Page 83 of Honey Cut
“But I’m for Mr. Drobny,” I say, with my best Gallic purr.
The name Drobny works—whether he thinks I mean Filip or Filip’s brother doesn’t seem to matter. With a muttered apology, he steps aside and waves me up.
I’ve studied enough pictures of Drobny in the basement of that museum to feel good about identifying him, but I don’t see him as I move through the VIP area. I do see Kulov, however, occupied with someone short-haired and limber in his lap, a bottle of very expensive vodka chilling in a bucket nearby.
I note the booth he’s in, in case that’s where Drobny also likes to sit when he’s here, and then quickly map out the rest of the space, doing my best to look drunk and dazed if someone happens to see me. It works; no one pays me any mind as I work my way to the end of the VIP space and to the door that staff are using to bring out food and booze.
I slip through it, conscious of the time I’ve been away from Tristan, conscious of the fib I’ll have to tell about a long bathroom line. I don’t like lying to him—it’s yet another sin I’ll have to confess. Although after murder and now infidelity, it’s not like lying is going to put me any more in the red.
The staff door leads to an ugly concrete stairwell, which in turn leads to a small kitchen, a tired breakroom filled with employee lockers, and then a fire door, which I know from my external reconnaissance leads to an alley about a quarter mile from the river. It’s a decent escape route, even if its efficacy will depend entirely on my speed. Which will in turn depend on how easy Drobny is to kill.
The fire door is propped open, and I treat myself to a cursory peek through the crack.
“No, it was definitely them,” says a voice.
American English, a woman.Familiar.
Ice slithers through my veins and down my spine. It’s only habit that has me slowing my breathing and guiding my body to regulate itself because I don’t have the presence of mind to do it consciously.
“I don’t care if he’s busy, he should know,” she says. “I was on the balcony above them, and I got the whole thing on video, and I’m sending that shit tonight. Let’s see what he thinks of his precious Isolde then. Let’s see if he wants to ignore Goran’s concerns after seeing her fuck her own bodyguard.”
Goran.
A flash of dark hair and pale skin through the cracked door, and I press myself to the wall, my pulse refusing to slow.
Andrea.
It’s Andrea. From Lyonesse.
Here in Belgrade somehow.
God and the Virgin and all the saints help me.
I go back to the VIP area and then back down the stairs, hoping I look thoroughly debauched as I pass by the bouncer. I find Tristan hovering adorably near the restrooms, waiting for me to emerge.
I take his hand from behind, startling him.
“We need to go,” I say urgently, and pull him out the door.
* * *
I fillhim in on the walk to the penthouse, fabricating only enough to say that I’d gotten turned around on my way to the bathroom and that was how I’d overheard Andrea.
Tristan is ashen, wordless. Both of us, I think, are at a loss for what to do. If Andrea has a video—if she shows that video to Mark?—
And of course what I can’t say to Tristan—or to Mark, if he ever finds out—is that Andrea being at a nightclub in Serbia, a club that just so happens to be the haunt of the man who stabbed her boss, is suspicious. Incriminating, actually.
Someone intentionally inserted the fake identities of the attackers into our system.
Someone who had access to our system, you mean.
Andrea would have been able to do that. Andrea has access to everything, along with Mark and Dinah, and would have known how to cover her tracks. And now she turns up here, at the same place where Drobny is supposed to be?
A new kind of fear pushes its way into my chest. A choking, smothering fear that reminds me of the gaping despair I felt when I was told my mother had died.
The snake is still at Lyonesse. And she might try to kill my husband again.
I have to find a way to tell Mark that doesn’t expose me or my sources of information. But will he even believe me? After he finds out…sees…Tristan and me?
