Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Honestly, they sound kind of like us back when we used to be fully operational. Back when we stole the diamond. The diamond. Which is where my head keeps coming back to. Especially since Christine blurted it out the way she did. I just keep thinking it has to all be related somehow. Too coincidental for it not to be.
Whatever organization this is that we’re dealing with, it has tendrils and isn’t afraid to let them scope and prod and irritate the shit out of someone. I really wish Christine could remember even ten percent more. When was she here with Lars and why? And speaking of Christine…
I look back over my shoulder to make sure the car carrying her and Eliza is still behind us as promised. It is. I pull out my phone and text her: U good?
CHRISTINE
My phone is vibrating. Eliza looks away from the window and over to me as I pull it out of my pocket.
It’s Danny. U good? he types. It’s so funny to me that Danny texts like a teenager.
I type in So far, so good, and am about to hit ‘send’ when a monumental wave of nausea takes me over. Like, massive. I sometimes get a little queasy when looking at my phone or typing or whatever when I’m in the backseat of a car to begin with. I once ruined the back of a New York City taxi while trying to send a text to Alec (although, to be fair, the New York City taxi was already pretty fucked up—not sure I really “ruined” anything other than the cabbie’s day), but this is something else. A combination of the motion sickness I’m already susceptible to combined with the morning-slash-afternoon-slash-evening sickness that has oh so recently decided to start showing up.
“You need to pull over,” I say to the driver, a big guy with dreadlocks spilling out from underneath his chauffeur’s cap. “Now,” I add when he makes no move at all to slow down.
Eliza looks at me and I must look back at her with a face that projects exactly what I’m about to… uh, project… all over the beautiful leather interior of this Mercedes, because she immediately echoes me in the streetwise version of her accent that comes out whenever anything gets really serious. “Oi! Pull the car over, mate! She’s going to be sick!”
DANNY
I wait for a reply for a few moments, but when one doesn’t come, I slip the phone back in my jacket pocket. She probably has the ringer off and didn’t feel it vibrate. No sense in making a big deal about it or letting my head go someplace unhelpful. I can see that the car is there and that means that everything’s fine.
If there were some kind of—
Ring. Ring.
It’s not my phone. Nor is it Alec’s. Big Driver Guy doesn’t take his hands off the wheel. It’s Hans’s. He answers.
“Allo?” There’s a pause as I watch the back of his unmoving head, which now has a cell phone pressed against it. “Oh. All right. I suppose.”
He tabs ‘end’ on the call and, in a language I don’t immediately recognize, tells the driver something. Alec apparently understands what’s being said, because he asks, “What’s the problem, man?”
“What’s going on?” I say, quickly on the heels of Alec asking, and with probably a whiff more urgency in my voice than I’d like as the car begins to slow and we pull over to the side of the road. “What’s happening?” I repeat. “Alec, what the fuck?”
Alec shakes his head at me—I don’t know—and I look over my shoulder once more to see that the car behind us is slowing down and pulling over as well. And I’m pretty sure I see the back passenger door swing open. And, even more fucking alarmingly, I see… Christine diving out.
“Somebody tell me what’s fucking going on right now, please!” I shout loudly and with a heat that makes it clear that the addition of the word ‘please’ is only for emphasis and has absolutely nothing to do with courtesy.
The car rolls to a stop, the driver puts the hazards on, and as Hans opens the door to jump out he says, “It appears we have an issue.”
CHRISTINE
Our driver glances in the rearview mirror and sees me put my hand over my mouth in an attempt not to vomit quite literally everywhere. In the reflection, I see his eyes register the seriousness of the situation and he presses a button on the steering wheel. The words “Calling: Boss” appear on the screen embedded in the car’s main console and after two quick rings the voice of the guy from the train station—the one who clearly remembers me even if I don’t fully remember him—comes over Bluetooth.
“Allo?”
And for the first time, I hear our driver speak. His voice is more of a tenor than I expected. Big, strong guy; I assumed he’d have some kind of rumbling bass spilling out when he talks, but it’s just a neutral, pleasant-sounding tone with a distinctly South African accent. I’ve heard that accent a million times. I’d know it anywhere. “One of the ladies is unwell,” he says. “I need to pull over so she doesn’t get sick in the car, yeah?”