Page 41 of Protecting You
Callan didn’t want anyone—by that, he meant Ghazi and his men—to see them on the street with their suitcases.
The Uber driver aimed for the hotel’s front door, but Callan insisted he take them into the parking garage beneath the building. The bill he slipped the guy convinced him to go to the extra trouble.
They took the elevator up to the fourth floor, then got off, walked away, waited around the corner, and then returned to the elevator.
Inside, Callan pressed the Down button.
This whole thing was weird, but she understood. He wanted them to be seen getting off the elevator from above floors. Maybe there were floor numbers above the first-floor elevator doors that would show where the car had come from.
Seemed a little paranoid, considering they still had an hour and a half before Ghazi’s man was supposed to pick them up, but Callan knew what he was doing.
The lobby was spacious and grand with high ceilings, dark woodwork, and multiple little seating areas. It teemed with people coming and going, some working at desks along one edge, others sipping coffee in a little café on the opposite side.
Callan marched across the room like he knew exactly where he was going. He left his suitcase against the wall outside the coffee shop. “What do you want?”
“Uh…I’m not?—”
He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “We’re putting on a show, Alyssa. Could you play along?”
It would be a lot easier if he’d give her a script or at least a hint as to what her lines were supposed to be. “Whatever you think, dear.”
He grinned. “Stay with our stuff. Be right back.”
She leaned against the wall and scanned the space, looking for…she wasn’t sure what. Enemies. Terrorists. Spies.
All she saw were families and businesspeople and probably parents whose kids attended Harvard or MIT.
Feeling exposed and off balance, she took out her phone and scanned her emails again. One message had come in from a client asking her to do a job for him. She replied and asked him to send her the details, that she’d be back in her office by Monday.
Was that wishful thinking?
Would she still be alive in four days? Would she be out of this…whatever it was?
Warmth beside her, then Callan’s voice in her ear. “You ready, Paris?”
There was that nickname again. But she didn’t hate how it sounded on his lips. Or how his breath felt against her neck.
She had no idea how she was going to pull this off. Pretend to work for Ghazi while gathering information, and all of that while faking an engagement to this man, who somehow made her skin tingle and her insides tremble. And infuriated her at the same time.
It was too much.
How had she ever wanted to be a spy? This was insane. Like taking the stage in front of a roomful of critics and knowing that if you forgot your lines, you’d probably end up dead.
What in the world was she doing?
* * *
“I can pull your suitcase.”Alyssa stopped Callan from trying to carry two coffee cups and a sack in one hand. When he gave her a go-ahead nod, she gripped the handle. “Where are we going?”
“Is that coat warm enough?”
“For what?”
He started across the lobby, and she walked beside him down a corridor that led to meeting rooms on one side.
He stopped at a glass door leading to a little courtyard with a large window between it and the lobby. The other three sides were brick. Planters overflowed with spring flowers and greenery, and a little fountain bubbled into a small pond in the center.
His eyebrows hiked, a question.
