Chapter Five

A knock on the door at three in the morning is rarely a good thing. My eyes cracked open, my down comforter twisted around my torso as I glanced blearily about my dark hotel room. For a moment, I didn’t realize where I was. I’d bounced from city to city, country to country so much in my life that all the beige, generic interiors had become indecipherable.

The knock sounded once more.

London. I’m in London.

I rolled onto my side, sitting up as my eyes swung to the bed beside me. It was empty. Keira wasn’t back yet. She already seemed buzzed from champagne when we left Julian’s flat, but she insisted on having “one last drink” in the hotel’s lobby bar. With Antonio. His criminal past with the organization that kidnapped her didn’t seem to be as much a deterrent as I thought it should, but there was no point in fighting. We were leaving London. All of our relationships would be ending soon enough, whether we wanted them to or not.

I yanked open the heavy door, expecting to find my sister. “Seriously, you better not puke in here,” I hissed, squinting as I flicked on the too-bright overhead light, my eyes momentarily blinded by the illumination.

“No. Just tired,” said a familiar accented voice.

I rubbed my groggy eyes, peering through the fluorescent blaze at Marcus, who looked as exhausted as I did—eyelids half drooping as he leaned an outstretched arm against the doorjamb for support.

“Where’s Keira? What happened?” I jolted, an intravenous shot of adrenaline suddenly coursing through me.

“She’s fine.” Marcus raised a hand in reassurance. “At least, she’s having…fun.”

“Where?” Though I already knew the answer.

“In my hotel room. With my brother.”

“Oh.”

I forced myself not to judge my sister for her fantastically bad taste in men. After all, I’d spent a lot of time worried that my sister might never be her “old self” again. Maybe I could take that worry off my long list.

“Sorry.” Marcus shrugged, acting amused, if not proud, of his brother’s player status. I didn’t feel the same. “But I can’t sleep in there for obvious reasons.”

“Come in,” I offered, reminding myself that Antonio was Marcus’s brother. And Marcus trusted him, so nothing bad was going to happen to my sister tonight. I hoped.

He followed me into my room and dropped onto the bed across from me. “Do you have any water?” he groaned, pressing his palm to his forehead.

“Hungover already? You haven’t even slept yet.”

“My brother ordered shots. Again.” He rubbed his temples.

“How many did Keira do?” I sounded like a disapproving mom.

“Less than me. I should have stopped when she did.”

My sister voluntarily stopped drinking before the party was over? That was new.

“What was she doing if she wasn’t drinking?” I fetched a glass from the bathroom and filled it with cloudy, lukewarm tap water. I returned and handed it to him.

“Grilling my brother about his work at Dresden, or Department D, or wherever.” He chugged the water.

I smiled—my sister interrogated Antonio, while he was drunk, or more specifically, while he was drunker than her. Maybe she wasn’t her “old self.” Maybe she had changed, and in ways that went beyond slumped shoulders. “What did Antonio say?”

“The same thing he told us.” Marcus set the empty glass on the nightstand. “He went into more detail about exactly how much he hated his job. He sounded miserable.”

“I can’t believe your parents recruited him.” My eyes narrowed. Why would they want to put their child in danger? “Do you think they’d try to recruit you?”

“No.” Marcus shook his head, his bangs dripping into his eyes. I loved when his hair did that. “They hardly talk to me about work.”

“Do they know Antonio’s here?” My voice sounded casual, but really, I was pressing to learn if he was still in contact with his parents. Maybe if Marcus cut ties, forever, maybe if he broke that thread to Department D, we could possibly stay together, he could come with me, and we could see each other again.

“I sent them a text telling them Antonio’s fine. But we’re still not speaking.”

My head fell. Of course he texted them. He didn’t want them to worry. He was their son, and they were alive, and he’d love them forever. He’d choose them. I knew that, even if I didn’t want to know it.

Our days were numbered.

“How did we get here?” I sighed.

From my parents abandoning us, to me now abandoning Marcus, my life had become a series of events I had no control over. Because if I had a choice, I’d take Marcus’s hand and go off to NYU or Duke or Berkeley. We’d go to college, and Keira would go to med school. She’d live with Charlotte, and we’d have apartments next door to one another. We’d all go on double dates and hang out in a coffee shop like they did in Friends reruns.

A heaviness gripped my chest as I felt a faint hint of the funk mist over me. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him.

My eyes welled, and Marcus noticed; he reached for my hand.

“You don’t have to worry about my brother and Keira,” he said, misreading my emotion, thinking I was upset because they were together. I was, but that wasn’t what had my eyes burning.

“I’m not. And I know you’re happy he’s here. You obviously talk to him…a lot.” I couldn’t help but remember the way Antonio joked that I didn’t trust anyone, then the look he shared with his brother. I didn’t want to see Marcus’s face now.

I picked at a loose thread in the comforter. I was leaving, by my choice, but it still bothered me that Marcus said something to make Antonio react that way.

Despite the deadly espionage, I was still a girl.

Marcus squeezed my palm tighter. “I told him all about us. How you tripped Wyatt Burns in the cafeteria. How we rode off together after you were hit by a chicken wing—”

“Aw, the good old days…” I mocked. God, that felt like a lifetime ago.

“You’ve been fearless since the day I met you.”

“You’re the one who saved me from the chicken wing heard ’round the world,” I pointed out. “And from Luis Basso in Cortona…”

“Then you saved your sister.”

He sat up and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. He had that boy smell of sweat and leather that made my cheeks burn. Then I spied the bull tattoo on his neck, resembling the ink on his brother’s arms. “You told Antonio more than that…” I pulled away.

