Page 14

Chapter Thirteen

I dashed to the closet first, and Andrew rushed after me, quietly shutting the door behind him. My heart drummed erratically, pushing the hot blood through my body. Two women came into the room, their silhouettes visible through the louvers. Why hadn’t Andrew or I called out to them to come back later? They didn’t know what each guest sounded like, did they? One crew member stayed in the bedroom, and the other went to the bathroom.

Fear burned a hole in my gut, and sweat began to bead all over my body, the snug space quickly turning into a brazing pit of fire. We stood flush against each other, my face into Andrew’s chest, inhaling his cologne, which had by now become familiar. My hands were by my sides, itching to wind around his waist. For no other reason, but to keep me stable, of course. Andrew wrapped his left arm around me, the corner of his notebook digging into my lower back.

Swallowing, I glanced up and whispered. “What if they find us?”

“Shh.” His arm tightened, pressing me closer.

Oh my god. What if his niece called him? What if William called me?

One of the women came to the door, and my breathing ceased to exist. Brandon had left his shirt on the bed. What if she decides to hang it? How often have I returned to a hotel room to find my make-up and toiletries neatly stacked, my shoes lined up, and the clothes I hastily threw on the floor folded on the bed or hung in the closet?

Through the slits, I could see her standing near, her voice vibrating in my bones. Her shadow moved. A hand reached for the handle.

This was it. We were busted. I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead into Andrew. Okay, if she saw us, we should say we were playing a sardines game, and invite her in. Yeah. That would go well.

A pull of the door.

Another tug.

The woman muttered.

I opened one eye. Andrew held the handle with his hand, not letting the lady in. She tugged again. Grumbled and sighed. A walkie-talkie beeped. Static crackled. She quickly rambled. After a bit, there was muffled hubbub, some more static noise followed by a man’s voice replying back to her.

“ Gracias ,” she said.

Ha! I knew that word.

Her shadow disappeared, and both women chatted in the bathroom. I didn’t understand what she said on the radio, but I sensed the worst in my gut.

“What did she say?” My voice quavered.

Andrew lowered his lips to my ear. “She needs Alejandro to come in and fix the door again.”

I’d have liked to focus on the brush of Andrew’s lips on my ear but… Houston, we have a problem . Panic rose inside me quicker than water after the second flush in a stopped-up toilet.

“What if they wait for him here? What do we?—”

Andrew let go of the handle and pressed his fingers to my lips. “Shh.”

My breath hitched from unexpected contact. Our eyes stayed locked, and he slowly dragged his hand away, his fingers brushing gently over my mouth and catching on my bottom lip. His hand caressed my shoulder and slid down my arm. The sensation of his touch was too much. My body tightened and stilled, my brain momentarily forgetting about cleaning ladies and some guy coming over to check the door. I was glad the hotel didn’t splurge on making this space any bigger because I loved being pressed against Andrew’s broad body. Was this the original wardrobe in the house? What about the bathroom? Did the hotel sacrifice some space to add both of these spaces? When we stood outside under the windows of Brandon’s room, there were four windows. But when we were inside his room, there were only three. Two large ones in the bedroom and one in the bathroom.

“Where is the fourth window?” I whisper-blurted.

“What?” Andrew’s eyebrows pinched together.

“When we were in the garden,” I whispered, “there were four windows, but inside there’re only three.”

Andrew was quiet for a minute, his eyes searching mine, and then his full lips curled up. “You’re brilliant,” he whispered and pressed his lips to the top of my head, and the entire Keukenhof garden blossomed in my chest at once. This kiss was the most action I’d gotten in almost two years.

“I concur,” I said, a bit breathless, but hey, we were in a stressed situation.

The water stopped running in the shower, and the cleaning ladies’ voices emerged from the bathroom and passed by our hiding spot. They lingered for a while, and then the main door banged shut. The lock clicked once, then twice.

Besides our heavy breathing and the loud heart beating, the room fell into silence.

“The coast is clear,” Andrew said and walked out. I shadowed him.

I pressed my palms to my chest, inhaling deeply.

“Oh, my god. That was not fun.” I wrapped my hands around my middle and bent, breathing in and out. “That was something I don’t ever want to repeat.”

