Quinn lowered the TV volume again.
“Peter?” Orlando said.
“Must be,” Quinn answered.
Somehow Peter had managed to take some of the heat off. But—
“Would have been nice if he’d fixed it so it looked like the man in the drawing was caught.”
“He’s staging it,” Orlando said.
She was right. It had been too late to control the release of the initial description and composite sketch. So to guide the story, Peter would let a little bit out at a time, turning the direction of the story until the man in the drawing was forgotten. All fine and good for the long run, but in the immediate future Quinn would have to remain vigilant.
Orlando seemed to realize this, too. She reached down into the plastic shopping bag, pulled out two boxes.
“So, you prefer your hair black or blond?” she asked.
By 8:30 p.m. they were deep into upstate New York. Quinn — with blond hair and brown-framed glasses that looked over a decade old— was driving a Volkswagen Jetta Nate had assumed temporary ownership of several blocks from the hotel. Beside him, Orlando sat staring out the window. The only one who seemed to be making good use of the time was Nate. He was curled up in the back seat, sound asleep.
The call from Peter had come just before they left the Morgan Motel.
“Montreal,” he had said. “As fast as you can.”
“And what are we supposed to do when we get there?” Quinn asked.
“Call me when you arrive, and I’ll have further instructions.”
So they had continued on their northern route, only this time with a specific destination in mind.
Quinn glanced over at Orlando. She seemed to be focused on a constant point several car lengths ahead of them, and didn’t acknowledge his gaze. He’d seen that look on her face before; she was working something in her mind, some problem she needed to solve. Whatever it was, he knew she’d share once she’d got it figured out.
He still had a hard time believing he and Orlando were together. For so many years it had been an unfulfilled dream with zero chance of ever happening. At least that’s what he’d convinced himself.
Yet here she was, sitting next to him, the smooth, pale skin of her neck peeking out from beneath her black hair. And her smell — the familiar, comfortable, enfolding smell that was hers alone. God, how he missed that smell when they weren’t together.
God, how he missed her.
But that wasn’t going to be as much of an issue as it had been.
“I like the idea,” she’d whispered into his ear as he kissed her shoulder, then her neck before they’d fallen asleep at the motel earlier.
“What idea?” he said, then moved his lips down her shoulder toward her breasts.
“What are you doing?” she said. “I thought you told me you were dead tir—” Her words turned into a moan, and her breath stuttered as Quinn’s tongue touched her nipple, then moved away, encircling it, teasing it. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
He stopped, and lifted his head an inch above her skin. “Are you sure?”
Her fingers weaved themselves into his hair. “No. I was lying.” She paused, but he remained frozen, his lips still hovering above the slope of her breast. “Please.”
“I don’t know. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that’ seems pretty definite to me,” he said.
“For God’s sake don’t listen to me.”
She pulled his head to her chest, and moaned again as he began tracing a line with the tip of his tongue that encircled her areola but didn’t touch it. After a few moments, he began to spiral inward. When he reached the center, he caressed her nipple with his tongue, then began spiraling outward again, away from it.
He moved his hand down her waist, keeping his fingers hovering just above her skin so that they didn’t touch her. She at first shivered, then sighed as his hand slipped between her legs. He lifted his head so that her lips met his.
When they had finished making love, she nestled into him, a sigh of comfort escaping her lips. Just when he felt she was about to fall asleep, he used his finger to retrace the movement his tongue had made earlier on her breast.
Her back arched. “You keep doing that, we’ll never get any rest.”
He laughed, then reluctantly moved his hand onto her back.
“You said something about liking an idea …?”
For a moment he thought she’d fallen asleep, then she said, “You getting a place in San Francisco. I like the idea.”
It took him a second to realize what she meant. It was the conversation they’d been having in Boston before Peter had called. It had been less than twenty-four hours earlier, but with everything that had happened since, it could have been a month ago.
“Really?” he asked.
“I’m … thinking about getting rid of my place in Saigon,” she said. “We’ve been spending more and more time over here, it doesn’t make sense to keep it any longer.”
“But what about the relief agency?” he said. Orlando ran a small emergency organization call the Tri- Continent Relief Agency out of Ho Chi Minh City. It was a passion of hers, something she took very seriously.
“I’m not giving up the agency,” she said. “I’ll go back when I need to. But I’m going to open an office in San Francisco. It is the
Quinn began to smile.
“Don’t get too smug. It’s not because of you,” she said. “It’s Garrett.”
Garrett, her son, was six years old. The product of a love affair with the man who had been Quinn’s mentor. But that was over now. Permanently. Quinn liked the boy. He was smart and seemed to have a lot more traits from his mother than from his father.
She went on, “He’s been accepted to the French American International School in the city. He starts first grade in September. I… I think it will be easier for him over here.”
Quinn smiled. “It
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Yes, you do. You can’t stand being so far away.”
“You have a serious case of inflated sense of self-worth.” She tried to push away from him, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Call it whatever you want, I know the truth.”
After several moments, she settled back into his arms. They stayed that way for a while, then Orlando yawned, and repositioned herself so that her chest was against his.
“Of course I am.” Her voice was soft and heavy with sleep.
“What?” he asked.
“Moving to be closer to you. Of course I am. That’s why you were being ridiculous.” She paused. “Stating the obvious.”
She was asleep a moment later.
Quinn continued to watch her for twenty minutes as she breathed in and out, her shoulders rising one second, then falling the next.
How in God’s name had he gotten so lucky?
But he’d fallen asleep before he could come up with an answer.
CHAPTER 13
“The last name’s Dupuis,” Peter said. “A woman, early thirties. First name unknown.”
Quinn had activated the speaker function on his phone so all three of them could hear. They were still in the
