I blink at him. “You got us a room?”
He nods once. “Taken care of.”
“When did you do that?”
“When you were talking to the nurse.”
I stare at him for a second.
There are probably questions I should ask. Where. How. Why none of this seems difficult for him. But I am too tired to go digging tonight.
So all I say is, “Thank you.”
He pulls out of the parking lot, and I let my head rest against the seat, watching the city slide past in a blur of stucco and traffic lights and fading gold.
For a while, I don’t think about anything at all.
Then, slowly, something begins to itch at the back of my mind.
Luca hasn’t glanced at the dash for directions. Hasn’t slowed at a light with that split-second hesitation of someone orienting himself in an unfamiliar part of town.
He drives through Las Vegas like a man who’s been here a thousand times.
A small chill slips down my spine.
I turn my head and look at his profile in the wash of streetlight and dusk.
He keeps his eyes on the road.
And I say nothing.
25
LUCA
I dropNatalia at the hospital the next morning with a kiss and a lie.
“Take your time with Anna. I’ve got an errand.”
Natalia unbuckles her seatbelt. “You’re sure you don’t mind coming back for me?”
I force my mouth into something that passes for easy. “Nat, I’m dropping you off at a hospital, not shipping you to Siberia. Text me when you’re done. I’ll come get you.”
Her brow furrows with a flicker of concern that twists in my gut. “Everything okay?”
“Yep.” It’s not even a good lie, and I see her almost question it. But she lets it go. She trusts me.
That’s the part that’s going to kill me.
“Okay.” She leans across the console, and her lips are warm and soft against mine for a second that’s both too short and too long.
I watch her slide out of the car, a flash of warm brown hair and graceful movement, before she disappears through the automatic glass doors of the hospital. My hand tightens on the steering wheel until my knuckles burn.
An errand.
That’s what we’re calling it when you go meet your uncle in an abandoned building to explain why you haven’t murdered your girlfriend yet.
Twenty minutes later, I pull into an underground garage beneath a hotel development that never broke ground. Concrete pillars. No lights. The kind of place where conversations happen that nobody wants on record.
