Page 17

Kurt waved the offer away. “Forget it. It’s mainly food and clothes.

We have what we need for tonight, and the outside temperature is good for our supplies.

Can I get a bottle of champagne for the room and whatever nibbles you recommend?

We’ll order dinner in about thirty if that works with the kitchen? ”

“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.”

The desk clerk handed him the room key and gave him directions. Kurt headed over to find Rowena ignoring all the beautiful batik paintings and trying on a black ball cap.

“Suits you.”

She smiled. “I don’t need another hat.” She put it back. Her eyes lit up as she picked up a travel cribbage board and playing cards. “But this could be a good way to spend the evening.”

Kurt dropped his hands on her shoulders and lowered his voice because the woman behind the desk was listening intently. “I can think of better ways.”

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes flashed to his. Then she must have realized they had an audience because she smiled, went up on tiptoes, and kissed him on the mouth, nearly stopping his heart.

“Perhaps.” She grinned as she pulled back. “ If you beat me at cribbage.”

He forced himself out of his state of shock and laughed. Took the board and deck of cards out of her hands. Picked up the ball cap. “I’m a pretty good card player.”

“Counting on it.” She placed her hand on his chest right over his heart. She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “We could always play strip poker.”

She laughed as she stepped away from him with a flirty grin. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to hold up his part of the playacting bargain without embarrassing himself if she kept this up. Not when he wanted to back her up to the nearest wall and sink deep inside her.

Dammit .

He needed to snap out of it and tease her the way she was teasing him. He knew how to flirt. He wasn’t dead. Women came on to him not irregularly. They just generally weren’t Rowena’s age.

He needed to get over the dirty-old-man syndrome that was dogging him. This was make-believe. He was acting, and actors often dated people of a different generation. Hell, look at Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro.

He cleared his throat, took the items to the desk, and paid the smiling cashier with his alias’s credit card. He turned to leave.

“Have a good night.” The shopkeeper’s tone was full of rich amusement .

He stopped dead for a second, cheeks heating, then drew in a deep breath and continued on. In the foyer, he handed Rowena the card game and hat. He placed his free hand on the small of her back and steered her in the direction of their room.

When they got there, he dumped their assorted collection of bags on the small table inside the door.

It was a nice room with cream walls and heavy wooden furniture except for the bright blue easy chairs near the garden doors that opened onto a small patio and presumably the golf course beyond.

The emergency lighting was dim, but the staff had placed about twenty candles in jars around the room.

It gave the space a decidedly romantic glow.

“I’m going to freshen up.” Rowena opened the bathroom door.

“Good idea.”

The champagne was already sitting on the credenza in a silver ice bucket.

“I’m going to go order dinner from the bar. Any preference?”

“Anything as long as it’s warm.”

“Damn. I forgot something I need from the car. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll grab a quick shower. Open the fizz, please? I need a drink more than my next breath.”

He smiled, went over and quickly twisted the cap off the bottle and eased the cork out with a subtle pop as she closed the bathroom door. He poured two glasses and took a long drink from his before stuffing an olive into his mouth.

He scrubbed his face to wake himself up and get his brain in gear.

It had been a long day. Quashing his qualms about invading her privacy, he went into Rowena’s purse and removed the letter supposedly written by Dougie Cavanagh to Rowena’s mother, and the photograph of Cavanagh and Bjorn together.

He stuffed Bjorn’s cell into his back pocket, then placed both photos into the larger brown envelope and grabbed a pen from the desk. Put the envelope under his shirt.

He pulled on a fleece, picked up his flashlight, and took a room key with him.

He went to the barkeep and put in an order for a pasta dish and another for steak pie and fries.

Next, he headed back to the giftshop. He’d noticed they sold postage stamps.

“Do you have any jiffy envelopes yay size?” He sketched out the approximate size of the cell phone with his hands.

“Let me fetch one from the front desk.”

“Thanks.” Perhaps this was the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas.

But when technology couldn’t be trusted, old-school was probably the way to go.

If they were caught with these photos in their possession, he suspected they’d be quickly confiscated and never seen again.

God only knew what would happen to him and Rowena, but he didn’t think it would be good.

