“What time is it, handsome?”
Pretty, blue-eyed Lance, who had stationed himself in the desk chair with a view not only of Leticia lying on the sofa but of the busy lit-up Promenade in front of the Belvédère, framed by the French doors, sighed and checked his expensive wristwatch. “Quarter till eight.”
Not long, she thought as she stretched out. “You know,” Leticia said, “I used to be you.”
Lance had a preternatural ability to sit in silence, and had been demonstrating it for hours. Now he perked up, just a little. “What?”
“You. A Tourist.”
He blinked dumbly, and she wondered if they even called themselves Tourists. “Have passport, will travel,” she said. “For years, I traveled on the government dime. Making things right. Sometimes making them wrong. It’s relentless. How long you been on the payroll?”
He looked out the windows, considering whether or not to answer, then said, “Two years.”
“A lot of miles?”
He nodded slowly.
“It gets easier,” she said, “before it gets harder.”
Lance frowned at her, and she almost said, You should smile more, but instead said, “Right now, honey, you’re probably pretty high on yourself. You travel the globe and sometimes you hurt people, but the law never catches up to you. You appear and disappear, like magic. And you’re right, it is a little bit like magic. And you are special, just like they tell you. But then, eventually, you start hearing that voice in the back of your head. The one that says there’s no point.”
He shifted, looking uncomfortable. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She gave a good long smile. “I’ll tell you where it happened to me. Cambodia, 2007. Simple thing. Take out a bent politico and disappear. I didn’t take the kid into account.” She paused, remembering, for at this moment she was giving him something real, and she wanted to get this right. “And my first thought, like anybody’s, was collateral damage. We’re not going to cry about dead flower girls when the drones take out a terrorist’s wedding, right? But then the new thing happened. I started thinking back over the years. How much collateral damage had there been? I even used a paper and pen. Math never lies. And it hit me, finally, that the collateral damage I’d done over the years wasn’t some side job—it was my job.
She watched him think on this, watched him scratch the side of his cheek and look out at the Swiss evening full of fancy dresses and the stink of money. Was he thinking about his own missteps, or the series of decisions that had brought him to this hotel room? She didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to puzzle through his psyche. So she climbed off the sofa. “I think I’ll take a shower. Want to join me?”
He looked briefly shocked, and it gave her pleasure to know that there really was a human under that façade. Then his face relaxed into an appreciative, cocky smile as he measured her body with his eyes. “Another time.”
He really was full of himself. She gave him a wink. “Suit yourself.”
Leticia headed through the wardrobe room and bedroom to find an expansive bathroom with a whirlpool tub, flat-screen TV, and large, sealed window looking back at an empty, snow-covered hillside. She closed the door and turned on the shower, then watched herself in the mirror, searching for lines. She thought about what had brought her to this room, and the choices she had made. In Wakkanai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Laayoune, and here. What was it about her that kept finding trouble? Was this what penance really looked like?
And yet—and yet—she had survived it all. The scar on her arm from Haroun Ghali’s Hong Kong bullet was just part of the terrain of her body, so many nicks and scratches, but nothing that had put her down. That was black girl magic right there.
Though she expected it, Leticia still jumped at the sudden wee-wah of the fire alarm blaring throughout the hotel. She put on her game face and returned to the living room, where Lance was stepping out to the patio, looking for smoke.
“So?” she asked.
He stepped back inside. “Probably false alarm.”
“Sure,” she said, and returned to the bathroom. As the steam collected, she counted down the seconds. She’d survived so many dangerous places, but what about now? Would Lance’s obstinance really lead to her dying in Switzerland? Come on.
But she had to play the game, so she took off her blouse and was unbuttoning her slacks when she heard the pretty tone of the doorbell. Through the wall came a muted conversation. Then the door shut, and after a moment Lance knocked on the bathroom door. She opened it fully, and he hesitated, eyes stalled briefly on her bra. Then: “That was the hotel staff. Turns out it is real. There’s a room in flames beneath us.”
She made a show of irritation. “I really wanted that shower.”
“We’d better go.”
“Sure you don’t want to go up in flames with me?”
His gaze traveled the length of her body again, approvingly, and she cursed herself—the fool was actually considering it. She forced a grin. “Come on, cowboy. Let’s get out of here.”
A minute later, they were heading toward the stairs. No hurry. On the second floor, though, a very old woman in gemstones looked panicked and lost. Lance ignored her, and was clearly annoyed when Leticia stopped and spoke to the old woman, then invited her to join them. Helping her on the stairs slowed them down considerably, and they were slowed more when Lance’s phone rang. He glanced irritably at the screen, then stiffened and answered, one hand on the phone, the other on the old woman’s elbow.
“Yes?” he said. Leticia watched his face pinch in a pained expression. “For sure?” he asked, and though the news he received was obviously not good, he didn’t miss a step or forget to keep hold of the old woman. “A fire alarm. Yes, ma’am, it’s under control.” Then he hung up.
“Something wrong?” Leticia asked.
He shook his head, but his cheeks were very red, and a prescient tingle spread across the width of her back.
Hotel staff were in the lobby, so they passed off the woman, but instead of following her outside Lance grabbed Leticia’s forearm. “Over here,” he said, pulling her back toward the restaurant at the opposite end of the corridor. “We have to get something.”
“Sure,” she said, preparing herself.
He pulled her through double doors into the spacious restaurant—pale walls, parquet, and large ring-shaped lamps above their heads like halos. Straight ahead, big windows looked north at the low, snow-covered Davos buildings. As the door closed, Lance’s right hand reached behind himself, and Leticia immediately jumped at him, punching the rigid knuckles of her left hand into his trachea.
He gasped, clutching his throat, while the other hand emerged holding his Glock. He got off one shot, which went wild as she dropped into a crouch and stomped hard against his knee. He buckled, gun hand rising as he fell back. She launched herself against his chest, helping his fall. They landed hard, Leticia straddling him, and as he raised his gun hand again she planted her elbow, with all her weight, into his face. It hurt, bone smashing into bone, and his nose gushed a torrent of blood. She quickly rolled off him, prying the pistol out of his weak hand, and kept rolling until she was yards away.
Gasping, she climbed to her feet and looked at him struggling on the floor. A sick, wet moan came from deep inside him. But it was barely audible, just a long, painful exhale pushing through crushed windpipe, smashed nose, and cracked teeth. She raised the Glock and pointed it at him. He was already dying, after all.
Afterward, she stripped off her blood-covered blouse and rolled it into a bundle with the Glock hidden inside. Then she pushed back into the lobby, where the staff, overcome by escaping guests, hardly even noticed the black woman in a bra making her way past them.
Outside in the cold, drivers were moving cars out of the way for approaching fire trucks. The crowd of half-dressed, fully suited, and drunk guests placed hands to their mouths and gaped at thick smoke rising from the other side, from where Leticia had come, into the night sky. Curious, she walked around the building, squeezing through spectators until she saw what they saw: A smashed first-floor window gushed smoke and flickering flames. The smoke was thick and black and, Leticia thought, obviously fueled by some serious propellant.
“You need a coat,” she heard, and turned to find Dalmatian taking off his old army jacket. He put it over her shoulders, and she smiled.
“Did you really have to do all that?” she asked as they hurried down the street.
“I don’t know, Kanni. What do you think?”
“My name’s not Kanni.”