by Nina Berry
What else? Where else?
She opened the drawer of his nightstand. Nothing. She slid her hands under his pillows and between the mattress and the box spring. Zilch. A quick glance at the closet showed her nothing but several ridiculously gorgeous suits and neatly hung belts. His upright suitcase was also locked.
Was there anything he hadn’t thought of?
She was about to head back out the door to see if she could lock it behind her when a thought struck her. There was one hiding place she herself would choose if she needed one in a hotel room.
She turned on her toe and ran into Devin’s private bathroom, ignoring the toothbrush and Pepsodent, the old-fashioned straight razor and shaving cream and the light hair pomade. She went right to the toilet, removed the extra roll of toilet tissue in its knitted cozy sitting on top, and lifted the lid off the tank.
Lying in the clear water at the bottom was a black plastic bag.
Her pulse tap-dancing, she spared a glance back at the bedroom. She’d closed the door to give herself time if he walked into the suite, but again, that wasn’t much help. Just being in here was damning.
He’d been gone for at least twenty minutes. How much longer could his downstairs phone call possibly last? She should probably shut the tank lid and come back later.
To hell with should. She stuck her hand in the cold water and pulled out the black plastic bag. It was surprisingly heavy. With her other hand she grabbed a towel off the rack and placed it on the counter to catch the water dripping from the plastic bag.
The bag was sealed with a kind of plastic zipper. She fumbled with her wet fingers, then got it open to find another plastic bag inside. She opened that bag, which was dry, and reached in.
Her fingers hit cold metal and glass.
Glass? She pulled out a small test-tubed sized bottle with a cork in it. Something dark, about the size of her thumbnail, rattled inside it.
She held it up, trying not to let it move around and make any noise. The object inside the tube was made of metal. It looked as though it might have once been cylindrical, but some great force had warped it. It made no sense but it sure looked like a spent bullet.
She put it aside, reached back in the bag, and pulled out a gun.
Pagan dropped the gun. It thumped onto the towel-covered counter and lay there, gleaming. The barrel was a very shiny silver. The grip was black.
She stared at it, suddenly dizzy, as if she’d discovered herself standing on the edge of a precipice. When she looked down, she couldn’t see the bottom.
A gun?
But no matter how long she gaped at the gun, it remained a gun. A semiautomatic .22 caliber pistol, in fact. She’d learned enough from her shooting instructor on Young Annie Oakley to know that.
She leaned in closer, not touching it. It carried no identifying marks, no manufacturer’s name or serial number. She wasn’t sure, but that seemed odd. She didn’t know enough about modern guns to tell who had manufactured it. Her training had been mostly with rifles and shotguns.
What the hell was Devin doing with a gun? And why was it hidden in the tank of his hotel toilet?
She snapped herself upright. She’d been gaping at it for too long. She dropped the spent bullet in the second bag along with the gun and zipped it up, sealed up the first bag, and plopped it back in the same corner of the toilet tank.
A doorknob click-clacked.
She stiffened, listening as if her life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
The main door to the suite ticked open.
Devin was back. She grasped the edges of the heavy porcelain tank lid and hoisted it back into place, taking care so that it didn’t clank.
“Pagan?”
Devin’s voice. Dang it, she was sunk.
She whipped the towel back onto the rack and tiptoed to the bathroom entrance, staring at the shut door of Devin’s bedroom. He must be right outside it.
“Pagan?” His voice was more irritated now. His footsteps, soft on the carpet outside, moved over to her bedroom. She heard him knock and rapidly open her door. “Ready for lunch?”
She ran to the door of his bedroom and put her hand on the knob. If he went inside her bedroom, there was a chance she could slip out of his room unnoticed and act like she’d just walked in herself.
She turned the knob with aching slowness to keep it quiet and gently cracked his door. She could see Devin’s slim form now coming swiftly back out of her bedroom muttering something that sounded like “Bollocks.”
Odd. Not a swear word most Americans used… Oh, dang, he was heading right toward her!
Too late. She’d never escape without being seen.
She shut the bedroom door and ran back into the bathroom. Maybe if he couldn’t find her, he’d go out to look for her, giving her time to escape.
The bathroom was hellishly small. The claw-foot bathtub was in the “sit down and soak” European style, with no shower curtain or sliding doors to screen her. The only place he might not find her at a glance was behind the door. Cursing herself silently for taking so long to search, she switched off the bathroom light and slid behind it. Devin would notice that his bedroom door was unlocked, but she half-hysterically told herself maybe that would lead him to think she’d been kidnapped, or that the place had been robbed.
Over the uneven sounds of her own breath she heard him slip his key into the lock of his bedroom door.
She couldn’t see what was going on, but she didn’t hear the door open or Devin’s footsteps enter the room. Nothing.
Was he coming in or not?
She’d been holding her breath. She forced herself to exhale silently, putting her hands up against the smooth wood of the bathroom door to stop it from banging her in the nose if he pushed it open. If he found her here, what was she going to say? How could she possibly justify being in his bathroom after breaking into his room?