Frankly, it was a lie. I wouldn’t mind being crammed into a small space with Andrew again.

Andrew pressed his ear to the room door, unlocked it, and cracked it ajar. He peeked out, then slid into the hallway, beckoning for me to follow him.

“How are we going to lock the door?” I shimmied out.

“We aren’t.” He took my hand.

Pulling me after him, Andrew stepped into a darker connecting corridor, a red sign with the words “ Salida de incendios ” was above a door. To the right was another door. Without hesitation, Andrew opened it. He fumbled with his hand on a wall and turned on a light.

Well, my wish came true.

It was the housekeeper’s storage area. The hotel had apparently boarded the window to make an extra room with storage space. Shelves lined all three walls, full of linen and towels, and plastic bins filled with hotel toiletries, paper products, and amenities supplies. In the corner was a vacuum cleaner, a mop, and a bucket. Andrew and I jam-packed into the limited space, and he closed the door. A low tick tick tick sound counted down minutes to automatic light shut off. The room had no air conditioning, and sweat quickly coated my skin, or maybe it was again the proximity to Andrew’s body.

“I just realized that being stuck with you in tight places is becoming my new norm,” I said, unable to hide my tiny grin. This situation, today and over the entirety of the past four days, was so bizarre, but I was enjoying it.

“Is that a complaint?” Andrew glanced at me with a twinkle in his eyes.

No.

“The jury’s still out.”

Andrew gave me a teasing smile before crouching on the floor and studying the tiles. I lowered onto the floor too, my bum bumping his as I checked under the selves, moving boxes out of the way. Tiles in this space were faded and tarnished, some worse than others, making it hard to make out what symbols they had. The light above our heads went off, leaving us in total darkness. I was about to get up and turn it on again.

“Don’t bother. I’ll use my phone,” Andrew said, and a second later his phone gave out dim light, illuminating his face. He turned on the flashlight app. I did the same. We shone both phones on the floor and continued to explore.

“What do you think about this one?” Andrew traced a finger over the discolored outline of what could have been two birds facing each. He pulled the pencil out of his notebook and traced faded lines, giving them more definition. It was remarkable to watch him expertly revitalize the old artwork.

I moved sideways so I could see it from his angle. My hip pressed against Andrew’s leg and my body’s temperature skyrocketed. I was confident we were looking at the correct birds. “We can’t break it. Can we?”

Andrew set the pencil aside, handed me his phone, and produced a pocketknife. He dug the blade into the grout around the tile and scraped it. The dust particles danced in the light as Andrew continued his work.

“How did you find Octavian Global?”

“Saw a job ad in a newspaper.” Andrew flashed me a quick smile, sweat glinting on his face, then returned his attention to his task. He fell quiet. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to share that information? But after a minute, he finally said, “One doesn’t find them. They find you. They recruited me when I was in my first year at uni. At that time, being part of an exclusive and honorable society was fascinating and exciting, and they paid well.”

“If money is good, why do you work at the university?”

“It’s not MI6.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “They only reach out when they need my expertise, maybe once a year. On rare occasions twice a year. I needed a day job, and I enjoy teaching my classes more than doing this.”

“Are you the only one from Cambridge that works with them?”

“Octavian Global doesn't organize Christmas parties yearly for everyone involved to meet. Dr. Evans, a professor at the University of Oxford, is the other person I know who is with them. Well, Richard was too, but he left.”

“What about Dr. Garcia?”

“No, he’s just an old and loyal family friend. This is his first time being so involved with my assignment.”

I wiped off the sweat above my top lip. “How did Brandon end up working with Richard?”

“My guess is money. Richard hired him a few years ago. Brandon is a pleasant and intelligent man, but a museum curator’s salary doesn’t allow for a lavish lifestyle. And money can easily change people and their principles.”

We again fell into silence, the blade’s scratch on the grout filling the small closet.

“I think you would make a perfect secret MI6 agent. Ambling around, wearing a black tux, seducing beautiful women, and using sex as your weapon to get secrets out of them. Instead of your name, they’d scream classified codes as they climaxed.”

I might have gone overboard here with my imagination. I didn’t have any top-secret information, but I’d probably give up my Netflix password. Heat crept up my neck as an image of naked, worn-out Andrew lounging in a bed with silk sheets, materialized in my mind.

