‘Course it’s bloody me! What, you think I’m a zombie? Ow, don’t hug me there, ow!’ He grimaced and pushed her off his chest. ‘I’ve got a bust rib and a fucked-up lung, so don’t go poking at ’em!’
‘What happened?’ Nina asked, emotions whirling. ‘I thought you were dead!’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, God, I thought you were dead . . .’
‘Yeah, I did too, for a bit. When Sophia shot me she hit a rib, but I still got a fragment in the lung. I don’t remember too much, just trying to keep my head above the water, but I think I ended up a couple of miles downstream where someone found me. Got taken to hospital, and they patched me up.’
‘What happened to Sophia?’
‘Now that I
‘Is she dead?’ Nina asked hopefully.
‘Dunno. After we hit the water, I lost her. But if she isn’t, I doubt she’ll be running any marathons for a while. I definitely heard a couple of bits of her go snap. See, I told you there weren’t any feelings left between us.’
‘Throwing your ex off a cliff’s kind of an extreme way of proving it. So when did you get back to New York?’
‘Couple of days ago.’
‘
‘First thing I did was check you were okay!’ he said, holding her arms so she couldn’t hit him. ‘But I had something to sort out first.’ He glanced at the TV. ‘Looks like it worked.’
Her outrage faded. ‘But how did you get the recording? Dalton took the only copy.’
He grinned. ‘He took
She nodded. ‘Yeah?’
‘Well, it occurred to me that seeing as she was legally dead and she’d named me as her next of kin or whatever, that’d mean I had the right to open her deposit box. Took a bit of wheedling, but they eventually let me look inside. And there it was. So . . .’
‘You made a copy.’
‘Yup. Had to buy a memory stick off some clerk, but I made a copy. And it even survived falling off a cliff into freezing water.’ He held up a small orange flash drive. ‘Might have it framed, actually.’
‘So you put a copy of the recording on the Internet.’
‘I put
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d made a copy?’
‘I didn’t have time. Sophia and Ribbsley turned up at the bank right after I left, remember? If I’d been another couple of minutes farting about, she’d have caught me.’
Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘And they didn’t tell her that you’d just been rifling through her safety deposit box?’
‘Well, you know those Swiss banks. Very discreet.’
She laughed, for the first time in three weeks, then kissed him, long and hard. ‘So now what?’ she asked.
‘Well, we can sit back and watch Dalton get fucked in slow motion.’
‘Eddie, that’s gross.’
‘I don’t mean with Sophia!’ he hastily qualified. ‘I mean on the news. There’s no way he’ll be able to slime his way out of this one. He’ll
She huffed in mock offence. ‘Oh, you think I’m a puritan, do you?’
‘Well, not so much since I bought you that book . . .’
They both laughed, Nina taking his hands in hers and lifting them - then looking at her engagement ring. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think a ring’d suit you too.’
He considered, then a broad smile spread across his square face. ‘I think it might. What, right now?’
Nina could hardly contain her rising excitement. ‘Yeah, right now. Come on!’ She jumped up, helping Chase stand. He winced at the pain in his chest - but it didn’t take the smile off his face.
They hurried down to the street. ‘Taxi!’ Nina yelled, waving down a yellow cab.
‘Where are we going?’ Chase asked.
‘Oh, crap, good point. New York’s got a twenty-four-hour waiting period on marriages. Oh, I know!’ The cab stopped and they climbed in. ‘Take us to Connecticut!’
The driver, a Central Asian man with a stubbly beard, gave her a dubious look. ‘Where in Connecticut?’
‘The nearest place with a Justice of the Peace!’
‘It’s your dollar,’ said the driver with a shrug, starting the meter. ‘Hey, you heard about the President?’
Nina and Chase smiled at each other. ‘Yeah, we have,’ Nina said, laughing.