Didn't You Promise (A Bad for You Novel) (3 page)

“But you don’t need to worry about that, you’re here for the lost part.” He opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope, and held it out to me. Then handed another envelope to Haithem.

I opened the envelope.
Passports
. Two of them. I flipped open the cover of the first. Lina Kyriakou, with her dark hair and eyes, in a photo taken only yesterday when we’d practiced this look. I ran my finger over the photo and the hologram. I’d never owned a passport. Never needed one. Who’d have thought the first time I held a passport in my hands it’d be a fake...

I opened the other passport. Me, a slightly more normal me, without the wig and contacts. Contingency B name. I closed the passports, I didn’t want to think about needing this one. The contingencies only escalated in terms of how much I hated them.

Haithem didn’t open his envelope, just tucked it into his pants pocket.

Avner held an electronic car key out to Haithem. “It’s clean.”

“Thank you.” Haithem took the key and a long look passed between them. Tension expanded. Silence throbbed over the hum of electronics with a force that seemed to want to push me from the room.

“There’s a bathroom just through there, Angelina.” Avner pointed behind me. “It’s going to be a long drive.”

Leave us
.

I’d heard the suggestion he wasn’t bold enough to put into words.
Not a chance.
We were in this together. No more secrets or lies.

Maybe Avner didn’t get that.

My gaze narrowed at him. Of course he didn’t. Avner and Haithem might look similar with their dark looks, but their differences were striking. And it wasn’t that Avner was leaner, or sleeker, or the shape of his jaw, the difference came from underneath.

Haithem wore his power on the surface, so bold and glaring I’d worried there was nowhere he’d ever pass unnoticed. Not so Avner. As I watched him stare a man like Haithem down, blast a silent message at him with a stare, that same power rose from where he kept it hidden.

My lungs filled with a silent gasp.

Avner
lived
incognito.

Unlike Haithem, you’d never notice him coming unless he wanted you to. There was no guessing what kind of man Avner was. I glanced at Haithem. He continued to stare at his friend. My chest clenched. There was never a time I didn’t feel Haithem’s attention on me, even without his direct gaze, it warmed me. As though he had extra wide peripheral.

We’d never been with other people long enough for me to notice
this
though. How he tried to put extra space between us. Space from his gaze. A gaping foot of distance between his body and mine. Distance so unnatural it practically vibrated.

There weren’t many times I’d known Haithem to be wrong—but he was wrong then.

No amount of space, no matter how long he averted his gaze, would fool anyone. It only took one look, one tiny look in my direction for anyone to see the way he loved me.

I glanced between them again. The level of ricocheting chin-notching stubbornness reached soap-opera levels. I sighed. Let them have their secret boy talk. The urge to pee had become a nuisance about half an hour ago anyhow.

“Thanks,” I said, leaving them to whatever catching up they had to do.

Chapter Three

“Leave her with me,” Avner demanded the instant she passed through the door.

My hand snapped closed. I kept my focus on the door she’d gone through. If I looked at Avner after that statement, I’d risk a decade of friendship and loyalty. “Careful.”

“You don’t trust me?”

I turned to him, the only friend I’d ever called brother. “Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t?” I clasped his shoulder. Avner might deal in danger but he’d always offered me caution. He’d caution me against this. “I won’t let her go.” I squeezed. “Unless...I absolutely must.”

I didn’t need to elaborate further. Avner knew what we were up against and was fully cognizant of the risks we took. He was in this with me. Except, Angelina was not the mission he signed on for. To a man who considered dangers personal challenges, keeping Angelina around was a strategically terrible move.

Avner clasped my shoulder in return. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” He lowered his voice. Not that he needed to worry that she’d overhear, we’d switched to Arabic the moment she’d left. “She’s safer here. You know there is no one who can hide her like I can.”

“She’s safest with me.”

He dropped his hand. “
You’re
safer with her here.”

I let that statement drift right where it belonged—into irrelevance. Then took a step back toward the master computer in these lavish headquarters I’d helped fund. We’d been partners since college. Even if our goals were different, our path had been the same. A life in the shadows. But Avner’s destination drew him deeper into murkiness than mine. Black market. Darknet. He’d hacked every system that supposedly couldn’t be hacked.

He’d embraced what I never could. I never thrived on this. Never sought the dark. Never wanted to fuck with something just because it could be fucked. I simply sensed disaster waiting. Made sure when it arrived I’d be more than ready—I’d greet it with an iron fist.

“Did you do everything I asked?”

His jaw set. “Of course I did.”

“I needed to ask—” I held his gaze tighter than I’d held his shoulder “—because I need you to look at me now, and tell me that if the time comes you’ll do what has to be done.”

He took a breath, then his jaw pulsed.

There were few people close to me I didn’t fully own. Avner might have been my only true friend. The only man with whom I’d argue. We’d argued about this. He’d refused my requests. Avner had the balls for that. Perhaps that’s what made him so crucial.