Andrew’s hands came to a stop, and he glanced at me, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Any secrets I need to get out of you?”

My heart somersaulted, and my jaw went slack. “What?!”

I gaped at him.

He stared at me.

I wanted to kiss him.

He cleared his throat.

“Sorry, a poor joke,” he said and returned to scraping.

Now it was my turn to clear my throat. “Um, what do you think is hidden here?”

“Not a clue. It could be nothing, or it could be a map, journal, correspondence, or heirloom, or a piece of a broken vase.”

“Sounds like you’ve found all of those items before.”

“I have.” A bead of sweat dripped down his face.

I observed him carefully push the blade along the tile edge, admiring his sculpted forearms, cords of his muscles flexing and dancing with each movement.

When he’d dug most of the grout out, he set the tip of the blade at the edge of the tile and pressed on the knife’s handle, lifting the tile up. Catching the tile by its edges, he moved it aside, and adrenaline in my body surged to a record high when a hollow space underneath came into view. We grinned like idiots at each other, my chest rising and falling with a rapid speed. Andrew broke our eye contact and shone the light inside.

He frowned. “It’s empty.”

“No!” I leaned forward, hitting my forehead on his cheek.

“Ouch.” He chuckled, rubbing his jaw. “I’m kidding. I see something.” He reached into the space and pulled out a bundle wrapped in a stained cloth.

I could have exploded with excitement.

He carefully unraveled the dirty fabric and exposed a mahogany box. Inside, on a stack of light-brown, folded paper sheets was a bracelet like the one I had on my wrist, but instead of green stones, it had dark blue gems. The box also had a brass cipher composed of two disks, and a similar book with a collection of short stories with an Augustine Pérez monogram in the center.

“Do you think this is the cipher we need to read messages in his letters to his sons?” I asked, turning brass rings.

“We’ll find out soon.” Andrew took his phone and shined it on the gold bracelet. “This is unexpected.”

He moved it slightly, catching the light.

“Do you see the map on it too?”

“Yes.” Andrew smiled. “This should complete the map we already have.”

My phone buzzed with a message.

William

Brandon and I are going to the pool. He’s going to change first in his room.

It’s fine. We’re in a closet.

His room?!!!

God, no! I’ll explain later. You don’t have to hang out with him anymore. You can leave him.

r u kidding me? This is the best thing that’s happened to me on this vacation. He is soooooo hot. I want to spend time with him. R u ok?

Fine. Don’t tell him anything about what you know and that you’re with us. Remember he works for THE dickhead.

“Is everything okay with William?” Andrew asked as he set the tile back into its place.

“Yes. They apparently bonded and are off to the pool.”

After last night, I was happy William had found some happiness on this trip, even if it was with the enemy and would probably be short-lived. What cover-up story had he come up with? Actually, William didn’t need to come with much, he just needed to omit his last name, and that he was with Dr. Jones.

Andrew took a clean washcloth off the shelf, wiped his face, and then dusted off the floor. He moved a bin with tiny lotion and body wash bottles to mask the crime scene. Holding the wooden box in one hand, he hauled me up and opened the door, letting in cool air around us.

I peeled my dress away from my sticky back. I needed a shower.

We exited the dim corridor and curved into the main hall where our rooms were located. Thankfully there wasn’t a soul in sight.

“For the last six years,” Andrew said as we neared his door, “I have worked alone. Working with you has reminded me of how nice it feels to share the excitement of uncovering something new with someone else.”

I shook my head, not believing what I was about to say. “This trip is the most ridiculous fun I’ve ever had in my life. I’m glad the package was delivered to me.”

“Me too.” Andrew smiled. “Would you mind if I mentioned you and William in my research papers?”

I hoped I mirrored his sincere smile. “Only if you promise we’ll be invited to the opening night of the museum exhibition?”

“You can count on that.”

I turned to go to my room.

“Adriana?” Andrew called out.

I whirled. “Yes?”

“Would you like to help me with these?” He lifted the box in his hand.

I wasn’t sure if it was the idea of spending more time with Andrew or that he thought I could help him, but my heart surged in my chest as I stepped in his direction.