entire body was screaming out for me to find her and protect her, make whatever it was better. Beat up the guy who had been mean to her. Fix the job she didn’t want anymore. Smooth the way forward for this woman who had somehow, beyond all expectation, grabbed my heart in that weekend we’d spent together.
I hadn’t realized how much she meant to me until that moment. But once I did, it was like an itch I couldn’t get to, an ache I couldn’t manage to stretch out.
She was that ache. And if she wasn’t going to tell me what was wrong, then goddammit, I was going to go see for myself. Because I couldn’t stay away from her any longer.
Hell, now that I recognized how I felt about her, I wasn’t sure how I’d stayed away for as long as I had.
Chapter 17
Francisco
It’s amazing how many friends you can find in low, or dark, or actually illegal places when you start looking for them. I’m talking about friends you never even dreamt about asking to do things for you, that you never in your wildest dreams thought you would need.
Or want.
Nonetheless, here we were.
I was on the phone with a friend of a friend, ordering a fake passport. I went through my personal information, namely the fake details I planned to be using when I was traveling under said passport, and then gave the guy on the other end of the line an address to send the passport to when it was finished.
No, not my address. It was the address of the friend who had referred me to this particular associate. Because I couldn’t exactly receive a fake passport in the house where I actually lived with my brother, the king—who had security, I was sure, going through my mail at random, just to make sure I didn’t do things that would embarrass him.
Not that I would. I mean, he would only be embarrassed by this sort of thing if he actually found out about it. And I was intent on making sure he never did.
When I got off the phone, after receiving assurances that my passport would be ready within two days—as long as I followed through on getting the picture done and sent over to the right person—I turned to the list I made back when I first started planning this scheme. I crossed off passport and glanced down at the other points.
I needed to get tickets, of course—for both the ship and then the train in the US—and pack. I needed to talk to my assistant and make sure we had a cover story planned for when I stopped turning up for events.
Isabelle was, after all, the only person I was telling about this whole thing. Partially out of necessity, because she would be covering my back, and partially she was one of the only people I completely trusted.
At that moment, the woman in question walked into my office, a notepad in her arms and a serious look on her face.
“I’ve got your tickets ordered for the ship, under the name you gave me,” she said, her voice all business. “I’ve got more tickets waiting for you at Grand Central in New York. You’ll have to take a cab to get there from the harbor. I could have printed them out for you now, but I came to the conclusion that the less proof you’re carrying on your person, the better.”
I snorted. “If anyone finds me carrying a passport that has a name other than my own on it, I’m going to be in enough trouble that a set of train tickets from New York to Chicago wouldn’t make it any worse.”
Isabelle tipped her head and took the three steps to get from the door to my desk, where she set down another set of tickets and an itinerary. “The passport could be for any number of things. I’m working on that.”
She added the last line with a bit of a smile—which I returned in kind. Because if there was anyone who could come up with a reason for having a fake passport, it was Isabelle. The woman had gotten me out of more scrapes than I could name, and it was really too bad I couldn’t take her with me on my secret adventure. If I could have, I would have been more confident in my success.
As it was, I was going to be taking a two-week boat ride to the US on my