“Sure,” Tristan said. “Like a houseboat, but it’s rated for ocean voyaging, too.”
“I’m sure we can get a hotel or something,” Anjali said.
“It has three guest cabins. My friends usually stay on the boat with me when they visit. The harbor is right in the middle of the country, which is tiny. It’s more of a town.”
Anjali’s eyes narrowed, and she still looked dubious. “I’m sure it’s fine that we get a hotel. We would need two rooms, after all.”
Colleen jumped in. “Well, of course. Tristan said the boat hasthreeguestrooms, right? There woulddefinitelybe two different rooms for you guys.”
Tristan nodded slowly. “Of course. Yes, my boat has three guestrooms, plus my master cabin. You two will each have a separate room. Colleen can also have her own room because there are more than enough.”
That was overdoing it.
Anjali said, “Of course, Colleen should have a separate room, also. Or Colleen and I can share a room. Because you should not take advantage of Colleen or hurt her reputation anymore.”
Colleen told her, “I don’t think I have much of a reputation in Monaco for anybody to hurt.”
“Still,” Anjali said. “People will talk.”
Anjali and Colleen spent a few hours walking around Newark’s Liberty Airport to stretch their legs before returning to the private terminal and the plane. They bought a new, extra-large roller suitcase, which Colleen tucked herself into when the US customs official walked onto the plane, looked around, and left, to Anjali’s dismay.
The sun and the East Coast of the United States fell behind them as they flew over the enormous rippling disk of water toward France.
Colleen wheedled until Tristan relented and allowed her to help him prepare supper.
When she found out that it was literally just sticking foil trays into a warming oven for twenty minutes, she laughed at him. “And I thought you were hustling back here.”
Tristan stood up from closing the door of the tiny oven. “I feel like crap for getting them into the situation. Jian is injured, and Anjali is traumatized. I don’t mean to minimize Jian’s trauma, either. Or yours. It’s because of me. We’ve been kidnapped and on the run, and your apartment was trashed. I think I must be mental. When I tapped you to be my coding consultant, I wanted to wine and dine you in London and Paris, not eat takeout in your apartment and a crappy hotel.”
“I got the authentic professional coder experience then.”
“Yeah, probably.”
He still looked so sad, like the light had gone out of his brilliant blue eyes.
“Look, you didn’t know how this was going to pan out,” she said. “You didn’t plan this. All this stuff just happened. No one blames you.”
“It’s still my fault, though. Or at least my responsibility.”
“One interesting thing about this is that I learned my bestie Anjali has a sadistic streak. You should’ve heard the way she was talking about what she would do to the Butorins if she ever got a hold of their data on the internet. It was malicious. Ilovedit.”
Tristan chuckled. “I wish I could have helped with that.”
“Dude! I do not like that you are talking about yourself in the past tense. We had some things to do today, including taking Jian for medical care and getting ourselves out of the country, but it’s time to start talking about how we can get Mary Varvara Bell off your case.”
“There’s nothing I can do. By the time we get to Monaco, it’ll be Tuesday morning. I’d only have two business days to get the stock and crash it. I don’t even know how I could do it. I’d have to own a ton of the stock to begin with to enact a long squeeze to drive the price down, and I don’t. Buying large amounts of the stock will drive the priceupbecause of supply and demand. It’s not enough time. I can’t do it.”
“You keep saying‘I’can’t do it,‘I’don’t own enough stock, and all that. It’s not just you.I’mhere, too, and I told you that I’m not going to let you flap in the wind.Ican help.Ican figure stuff out, too. Like every other moderator on the Sherwood Forest forums, I have stock trading accounts in good standing on every major platform to film tutorials. And like every forum member, I have an account that I play with. I paid off half my student loans by treating the Killer Whales’ advice as contrary indicators and doing the opposite of what you guys told everyone to do. I might have half a CS and finance degree and little money, but I’m not nothing.”
“Good girl.”
Was he playingthatgame in the middle ofthis?“What?Dude, seriously.”
“You’re doing well. You’re not apologizing. You’ve listed a few of your many virtues.Good girl.”
“Yeah, okay.” Confusion spun her head, but Tristan’s sexy voice made her want to sit at his feet and hug his leg. “But my point was that you’re not alone in this.I can help you.”
“So noted.”
