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She shrugged but held his gaze. “Swans don’t fail.”
He stilled, and then memory clicked into her eyes. She looked away.
Yep, they were right back at the café before the bomb, weren’t they?
“Wow.”
She closed her eyes briefly, as if in pain. Then she turned back to him, her jaw hard. Her expression, however, suggested something else. “I never meant for you to get hurt. You weren’t supposed to be there?—”
“I saw the backpack, and I thought you were inside. I went back tosaveyou.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like that—I didn’t even know what the plan was, Stein. They just told me to be there and then when to evacuate.”
“You had to know they’d set off a?—”
“Diversion! I had no idea that included a bomb! And—if you’d stuck to the plan?—”
“Yourplan still would have killed people!”
“No, it wouldn’t have. I’d already pulled the fire alarm, already gotten people out?—”
“Not me.” He didn’t mean to snap, but—fine.“Okay, I know you said to leave but...” He held up his hands. “It doesn’t matter.”
She drew in a breath, her mouth tight. “For the record, I didn’t want to leave you. I called the police—got you help as soon as I could.”
“For the record,I thought you were dead.”
She flinched. Nodded.
Okay, perhaps that had come out a little stronger than he’d wanted. He schooled his voice. “What happened to Luis?”
A beat. Then, “He lives in Portugal. Does some work for us occasionally.”
And right then, an odor hit Stein’s nose.
Smoke.
He stood up. A glow came from the edge of the door, a strip of light. “Something’s on fire.”
“It’s all concrete in there. How—” And then she got up, put her hand to her nose. “Oh no. Don’t breathe in.”
He looked at her.
“The lift—I’ll bet it had a lithium backup battery. It could have overheated, especially if it was damaged in the earthquake. It must have ignited.”
It made sense—especially since he started to cough?—
“Don’t breathe in!”
And then she tackled him into the water.
What—?
He surfaced, the water hitting his bones, turning them to ice.
Her eyes shone just above the surface. She swam over to the edge, grabbed her face mask, her fins, and then pulled the BCD and oxygen tank into the water. Handed him the regulator. “Breathe.”
He took a breath, handed it back to her. She took a breath.