Marcus ran his hands through his messy locks, his face looking too tired (and drunk) to have this conversation. “I told him that you sometimes have…trust issues with new people.”

“Everyone is new to me. And you. We’ve moved around our entire lives.”

“But my brother isn’t new, not to me.” He lazily swung his head my way. “I know you think he’s a spy, but I know him. He never wanted to work there, and he’s out now. You don’t have to leave because of him.”

I wasn’t leaving because of him. I was leaving because of everything. He couldn’t expect me to trust this stranger with my sister’s life. There wasn’t another person in this world I could trust with that anymore, not even our own parents. That was why I was going.

Marcus read my eyes.

“When are you leaving?” he asked, sadly looking up through his lashes. He ran his fingers along my cheek like he was making a mental drawing. Pinpricks covered my skin.

“I don’t know.” I was lying. My suitcase was already packed. I wanted to check the train schedules for tomorrow before Marcus could use the butterflies in my stomach to change my mind. God, I want to stay…

He moved his fingers to my mouth, tugging my bottom lip from my bite, and it was as if every hair on my body lifted upright. I closed my eyes. What if people only got one shot in life to feel this way, and I was running away from it?

“I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered.

“I know.” I wanted so badly to tell him how I felt about him, but the words piled on top of each other at the back of my throat. Any grand gestures now would only make things worse, and the pain was bad enough.

I opened my eyes, and he was staring at me like he wanted to look at nothing else for the rest of his life, like he wanted me. I reached for his face, sliding a strand of hair from his eyes, and his breath hitched, eyes darkening. I might never see him again. This could be our last night together.

I lifted my lips to his, slow at first, then his fingers slid into my hair. He groaned, squeezing me tight, and I pushed him back onto the mattress and moved on top. I was wearing an old Red Sox T-shirt and lacrosse shorts, not exactly my best look. Why couldn’t I be the type of girl who slept in satin?

My hair tumbled into his face as I kissed him. His mouth tasted like stale red wine.

He moved the hem of my shirt toward my head, throwing Big Papi’s number onto the floor. We’d never gotten this far. Venice and Amsterdam were too chaotic, and afterward, we were so focused on finding Antonio that we were never alone, never feeling romantic.

“I’m so glad my brother kicked me out of the room,” he whispered.

“Uh huh.” I nodded against his lips.

“I’ve wanted to be with you for so long.”

There was such longing in his voice that an alarm went off in my head. Be with me. He wants to be with me… Did I want that? Could I handle that? Could I really do that and never see him again? My face flamed. Was I excited? Was I scared?

This was our last night together.

Our last night.

I’d never see him again.

“Wait.” I pulled away, breathing heavily as I looked down at him beneath my body. His lips moved for mine once more, the look in his eyes making it very clear what he wanted to do next. “Hold on.”

I sat up straighter, still straddling him as I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, doubt warring within me. I was feeling everything he was feeling, sweating like he was sweating, panting like he was panting, but I was starting to realize there was a big difference between us, one we’d never discussed. “Thing is, um… I mean, like, I’ve never really, you know, done…” I gave him the look of please don’t make me say it out loud.

“Ever?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Boyfriends haven’t exactly been my priority,” I admitted, staring at a crack in the ceiling. “You can say Keira and I took our parents deaths very differently.” I returned my gaze to his. “If I leave, it’s just…I don’t know if or when I’ll see you again. And I don’t know how I’m going to feel about that.” I lifted myself off of him, sitting beside his long frame as he covered his eyes with his forearm and sighed heavily—with annoyance or disappointment, I wasn’t sure.

“Fine. Whatever,” he grumbled.

“I’m sorry.” I sounded as small as the child I felt like. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea, if I know I have to go soon—”

“Mira.” He yanked his arm down and glared at me, his eyes angrier than I expected. “You might be able to convince yourself that’s the reason, but don’t expect me to listen.”

“Marcus—” Obviously, I knew he’d be disappointed, but I never thought he’d be mad.

“No. It’s true. The reason you’re stopping all of this”—he sat up, gesturing to the two of us—“is not because you’re leaving or because you’re a virgin.”

An involuntary breath huffed out of me, as if even my lungs were offended. There was something about hearing that word “virgin” aloud that felt like I was being slapped with a sexist insult. Only women were virgins, guys just “haven’t done it yet.”

“You’re stopping because you don’t trust me.” His words slurred around the edges as he spoke faster. “You say you do, but you don’t. Not really. You don’t trust me when I tell you I know my brother. You don’t trust me when I promise not to speak to my parents about you. You don’t trust your sister to offer an opinion on when you’re leaving or what you should do next. You don’t trust Julian to tell your story, even though we all think it’s a good idea. You don’t trust the police to help you. You don’t trust the CIA to keep you safe. You don’t trust the whole damn world.” He pointed a finger at me. “You ran, full speed, toward an assassin in Venice. By yourself. Leaving all of us behind, everyone trying to help you. Those aren’t the actions of a girl who’s fighting to live.”

His eyes were still glazed with booze, but his intention was perfectly clear. This was what Marcus had talked to his brother about, what he really thought of me, and this truth hurt more than any punch from a random spy.

My jaw dropped as I stared at him. He thought I was so screwed up I was incapable of trusting anyone, of loving anyone.

“I’m going to sleep,” he hissed, then dropped back onto his pillow and rolled over. Within moments, he was snoring, a drunk deep slumber, and I continued to sit there, gawking at him, wondering if it was true, wondering if I trusted anyone. Even myself.