“And shot.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t counting that.”
“You weren’t counting my being shot?”
“Because I did that.”
“Still counts.”
“To save you.”
“You shot me for my own good?”
“It was a zagging thing; I thought I explained that.”
“You’re cutting me loose.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ve already been hurt.”
“Hurt worse.”
“Maybe I’m a grown-up and don’t need a teenager to make that decision for me.”
“Nueve gets this. You used to be a field operative, so I know you get this. It’s why Mingus used you to test me. It’s why Nueve threatened to kill you to get me to give up. I can’t do that anymore, Ashley. Not to anybody, but especially not to you.”
She angrily slurped the dregs of her milk shake through her straw, if it’s possible to slurp angrily.
“And where am I supposed to go, Alfred? I can’t go back to the Company—what do you think they’d do to me after I helped you escape? I can’t go back to my old life. They took my old life away. God, I wish I knew you were going to do this back at the château; I would have told you to let me bleed to death after Mingus sliced me open. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you do this to me. I’m coming with you, wherever you go, until I’m dead or you are or we both are.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but if the past proves anything, I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to happen to you, and I don’t want that to happen to you, Ashley. I’d rather be cut open myself than see something happen to you.”
She tossed her napkin on her plate, leaned over the table, grabbed my face with both hands, and kissed me full on the lips. I tasted chocolate.
“You don’t get it,” she said, touching my cheek. “I’ve been assigned to you, Alfred Kropp. You own me.”
01:11:57:02
I left Ashley in the restaurant so they wouldn’t think we were running out on the check and went to the Western Union office where the money from Mr. Needlemier was waiting for me. I cashed a twenty and used the change to call Samuel’s cell phone.
On the third ring someone with a vaguely familiar voice came on the line.
It wasn’t Samuel’s voice.
“I believe I know who this is,” the man said in a French accent.
“Where’s Samuel?” I asked.
“Mr. St. John is indisposed,” Vosch said, echoing the OIPEP operator. “But if you’d like to leave a message, Alfred, I’d be happy to pass it along.”
I fell back against the wall and closed my eyes. I could taste the dressing from my salad and wondered if I was going to be sick.
“Is he alive?” I asked.
“He is, but of course you are not. You should have been at your funeral, Alfred. Quite touching, if ill attended.”
“You didn’t buy it.”