He borrowed a piece of headed notepaper. He’d tell Daisy as soon as he got home, but just in case he was detained, he wrote, “Give this to Jordan Krychek immediately.”

He hesitated over the address because he didn’t want to embroil his daughter in potential danger, but he couldn’t assume the post office machines couldn’t read or identify FBI addresses or names.

Sending anything to Camp Peary where Killion lived wasn’t exactly subtle.

He didn’t have that many options for people who didn’t work for one government agency or another.

He went with “D. Montana-Sagar.” Sagar was Daisy’s mom’s maiden name that Jennifer had made Daisy use for a couple of years at school, although it had never been legally changed, and Daisy had switched back when she’d gone to college, which had made him smugly happy.

He drew a small flower beside the “D.” Then he wrote Daisy’s address on the envelope and sealed the photos and SIM card inside.

When the woman came back with the jiffy envelope, he asked her to guess the postage for the letter.

Instead, she looked it up online and sold him the correct postage.

Then he asked her for ten times the amount figuring that would cover the stamps needed to send the cell phone, paid and left.

He went over to one of the tables and affixed the stamps, then wrote his neighbor’s name and address on the jiffy envelope, added c/o K Montana.

The guy knew him well enough to hold on to it for him until he got back.

It was a risk to mail anything from this part of the world as post had a habit of disappearing.

But he’d at least separated the SIM card.

He didn’t even know if the phone would hold any clues to the identity of Bjorn’s killer or Hurek’s whereabouts or Gilder’s or Spartan’s involvement.

He did know he couldn’t afford to assume it didn’t, and being caught with it would likely embroil him in a criminal case as a suspect for murder that would cause international uproar and steal years of his freedom.

He sealed the phone inside. The battery was already removed.

Rowena had seen to that. The lobby was quiet.

Muted voices coming from the dining room and the bar.

The reception desk was unmanned so he headed back outside into the dark night.

He jogged up the road in the direction the mechanic had pointed, using the flashlight to check the uneven surface of the tarmac.

A few hundred yards up the road, he spotted a turn off to the right and then a small group of buildings beyond.

He ran across the road and found the mailbox.

He stared hard at the two envelopes in his hand.

He was leaving it up to fate, but it might be the safest course of action.

They had a copy of the photos on their cells.

He’d print a copy for Rowena or arrange for the return of the original after examination should it reach its destination.

This way, if the two of them were stopped they wouldn’t have the originals on them.

And, although they had a very good chance of making it out of the country without being detected, he was sure whatever the bad guys were trying to hide was big.

Really big. Worth bringing down an aircraft full of people big.

And he needed to do everything he could to ensure this evidence got to the FBI.

The guilt that all those people had died because he was supposed to be on that flight threatened to break through the shield he’d erected against it. Objectively, he knew it wasn’t his fault and yet…it devastated .

What secret could possibly be worth that monstrous act?

Perhaps the information somehow implicated Gilder and Spartan in something far more sinister than being acquainted with a guy nearly thirty years ago who’d gone on to become an international terrorist.

Not telling Rowena about his plans for this evidence was a risk.

It could shake her trust in him, and he’d need that to get them both safely out of the country.

If she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t tell anyone where these items were, and therefore the bad guys wouldn’t think to stop the mail and search for the letters until it was hopefully too late.

It wasn’t that he thought Rowena was dirty. Not now. Not at all. But, if they were captured and tortured... He’d gone through SERE training back in the day and a similar program with HRT.

He wasn’t dumb enough to think he wouldn’t break under extreme duress, but he also knew that if the only thing someone wanted from him was the location of those photographs, then keeping their location a secret was probably the only thing keeping him alive.

The idea of whoever had murdered Bjorn getting hold of Rowena…

Not gonna happen.

The Hostage Rescue Team motto was Servare Vitas . To save lives.

That was his priority.

Not Hurek, not the evidence. Rowena’s life. And the life of anyone else who might be in danger because of what he’d uncovered.

He opened the slot and slipped the letters inside. Listened to them drop with a hollow feeling in his heart.

Despite not being a particularly religious man, he said a little prayer that he was making the right choice. Then he turned around and jogged back to the hotel.