Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER NINE Haphazard
'We need to be glued to the hip whilst pretending we're total strangers,' Sarah concludes. 'You'll also have to remain unseen.'
'Those are very conflicting variables....'
'It's the only way it'll work.'
The options were as thin and fragile as glass. Any wrong step and they would shatter magnificently. Can't hide in the luggage; there's a triple screening process involving hand search and thermal scanning. Alias out of the question; ID and referees and physical proof of your project required at the gate. Security outfits were dispatched at cabins, brought personally from an undisclosed location in the sanctuary. Sarah and I stood over these spread across a hotel room tablet, exhausted and dry-lipped. They were well within their right to refuse intelligence visitation without warrant, ruling out Barry's intervention.
The rain continues to beat relentlessly over the roof of the dingy hotel. The incessant reminder that we couldn't move until we devised a way forward. Paris, as I've quickly learned, is as restless and relentless as New York. Sarah wriggles down into the uncomfortably small bed nook, expression graceful and calm. Our dinner containers half eaten, long cold.
'You don't seem discouraged though,' I say.
'Not in the least,' she says. 'These people are meticulous, but arrogant. Causes inevitable flaws leading to catastrophic loss of control, Ian would always say.'
I catch a hint of cryptic in her words. 'You think causing a scene might allow me to do so?'
'I do,' she says. 'But i'll be honest in saying that's not my specialty. At least not intentionally.'
I lower down onto scuffed carpet. 'And you can't exactly co-ordinate something with Ian.'
'No,' Sarah says, almost sighs. 'I can't. But I can plan something in the hopes he might catch on.'
A sigh exudes her then. She shakes her head slightly. 'If only I'd said something,' she says. 'To both of them. Then none of this would've been put on you.'