“Yeah—I’ll do it.”

My spine relaxed a fraction.

“I still say there are too many things that could go wrong, Haithem.”

My gaze drifted to the door once more.

Yes
,
there were.

Far too many things that could go wrong with this plan. The one contingency I’d never repeated to Angelina. One that could only work—could only protect her if she never suspected. It’d destroy her, but if we ever found ourselves on that road, that terrible one-way road, we’d already be beyond salvation.

Nothing, no part of all the good I could only hope would vindicate our actions, trumped her.

She had to survive me.

If everything went to hell, I could live in hell, I could bear the flames, as long as she was all right. She’d never forgive me if I had to go through with this. I’d told too many lies already. Even this planning broke the honesty keeping us together after everything I’d done.

But better to be with and not need, then need and be without.

So I had to plan for the worst.

“Do you have that other thing I asked for?”

“Right here.” Avner patted his breast pocket.

The door opened, and Angelina stepped through. It took work to keep the air in my lungs. She’d never been sexier. Not because she appeared different—I’d love nothing more than to strip that disguise away—it was the way she looked at me.

Angelina looked at me the way a woman does who knew and owned her own self.

She knew and owned me too.

Yet, I couldn’t help the questions clenching my guts—what had it cost to get us here? How much of her innocence had been lost? And how much more was yet to be broken.

Angelina

I’d taken the opportunity after relieving myself to remove the wig and scratch my damp scalp until it stung. Still the blasted thing left me feeling as though ants had made their nest between the cap and my skull.

Haithem’s clipped words reached me in the doorway.

I froze. Needed a moment to process the sound of him and the look of him all at once.
Too much
. He was too much for the eyes and the ears and the senses. Even from where I stood across the room, the sound of his voice triggered the memory of his scent. The words he’d whisper when we lay in bed, never in English for me to understand. I could only believe they were more tender and more vulnerable than saying
I
love you
.

Because he was generous with those three words.

He held a hand out to me. I walked to him and placed my fingers in his. The touch anchored me, slowed the ever present rushing in my head that’d plagued me ever since we stepped foot off the yacht.

He fixed his gaze on me. “Avner has arranged a special gift for you.”

“A gift?” I glanced between them.

Avner nodded, and pulled a box from his jacket pocket. “From Haithem.”

He opened the box, and presented what lay inside.

A gold watch.

Thick gold link band, big round face. Beautiful, but bold. Like Haithem.

I wasn’t sure what to say. If I waved my arm I could probably see the tension between Haithem and Avner wobble like jelly. “Um, thank you?”

Haithem took the watch from the box and buckled it to my wrist, then squeezed my hand in both of his. “As long as you wear this, no matter what happens, I’ll be with you.”

My scalp itched again. This time not because of the wig. I scanned his face. The groove between his brows.

Avner moved next to Haithem and tapped on a keyboard. An aerial view of the area appeared with a flashing red dot over the building we stood in.

“We can pinpoint your location to the centimeter. If you and Haithem become separated, or—” he glanced at Haithem “—we can find you within seconds anywhere in the world.”

I stared at the screen. The dot seemed to throb with the same beat as in my chest. In any normal circumstances, my boyfriend gifting me a tracking device would fall under automatic grounds for breakup with a side of restraining order.

But he and I had never been normal. Something like this might just end up saving my life.

“Then I’ll make sure it never comes off.”

“Oh it won’t,” Avner said. “Now it’s on it can only be unlocked remotely.”

I turned my wrist over in Haithem’s grasp. The clasp of the watch rested like a small bullet on my skin, thicker than on any watch I’d seen before. My stomach sank. “Haithem?”

His grip loosened around my hand. “Remember the telephone number I had you remember, and you asked me what it was for?”

“Yes?”

“It was for this.” He stroked my wrist above the watch. “I swore you’d always have the choice—you will—you do.”

My fingers unclenched.

“Just dial that number and this unlocks. The choice is yours. No one can remove it but you or me.”

I stared at the watch. No one could remove this. No one could steal this. No one could take this away. He’d have to be the one to take the watch off me, to let
me
go. I’d wipe that number from my mind before using it.

“And I won’t,” I said.

He didn’t smile but his forehead evened. “There’s one more thing.”

“Does it come with steak knives?”

“Better.” His lips curved. “Just press here.” He placed my finger over the crown of the watch and pushed in. “Hold for five full seconds.”

I held the crown in, squeezing against resistance. A sharp ringtone sounded from Haithem’s pocket.

“And if I don’t respond in three rings...”

An alarm went off on a computer beside Avner, squealing through the room. Avner hit a button on the keyboard cutting of the sound.

I let go of the watch.

“No matter what happens, no matter where you are, you press this and I’ll be there for you.”

My throat closed.