An iron hand gripped Pagan’s raised right arm. She gasped as he wrenched her out from behind the door, arcing her toward the tub.
She twisted her wrist against his thumb and slipped free, stumbling back into the tub, but managing not to fall into it. She opened her mouth to speak, to let him know it was her.
He threw a punch at her face.
She flinched back and got her forearm up in time to deflect it, but the power behind the punch rattled her bones. Dim light limned an angle of his implacable face. There was no sign of recognition. He couldn’t see her in the dark.
Terror pushed her past him, toward the bathroom door, but he grabbed her wrist with fingers like steel bands and twisted. Pain shot through her as he spun her around and shoved her bent arm up behind her back, brutally pushing her face first against the wall. The entire line of his body pressed up against hers. Her hair was tumbling down, sticking to her neck and her lips. The heat from him burned a line down her back from shoulder to hip.
Enough! With sudden fury, she slammed her heel onto his instep.
He grunted in pain. But his grip on her wrist did not slacken.
She was pinned to the wall, helpless. His chest was heaving in time with hers. She prepared an earth-shattering scream for help.
Then: “Pagan?”
He let her go so suddenly, she nearly collapsed.
But this time he caught her, gently, by the shoulders.
“Oh, my God,” he said. A line of light from the cracked door showed his eyes, wide with horror. Locks of dark hair spiked down over his forehead. “I’m so sorry.” He set her back on her feet and slid his hands down her bare arms, feeling for injury. “Did I hurt you?”
Still trying to catch her breath, she brushed her hair out of her eyes and mouth. “I’m okay, I think. But my wrist…”
Before she could finish the sentence, he was holding her wrist in both of h
is hands as delicately as if it were a baby bird. “Did I break it?”
“I don’t think so.” He was probing the bones of her arm for signs of injury.
Something about the way he handled her, softly stroking the thin skin on the inside of her wrist, combined with the ebbing of adrenaline, was turning her knees to water. She wanted to fall into him. She wanted to run away.
“It’s okay,” she managed to say.
He reached over, eyes never leaving her, and flicked on the light. He put one hand up to her cheek. “Your face. When I pushed you against the wall. I didn’t mean to…”
His fingers were warm. His mouth was only a foot from hers. Waves of heat pulsed through her with every breath. After all the tension of searching his room, waiting to be caught when he came in, their heart-stopping clash, and now this—her head was buzzing. His scent lingered on her skin where he’d grabbed her, clean leather and rain on tobacco leaves. She wanted to press herself into it, to drown in it. The temptation to do that, to lean into him, to breathe him in and feel his strength surrounding her expanded into a drastic ache. She swayed.
Concern creased his forehead. “Come sit down,” he said.
She allowed him to guide her out of the bathroom and sit her down slowly on the edge of his bed. Hard to believe that just a minute ago she’d been underneath that same bed. The only place left to go was in it.
What was wrong with her? She bowed her head, as if to keep him from reading her mind.
“How do you feel?” he asked, feeling her uninjured wrist for her pulse.
She tugged away from him and sat up a little taller, taking a deep breath. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m… I just am not used to fighting men for use of the bathroom.”
He let her pull away without quarrel and stood up, staring down at her with a look she couldn’t decipher. “I thought you were an intruder. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
“I could have hurt you very badly,” he said. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called you?”
The question was like a bucket of cold water, bringing her back to the strange new reality. He looked so young with his hair falling in his eyes, a faint sheen of sweat from their fight on his forehead. He could’ve been a normal teenage boy, instead of a man with a hidden gun and an even more secret agenda for her here in Berlin.
When she still didn’t respond, he took off his jacket and walked over to the closet. The taut muscles in his shoulders moved with a well-oiled ease under the fine cotton shirt. She’d never seen him with his jacket off before, and without the formal wool silhouette masking the line of his body, his movements were controlled, powerful. She could now well believe how effortlessly he’d pinned her, held her.
“You broke into this room,” he said. “Where’d you learn how to pick a lock?”
“Mercedes,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
“What were you doing in here?” He put his suit jacket on a hanger and hung it on the closet rail with a click.
She said nothing. When in doubt, let the other person do all the talking.
He put a finger in his tie and eased it looser around his neck. “To be honest, I expected you to leave the room and try to get out through the kitchen in the back of the hotel. Or to hire someone to distract me so you could bolt out the front.”
“Wish I’d thought of that,” she said, half meaning it.
“I didn’t expect you to ransack my room.” He walked back to stand in front of her, staring down. “Did you take anything?”
His question sparked an idea. If she was as good an actress as she hoped, she might pull it off.
“No!” She made it a little too loud; the lady protesting too much. “I’m not a thief.”
“I don’t have any alcohol in here, Pagan,” he said, exactly as she’d hoped. “While I’m on this assignment with you, I’m sober as a judge.”
“Not the highest standard to measure yourself against,” she said, a shade too flippantly, and continued to avoid looking him in the eye.
“Why were you in my bathroom?” He circled around to look into that room, now in disarray.
