But the masked man seemed to sense Robert’s intent and skipped back, again far too quickly, like a dancer.
Robert’s fingers swiped empty air and he landed face first, chin jamming against the rough floor. He felt one of his old books pressed beneath his ribs. He could feel blood swelling down his arm now.
The killer was murmuring to himself, scrolling through Robert’s phone, which was left unlocked during the night in case of a medical emergency. Now, though, it allowed the killer to scroll through his texts. The bastard paused at once, going stiff.
“Adele,” he said, uttering the word breathlessly like a lover at the sight of his bride. He looked up now, his eyes—the one dull, the one vibrant—staring out from the metallic mask. “She is coming tomorrow?”
“I don’t know who Adele is,” Robert spat. “Wrong number.”
The intruder laughed, a hearty, authentic sound. He shook his head and chuckled, holding the phone a moment and then pressing it into his pocket. “It will be nice to talk to Adele,” said the killer. “In a way she’ll receive it. It isn’t fun to go without seeing one’s friends for so long.”
Robert snarled now, trying to rise, but finding his injured arm insufficient to bear his weight. “You leave her alone! Hear me? Leave her out of this, you sick twist!”
The intruder paused, contemplating these words. Then his expression behind the mask seemed to darken, as if a light dimmed in his eyes. “I don’t think I will, thank you,” he said, quietly. “Adele and I have unfinished business. And I’m afraid you’re standing in the way. Don’t worry, Mr. Henry, we only have tonight together. I wish it were a week, maybe two. But I’ll have to work with the time we have.”
And then the intruder stepped forward, fast—far too fast, his knife flashing down, a foot planting firmly in Robert’s weakened chest and shoving him back against the floorboards in his own home.
All that remained was a glimmer of regret, sheer fear, and a white-hot anger with nowhere left to go.
Then… all of these faded too, replaced by a sudden cold.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Adele slumped more than strolled out of the sliding glass doors of the airport, John Renee marching at her side. She glanced at her phone. Two a.m. Night had fallen complete and beckoned starlight in coaxing breaths from the ebony horizon.
Adele paused on the sidewalk outside the airport, listening to the quiet buzz of airplanes in the background. The sparse terminal itself had emptied rather quickly, leaving Adele and John both standing by the curb, witnessed only by a distant traffic warden leaning against an old security vehicle and chatting with a guard through the window.
John sighed, glancing at his phone and muttering, “Ride is going to be late,” he murmured. Then, after a moment, he added, “Sorry.”
Adele glanced up at Renee where he stood illuminated by the safety lights above the sign for the terminal. His scars traced the underside of his chin and his eyes fixed on the asphalt ahead of them, flicking expectantly toward the roundabout where the passenger vehicles would come to pick up their fares.
“It’s all right,” she murmured quietly, closing her eyes for a moment and resisting the urge to rest against John. She was so tired. The airplane ride had proceeded in the same quiet that had existed between them for the last few days.
A quiet she’d grown to hate, but one she didn’t quite know how to shatter.
She looked up again, and the tall Frenchman was staring at her. She blinked, looked away, glanced back, and now John was looking off at the road again, as if embarrassed she’d caught him watching.
“What is it?” she asked, offering the question like a gift, but also wincing as if fearful he might slap it away.
John, though, just sighed and regarded her for a moment with a soft, sad glimmer to his gaze. “I was just thinking,” he said, standing in the quiet.
“Thinking about what?”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing important.”
Adele nodded, feeling a flutter of disappointment. Again, in the distance she heard the churn of an airplane engine, listening as it carried the aircraft away and over the airport.
Adele sighed softly to herself, her mind wandering away in the cool darkness of the isolated terminal. “John,” she ventured softly, her eyes flitting up to him once again,
“What?” John said, his tone similarly hesitant, it seemed. She tried to remember if he’d had more than one drink on the plane, but couldn’t recollect.
She met his gaze, her own heart still. He looked back, his expression soft for the first time, it seemed, in weeks.
“John,” she murmured.
“Adele?”
She swallowed, then said, “You… you can be a right bastard sometimes, you know that?”
John blinked, then frowned. He turned now, facing her, feet set at shoulder width. His eyes flashed for a moment and he sniffed. “What the hell do you mean?” he demanded.
Adele shrugged now, looking away and staring out across the abandoned terminal. She looked to her phone. It was 2:05 now. Too late to have this conversation. Too late for much. Then again, she’d never been able to muster up the courage to confront him during the day, while on the job. If not now, then when?
“You are,” she insisted. “But… not in a bad way. Not really. I sometimes think I have you figured out, but then you go and do something that makes me question it.”
“Ah, the trait of every bastard then.”
“I’m not joking. You’re impossible. But useful. You act like I don’t exist anymore. And yet you still have my back when I need you. You’re a strange one, John Renee.” Adele wasn’t sure where this sudden spurt of honesty was coming from, but she also didn’t want to lose the current of it, so she pressed into the words, her brow furrowing as she did.
“I… I think I’m sorry,” she said. “For how I treated you after… well…”
“After I let your mother’s killer get away?”
“Yes.” Adele bit her lip. “But you saved a life. That’s all we can do sometimes. You saved a life. I’m sorry for treating you like… well…”
“Like a bastard.”
“I guess so.”
John stood with his eyes fixed on her, solemn and sincere. “I… I thought you were tired of me,” he murmured, quietly. Now he turned, facing the road again, as if plotting an escape route. “It doesn’t matter.” He went still, quiet.
“No,” she insisted, propelled by some summoned courage from a hidden place. She didn’t know why she was pressing, why she wouldn’t let it go. But in that same moment, she realized she didn’t want to. She knew John—and when he acted like himself, his true self, there was no one she trusted more. When he acted like a shadow of himself, he was the most obnoxious, unprofessional, ridiculous man she’d ever known. It was infuriating…
And yet part of her enjoyed the two-sided coin that was Renee’s personality. Part of her also loathed it. For a brief moment, she thought of Agent Leoni. Of Christopher. His kindness, his self-sacrifice, his willingness to care about her regardless of what she seemed to do.