He searched my face.

The only thing crazier than the fact that I actually needed a panic button strapped to my wrist was how freaking much it meant to me that he’d given me one. That he’d given me security right when I felt like a fish swimming against the current. As though he knew I needed something to touch, something I could lay my palm on and know everything would be okay.

“Thank you,” I said, and touched the clasp that only we could open. “This is incredible.”

“It should be, Haithem designed it.”

My gaze snapped from Avner to Haithem. I’d realized of course, this wasn’t the kind of watch you could pick up at your local jeweler. But Haithem had designed something like this?

I’d seen him tap away at his laptop, writing codes I didn’t understand, using programs I’d never seen. I knew he was
smart
. Knew he’d invented more than that one device that had us running around the world in secret. Yet when staring at a man whose appearance insisted he was an anti-nerd, you could be forgiven for forgetting he was an actual genius.

“You designed this for me?”

Haithem cleared his throat. “I needed to know you could always reach me.”

I studied his lips, they’d gone soft.

There were things he wanted to say.

There were things
I
wanted to say.

Things I wanted to
do
.

I turned to Avner. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Now you two need to go.”

Avner led us back into the elevator, put his key back into the keyhole, turned it, and this time pressed the basement two button on its own. The lift slid down, then opened to a dim abandoned space. We stepped into a wave of rancid heat, the stench of damp, and of rot.

I coughed, catching myself on a gag.

“Not so hospitable, huh?” Avner shot me a look from the corner of his eye, then smiled. “Discourages explorers.”

We followed the rear wall to a door. Avner lifted a panel, punched in a security code and opened the door. We stepped though, and the lights flickered on, illuminating a long narrow passage. The door shut and for the most part, the stench eased.

So did the heat.

“What is this, where are we going?”

Avner lead the way. “It’s a tunnel to the parking lot across the road.”

“Secret levels and underground tunnels...” I reached for Haithem, and held onto his elbow as I dodged an oily puddle. “Who the hell are you people?”

Avner laughed. “The polite term is entrepreneurs.”

“Hmm,” I said, and glanced at Haithem, who expressed exactly zero shock at any of this. Had he been here before?

How did their businesses fit together?

We emerged from the tunnel via another heavy security door on the first floor of a multi-story car park. Avner showed us to a silver sedan with darkened windows. New but not too flash.

“There’s a cooler in the back seat of the car, make sure you both eat something.”

I stepped towards Avner, leaned on my tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see that he does.”

Avner’s expression shifted and for the first time since we’d arrived he looked at me. Looked at me as though I was
someone
, rather than
something
to be handled with fake passports, tracking watches and vague details. “Be safe, Angelina.”

“I will.”

Haithem opened the passenger door and I climbed in and buckled my seatbelt. Haithem and Avner exchanged a few words then Haithem joined me in the car. We left the parking lot via a guarded exit ramp. Then hit the road, and settled in for what would be almost a day’s drive.

* * *

I rummaged through the cooler. “Sandwich? Scone with sultanas?”

Had to give points to Avner for this. Sandwiches on white bread. Scones. No cream but they were wrapped, and buttered with jam. A proper picnic in a cooler.

Haithem kept his gaze fixed on the road. “No, I’m fine for now.”

A tone sounded through the car. The voice that had turned from mechanical to downright grating about two hours ago barked instructions to bear left in three hundred meters from his phone. I glanced at the screen. The GPS map with flashing dot marking our precise location. Shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the app guiding our way was one of Haithem’s own. Or that it was the only device he’d trust or dare enter our destination into.

“What about an apple?” I held up the reddest of the two, rotating it back and forth.

I could practically
see
the thoughts hammering in his head the same way they did mine. Maybe his were less obvious, his torment only visible because I witnessed the change in him.

“A cola?”

He rested a hand on my thigh. “You eat. I’ll have something when we stop.”

I set the cooler down between my legs, keeping the apple but laying my other hand on his.

“Hmm,” I said.

He glanced at me. “What?”

“I guess I’m just disappointed.”

He frowned hard enough to make me pity the thing that dared disappoint me. I guess there was more evil in me than I’d known.

“Why?”

I sighed as audibly as possible. “Someone swore to fulfill my needs later...” I rubbed the apple against my lips, inhaling its sweetness. “But you’ve been driving all day—and haven’t eaten since six a.m.” I suppressed the spasm forming in my throat, and held my lips even. “Frankly, I don’t believe it’s going to be everything I was
guaranteed
.”

The brakes squeaked. We jerked to a halt behind the car stopping in front of us. Traffic hummed and groaned outside the car. Inside, silence screamed electric.

The hand beneath mine tightened over my knee.

I took a bite of apple to keep from choking on a laugh
.

“Is that so?” he asked, his voice more honeyed than the fruit dissolving over my tongue. “And to think I thought you were sweet.”