She’d invented the ending for their romance subplot after Nika drifted into oblivion, just as she’d invented the thriller ending. A blissful happy-ever-after between Galina and Holt hadn’t seemed right. Though he’d killed a man to save her life, Galina had sensed his heart wasn’t in it, wasn’t able to be in it because of his tragic backstory, so Alice had written a poignant, aching separation, which was totally in her own field of expertise. And given that Holt—this‘Holt’—hadn’t been there for Nika at the end of her real life, maybe that was accurate—minus the murder, presumably.
He opened the door and stood aside to let Alice leave the bathroom first—less about chivalry and more about keeping an eye on her. He flanked her as they set out down the corridor. He even walked like he did in the book—unhurried but with the open posture of someone aware of his surroundings. Laughter and shouts echoed out of the open classroom door behind them. She pulled the cap lower. There went any chance her absence wouldn’t be missed—she was already on the principal’s bad side for letting her work slip while she’d nursed Nika and finished the novel.
Novel? Could she even call it that now? For months she’d been fantasizing about walking into the staff lounge and casually slipping into conversation that she’d hit theNew York Timesbestseller list and was quitting teaching to write full time. Being escorted out by the trash collector wasn’t the triumph she’d imagined. All that work, the naive hope that this would be a pathway to something else…
Maybe she could collect the laptop, give him the slip and deliver it and herself to the Montrose Police Station. She couldexplain everything before this got any crazier, quietly take the ebook down from the retailer sites, hand over her recordings and notes, let the grown-ups deal with the fallout. Surely he was exaggerating her predicament—and his. She’d done nothing wrong—nothing she’d been aware of at the time.
And like being caught speeding and claiming you hadn’t known the legal limit, was ignorance no defense?
From behind them came a familiar metallic squeal—the external door at the far end of the corridor was opening. She’d been begging the janitor to oil it for weeks.
“Don’t look,” Holt muttered as she went to turn. “Keep walking. Don’t change your pace.”
Shoes squeaked across the vinyl, a couple of pairs. Voices rumbled. She couldn’t make out words but she’d swear she detected a Russian accent. The window cleaners, or whoever they really were? The back of her neck prickled.
“But the kids!” she hissed. “You said these guys are armed!”
“Kids’ll be fine. Whoever they are, these people won’t want any kind of incident—they’ve gone to a lot of effort to fly under the radar. It’s you they’re after. They’ll wanna be in and out fast, without blowing their cover or raising alarms.”
Holt adjusted the garbage bag over his shoulder, making it out to be heavy. He stepped directly behind her, touching her back to urge her ahead. Masking her from their view? He made a good wall—he had to be a foot taller than her and half a foot wider. But any second the cleaning crew would realize she wasn’t in her class. And then the kids would tell them she’d left with the garbage man…
The walk to the exit seemed three times longer than normal, her legs moving of their own accord, her vision distorting until she had the sense she was in a primitive 3D computer game, all converging lines and disorienting perspective.
Finally, she pushed open the exterior door. Coach Jamal was crossing the path in front of them, hauling a string bag of footballs. She lowered her gaze and pretended she was rubbing her eye, to shield her face with her cap. As if her big brown hair wasn’t enough to give the game away.
Or should she ask him for help? Signal him? What would Galina do? She straightened but he’d already passed, his back to her. Holt planted himself at her side, blocking her view of him.
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. “And walk faster—but not suspiciously fast.”
Galina—Nika—would follow her gut. “Moscow Rules,” she’d say. If this guy was who he said he was, Nika had trusted him with her life. Alice’s gut was no help—it was mostly just trying to keep down the chicken wrap she’d had for lunch. If she chose to believe he was Anderson Holt, it stood to reason that she’d have to accept that the defamation suit was real, a troupe of Russian fake window cleaners was on her heels, and Nika had deceived her. She didn’t want any of it to be true.
But refusing to believe it wouldn’t make it untrue.
Chapter 5
Alice
Alice stole a look at Holt. He was scanning the scene as thoroughly as he’d scanned her. Her instincts for people were usually solid—a decade of teaching did that for you. But were her wires crossed because she was confusing the fictional Holt with this one? Not that she’d detected major differences. This version had more detail—the patchy unshaven hair on his neck growing in different directions and broken up by little red bumps, the curve at the end of his long nose, the sexy hollow between his jaw and his cheekbone, the messy tufted eyebrows… Her Holt—Nika’sHolt—had been neater, a smoothed anime version of this guy.
He looked at Alice, one side of his lips curling. “So what do you think?”
She looked away. “About what?”
“My honeypot allure.”
She focused on the path ahead, hyper-aware of her cheeks and neck heating.
His sense of humor, that was a difference. Holt was taciturn and rarely joked.
“If you’re going to…” She wasn’t sure how that sentence was supposed to end. If he was going to kidnap her? Rescue her? “Ifyou’re going to take me out of school, I should at least know your real name.” Then she might have a hope of separating fact from fantasy.
He paused a second. “Carter.”
“Last name or first name?”
Another pause, as if he was deciding which option to choose. “First.”
“Carter what?”
