I indicate the sign as I draw my shoulders in, making myself small. "Um, that's me."
Her face lights up as she tucks the sign and her phone under her arm and reaches red-painted fingernails in my direction. "Oh, hi! I'm sorry, you don't mind if we have to rush a bit, do you? Mr. De La Rosa was really hoping we'd make it back in time for him to catch you before a meeting he has after dinner."
She shakes my hand with the grip of someone twice her size and calls for someone named Carl.
"Carl!Carl!Her bag, come on." Linnette snaps her fingers. "We need to go."
She smiles at me apologetically. "Sorry, it’s so hard to find good staff on short notice."
I laugh a bit awkwardly as Carl, a short man in a navy windbreaker, takes my carry-on bag from me.
"This way," he says, and leads us out to a parked town car with the trunk already popped.
Linette is the first one in when he opens the door for the back seat, and I slide in after her when she pats the seat next to her insistently.
I remind myself I need to be at least somewhat pleasant to this woman as she chastises the driver for taking too long to pull away from the curb and into the busy airport traffic.
"Sorry," she says again. "Mr. De La Rosa is a very punctual man."
I put myself in the frame of mind of a girl who may be meeting her biological parent for the first time. It isn't hard, since I spent most of my childhood imagining this exact moment, although under very different circumstances.
"Is he nice?" I ask, and Linette laughs.
"Oh dear, I didn't mean to make you think— Mr. De La Rosa is a very nice man."
She pats me on the knee and I smile anxiously to myself, looking out the window.
"There's nothing to be nervous about," Linette insists, like I thought she would. "I'm sorry. I'm being insensitive. I don't want to dash your hopes, but we've seen a large number of young women who thought they might be 'the one'." She laughs hollowly, trying to take the edge off. "Not to say that you won't be, but I think it's best not to get too worked up over what might be nothing, you know?"
I make a show of swallowing hard before I nod. "Yeah, you're right."
"Great," she says, clearly glad to not have to comfort me anymore as she taps on the screen of a tablet in her lap and opens several things at once.
"For now, you focus on enjoying the trip. Mr. De La Rosa has spared no expense. You'll be in the largest available suite with full access to the facilities while you're here."
She speaks while she types out a message to someone on her phone and simultaneously checks an email on the tablet. "When we get back to the hotel, I'll show you to your room, and if this driver wouldhurry up, I might be able to buy you twenty minutes to compose yourself before you meet Mr. De La Rosa for dinner."
I clasp my hands together in my lap and nod along to everything she says. By the time we're on the main highway, I am already settled into the role, the mask firmly in place.
23
A HELD BREATH
ELIJAH
"You couldn't have picked a closer motel?"
This shithole is about as far from where Ambrose's hotel is as Atticus could've possibly picked while still being within city limits.
Atticus hushes me, pushing the headphones tighter to his ears.
"What is it? Is she off the plane? Let me hear."
Atticus doesn't budge, but Sev offers me his headset from where he's sitting next to Atticus at the cleared-off seventies console table against the wall. I take them and his seat when he stands, slipping them over my ears in time to hear a woman greeting her.
It's Linette. We don't know much about her outside of the fact that Ambrose hired her about six months ago, and she doesn't seem to know anything about hisotherempire.
I listen as Seven stands back to watch the screens, following her path on the sat map on the right-hand side of the screens.
