had a bit of how’s your father. Two days before that, I met another woman at a tourist trap bar where a friend of mine and I had gone for a drink, and we had a knee-trembler in an alley. The night before that, a college friend was in town and wanted to be shown around the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, and I showed her the crown jewels. A few days before that, a friend of mine from boarding school got me backstage tickets to a rock concert, and I went back to my hotel with one of the backup dancers. Shall I go on?”
Colleen clapped her hands over her ears. “I do not need to hear this.”
“Oh, but I’ve only told you about the last few weeks. If you need full disclosure, I’d need to consult my phone for dates prior to that. I think I have notes, or else I can use the map review function and figure out where I was.”
“Sliced Christ on a cracker,Twist, I do not need to know about your sexual history. And youlied.You are an easy lay.”
“Ouch, and touché. I admit, I was playing hard to get with you, but I was playing. And I like playing with you. I don’t want you to go, Colleen. I do think that you’d be safer with me than off on your own because Sergey—”