“I…” She ducked her head in shame. “Nothing. Like you said, I was hoping to find your secret stash of scotch, but there was nothing. And then I heard you coming and I panicked. The bathroom was the only place to hide.”
“You,” he said. “You panicked.”
She looked up, surprised at his skepticism. He eased one shoulder against the wall, the corner of his mouth curving up. “I don’t believe you’re capable of panic. Even in there—” he jerked his thumb back at the bathroom “—you were thinking with perfect clarity. You blocked my punch, and after I got you in a lock you had the presence of mind to stomp on my foot.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, not meaning it.
He lifted the foot and flexed it. “Where did you learn that?”
“Mercedes again,” she said. “She taught me a lot.”
He nodded, pursing his lips. “Mercedes Duran. Now there’s a formidable individual. Joined the Avenidas gang when she was thirteen, stole her first car when she was fourteen, and got caught.”
“That was her second, actually,” Pagan said.
He smiled and dipped his head, acknowledging her superior expertise on the subject. “But they let her go a month later. Did she tell you she used to extort money from shop owners?” he asked. “Usually only the most intimidating men in the gang get that job.”
Pagan nodded. “Her older brother was one of their top members,” she said. “He taught Mercedes a lot before…” She broke off. Was she betraying Mercedes’s trust by saying these things?
“Before he was killed by a rival gang.” Devin raised one dark eyebrow as she shot him a look. “Yes, I’ve done my homework.”
Oh, he was so smug. “Did you know her best friend died of a heroin overdose when they were both fifteen?” Pagan asked. “Mercedes has seen so much, even I can’t shock her. It made for a nice change after all those screaming headlines during the trial.”
“You’re not that shocking,” he said. “Just surprising.”
“Where did you learn to fight?” she said. “It isn’t usually a skill on the résumés of studio flacks.”
“Stop trying to change the subject,” he said. “There’s no alcohol in my bedroom or my bathroom, Pagan.”
“No?” she said. “Ever look at the ingredients on a bottle of mouthwash? Or cough syrup?”
Comprehension dawned over his face, just as she’d hoped it would. She darted her gaze away and let her shoulders slump. She knew all too well how to act humiliated. The memory of real shame was ever present for her to tap into. “That’s what I was looking for, okay? It’s disgusting and awful, but after what Bennie said to me earlier, I just…” She broke off, knowing she didn’t need to say more. People were so ready to believe you when you revealed some horrible fact about yourself.
He exhaled a long breath, nodding as if to himself. “Okay,” he said. “I appreciate you telling me.” He pulled his tie completely loose. “Maybe we should order lunch from room service today.”
“Oh, no, please, can’t we go out?” The question came straight from her heart. “I’ve been cooped up for nine months, and tomorrow I go back to work. Can’t we just—I don’t know—go for a walk somewhere green? Or even around the city, I don’t care, I just want to see the sky and look at people who aren’t in school uniforms.”
“Fair enough.” He undid his top button, and she caught a glimpse of the smooth skin over his collarbone. He pointed at his bedroom door. “Let me change and I’ll think about where we can walk around and find some food.”
“That sounds boss!” she said, jumping up and darting out of his bedroom. “See you in a few!”
She ran into her
room, shut the door, and leaned back against it.
Her head was spinning. Dang, that had been crazy, dangerous, and fun.
She hadn’t felt this juiced since she and Nicky zoomed down Mullholland at midnight racing two guys in a Chrysler 300E. Vodka was child’s play compared to this. She was higher than high.
What, she wondered, would happen next?
The outdoor café where they ate lunch had delicious schnitzel, and after some ice cream, Devin pointed their driver to a huge yellow palace with a bronze-green dome. Devin had picked the location, but the idea had been Pagan’s.
After privately deciding it was time to learn more about Devin, she’d suggested they visit a museum. She knew two strange things about him for sure: he’d admired and understood the Renoir in her parents’ room, and he had a pistol hidden in his hotel toilet tank. She wasn’t likely to persuade him to take her to a firing range, but maybe if she saw him around more art, he’d give something away. If not, she’d throw smart-aleck remarks at him till he did.
They walked through the gate past two statues of naked, armed men, into the large square courtyard, where tourists ambled or rested in the shade of a huge bronze guy on a horse. Although the butter-yellow facade of the building was clean and new, scaffolding clung to the outer wings of the building, which stretched for what seemed like miles to the left and right.
“Schloss Charlottenburg,” Devin said. “Badly damaged in the war, and still under reconstruction, but in decent enough shape for a visit. I hear the gardens are nice, too.”
He babbled on about Queen Charlotte and baroque art as they entered the rather plain first floor and she caught a glimpse of the vast gardens beyond. Geometric paths wound through emerald grass, bordered by thick, strictly trimmed trees. A fountain shot water nearly three stories high in the middle, and in the distance glassy olive-green water hinted at a pond or river.
A sudden longing to hear the trickle of moving water pierced her. It wasn’t the Pacific Ocean she was used to, but it was beautiful, and natural, and it had been months since she’d been surrounded by anything but concrete.
