“Ow. Ow.OW,” he says pointedly.
“New plan,” I announce. “If Anna won’t respond to my messages, then we’ll go to her. Look.”
I hand him the phone and he squints at it, then frowns at me. “These are in London,” he says. “And the first one is over a week away.”
I grin at him. “You did say you never get to travel.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“This is ridiculous,” says Grant from the driver’s seat of Jack’s car. “We can’t just jet off to a foreign country at the drop of a hat!”
“Why not? I do it whenever I can afford to,” I yawn, reclining my seat. “I ditched my college graduation for a cheap last-minute ticket to Morocco.”
I’m trying to use this short car ride to rest, to sink into my heated seat and get some warmth back into my bones. Grant’s using it to—surprise of a lifetime—continue freaking out. With my feet up on the dash and the morning sunlight painting red-orange streaks against my closed eyelids, I can almost tune him out and pretend this car is being driven by a white noise machine with anxiety.
Grant works his way through a list of reasons he can’t go to London, none of them convincing. We’re heading to his apartment solely to regroup and feed his cat, he says, but I’m not above scouring the place for his passport and kidnapping him all over again if I have to. There may be a light at the end of this tunnel, but it’s still a long way to go without my crime fiction consultant.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, in response to whatever his latest objection was.
“I mean it,” he says, more firmly now. “I’m not going.”
With an impatient groan, I sit up and face him. “What do you suggest, then? We stay here? Let Anna’s whole twisted story play out for who knows how long?” Grant’s throat bobs at my suggestion, and I take the cue to ramp up the drama in my voice. I lean in, eyes wide. “Weeks, months, maybeyearsof watching your back. Dodging murder attempts. Running from explosions in slow-mo.”
He gives me an uneasy double take. “Okay, I’m not loving how excited you seem about that.” I might be smiling. I school the corners of my mouth back down. “Also, you’re thinking of action movies. Novels don’t have running away in slow motion. It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Sure it would.”
“How? How would someone put slow motion in a novel?”
“Like this: ‘And then they ran away, in slow motion.’”
His face remains a scrunched mask of skepticism. I sit back, arms crossed. There’s nothing I can say that this man can’t pick apart. Maybe Ishouldleave him here and go find Anna on my own. He can just stay here and spend the next however long stewing in guilt, jumping at every loud sound, sweating over every creepy person and suspicious car he sees.
Like the one behind us now, for instance.
I peer into the side mirror. An older man in aviator sunglasses is driving the black SUV, with a woman in the passenger seat. Both are staring daggers straight ahead. Grant turns left at an intersection and the SUV follows suit.
“Huh,” I say.
“What?”
“Hypothetically,” I say, “would being followed count as rising action?”
Grant’s eyes dart to the rearview, then the side mirror, then back. “Oh, God,” he says in that way that tends to precede him losing his shit.
“Grant. Relax,” I say. “It might be nothing.” I slightly regret nudging my driver toward a panic attack at the wheel.
He turns right down a side street. So does the SUV. I blow out a long breath, and Grant exhales a string of obscenities. He makes another turn. The SUV follows. I suggest he do it again without the turn signal. He’s visibly uncomfortable with the idea but tries it anyway. He even picks up the pace a responsible two to three miles per hour. It makes no difference. Maneuvering through the streets, the SUV matches us turn for turn.
Grant squints in the rearview mirror, his face growing paler by the second. “Are they trying to tell us something?”
I twist around to see. They do seem to be saying something, though I obviously can’t tell what. And they don’t look happy.
“It could be nothing,” I suggest. “Like, we left a cup of coffee on the roof and they’re trying to let us know.”
“Did you leave a cup of coffee on the roof?”
“… No.”
