Page 10

10

Sparrow

W e lost sight of Will and Thomas a few minutes after stepping off the train. One moment, their silhouettes were ahead of us, cutting a path through the quiet throng. The next, they vanished into the rain-wet blur of Budapest.

I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t need to.

Egret noticed, too.

He stood beside me at the platform’s edge, smoke curling from the end of his cigarette like a lazy question mark. The corners of his mouth were drawn in the half smirk he wore like armor.

“They’re fine,” he said eventually, eyes scanning the faces around us. “Beckett could find a bolt-hole in the middle of a Siberian blizzard.”

I nodded, adjusting my coat and gripping my bag tighter.

Budapest loomed beyond the station like a city halfway between breath and burial. The war had chewed it down to bone; and, while the Soviets had stitched it back together, the seams showed.

“Let’s find our way to the Astoria,” I said.

A line of taxis waited just beyond the station. Our driver spoke little English, less German, and no French. Egret answered the man’s clipped Hungarian with brief, unoffensive phrases. I watched out the window while the city crawled past—trams, darkened shopfronts, red stars on every corner.

We spoke little on the way.

It wasn’t that there was nothing to say.

Halfway through the ride, Egret’s hand found mine, and our fingers intertwined.

I watched a boy chase a scrap of paper across a puddle. A pair of Soviet soldiers leaned against a wall, smoking and watching.

“Let’s go to your room first, check things out,” I said after a while, my voice barely a whisper. We needed to check both rooms for listening devices, and it would go faster if we did it together.

Egret didn’t turn. He simply nodded.

I didn’t answer.

He didn’t push.

The Astoria was beautiful—crumbling a little at the edges, like a woman who once held court in Paris salons but smoked too much and now played cards with ghosts.

Inside, the floors shone, the chandelier sparkled with forced pride, and the desk clerk greeted us with a bureaucratic politeness that felt more like a warning than hospitality.

Egret signed the guest book first. “Dr. Hans Weiss. Austria.”

Then me. “Juliette Moreau. France.”

We were given rooms on the third floor with a view of the street.

The bellhop asked no questions. We didn’t offer him our luggage.

We tipped in Western currency and took the stairs instead of the elevator.

Room 317 was nicer than I expected. It was clean and understated, containing two twin beds, a dark wooden wardrobe, and heavy curtains.

The radiator hissed.

Egret dropped his bag and said, “I need to use the bathroom. Mind waiting out here?”

It seemed like such a strange thing to ask, especially given our history, but I heard it for what he meant: “I’ll check the bathroom for bugs. You take the bedroom.”

The first one was in the telephone. Of course.

The second was in the ceiling light fixture—too well placed, too convenient.

The third, hidden in a decorative vent behind the wardrobe, was my personal favorite.

Egret bent down, followed where I pointed, then sat back and whistled. “You have to give it to the Hungarians, they really know how to decorate these rooms. I haven’t seen anything like this in years.”

“It is . . . interesting, isn’t it?” I gave him a tight smile. “Can I ask you something?”

“Uh, okay. Shoot.”

“You’ve been . . . how should I say this?”

“An ass?” he offered.

“Let’s be honest. Ass is your natural state.” I chuckled. “But you have been, I don’t know, more intense than you normally are.”

“Hey!”

“Please, Dr. Weiss , you know you’re an ass on good days—and the past week hasn’t exactly been filled with good days. Why are you being so hard on Charles and Henry? They are lovely people, if a bit odd.”

He shrugged. “I can’t help being who I am.”

“You can behave.” I slapped his arm. “I have seen you do it, though I can’t recall the last time you did so.”

He winked. The asshole actually winked.

“Please, try to be nice to them . . . for me?”

His eyes closed as though he wished to be a million miles away. Then he looked up and nodded. “For you, anything.”

I cupped his cheek, feeling a familiar flutter in my chest. The man would likely be the death of me, but at least I knew I would die happy.

After our last mission with Condor and Emu, where we crept our way past Nazis in France only to find ourselves in a shootout in Berlin, Egret had surprised me. I’d known there was a chemistry between us. Like a kettle about to boil, its lid rattling in anticipation, my heart thrummed every time our shoulders brushed or he gave me one of his rare, lingering smiles.

By the time we made it back into Allied territory, the tension proved to be too much. That first night, holed up on a military base in an empty officer’s house, Egret had lit a fuse that would never again go out—and damn, if the explosion wasn’t bright. Something I’d thought long dead burst into flames, blazing to life, and threatened to consume me—consume both of us. In a heartbeat, we went from tight smiles and awkward flirting to a tangle of naked limbs and clawing fingers.

God, it was wonderful.

After everything we’d experienced—everything we’d faced together—the exhilaration of having Egret’s powerful arms around me, his palms caressing, his fingers teasing the skin of my sides before slipping around to take my breasts.

I could have lost myself in his touch.

Even now, just the thought of his warm whisper against my neck made me shiver.

The OSS had allowed us to return to the States, but rather than go our separate ways, to our respective hometowns, we’d fled to the comfort and safety of Egret’s bed.

For a few brief months, the world let us just . . . be.

It was perfect, and I fell for him a little more each time I woke and our eyes met, still sleepy from an evening’s rest. As much as the man made me want to hurl a knife into a tree—and as much as I wanted to shove him out of a plane on our first mission—now, I couldn’t imagine life without him by my side.

I could never get enough of the infuriating man. There could never be enough.

Egret, somehow sensing my inner recollection, rose from the bed and moved to the window, pulling the curtain back with one hand. The city wasn’t quite dark, but what remained of the sunset cast little light, save for weak streetlamps and the occasional flicker of headlights.

“Juliette, come here. The sun is almost down, and the sky is . . . you have to see this.”

I kicked off my shoes and padded to where he stood. Across the street were two men wearing fedoras, an oddity in a city that preferred fur-lined headwear. Egret’s hand tickled my waist on its way around. He pulled me into him, and I leaned my head against his chest. For the first time in days, a wave of peace washed over me, through me.

He kissed my head, and the strange men across the street suddenly felt far away.

Then he kissed me again.

Before I realized what he was doing, he’d turned me toward him, and our lips were pressed together. For the briefest moment, I thought about pulling back; but Thomas was our leader, and until he contacted our asset, there was nothing Egret or I could do but relax.

So I surrendered to his kisses and melted into the contoured muscles of his body.

“Let’s teach our friends what love sounds like.” His playful whisper teased my ears right before he bit my lobe and made me squeal in a most unladylike way.