“They’re going to get back to us when they can, they’re busy right now,” he told me, and he joined me back at the table.
“What happens now?” I asked him. I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question. I had to get back in the field, whether I wanted to or not, whether I could handle the thought of leaving all of this behind or I couldn’t. Yes, it might not have been easy, especially since the small break I’d been given had allowed me to get close to Arianna, but I hadn’t come this far just to fail at the last turn.
“You’re going to go back to Terence,” he replied, and I felt my heart sink. I knew it had been a possibility, but I had prayed, hoped against hope, I would get an out before it was locked in. I didn’t want to have to go back there, to leave the version of me I liked behind once more. I wanted this to be over. I knew it wasn’t that easy, but there was no way I was going to get through it without missing this brief snatch of real life I’d had back.
“And you’re going to talk about revenge,” he continued. “You’re going to go in there all guns blazing and make it clear you’re not going to back down until you get revenge for what happened to – what was his name?”
“Ian,” I replied. It was strange, saying it out loud – he’d been such a big part of my life for so long, and he was gone now, just like that, just as though he had never existed in the first place. I could already feel a twinge of sadness, but I pushed it down. Maybe inventing the kind of revenge I had to convince them of wouldn’t be as hard as I thought.
“Ian,” Rafael repeated after me. “You go in hard for him, and for yourself. Make a big deal about how you were almost killed, and then you can make sure you’re at the forefront of any of the new plans they put together regarding that group.”
I took a long sip of my beer, and considered what it was going to take for me to go back to that reality once more. I had thought, for a brief moment, I was out of it. That I wouldn’t have to return, that it was all behind me, that I could get on with my life and take the intel I’d gathered back to Rafael and the Bureau and hope for the best. But there was no way I was going to be able to do that. I was still on the job, and it wasn’t over until Rafael said it was over.
And he wasn’t going to give me that out yet, not a chance in hell. We had just taken a step forward, and we couldn’t risk letting it get away from us. I hadn’t worked this hard to fail now. I had to be willing to push past this little edge of discomfort, and get back to what I needed to do. I had no doubt it would do us better in the long run, and I was all about focusing on what was going to help us in the future.
“You can manage it, right?” Rafael asked, sensing my quiet. I nodded. It wasn’t like I could have given him any other answer. As much as I might have wanted to tell him I needed to get back to my own life, that I couldn’t just pretend I was someone else any longer, it didn’t work that way. It couldn’t. He was relying on me to return, and I needed to be able to do it.
“Yeah, I can,” I promised him, and I meant it. As much as I could possibly mean it, anyway. I took another sip of my beer, hoping the alcohol would be enough to obscure the doubts in my mind.
Before I could say another word, his phone rang again and he answered it at once. I watched him closely as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. I could see his face clouding over. He nodded.
“Thank you for letting me know,” he replied, and he hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” I asked. I had a bad feeling I already knew the answer.
“It was the hotel,” he replied, with a grimace. “They checked on the room you left her in, they say it’s empty, but it looks like there was a struggle in there.”
My heart skipped a beat. Had she been hurt? Worse? Just what had I put her into the middle of? I tried to push down the fear in my heart, but it was impossible.
“There’s a full bathtub and no sign of your girl,” he continued. “Looks like someone came in there and took her out.”
I closed my eyes. That was the last fucking thing I wanted to hear. What had happened to her? Was she okay? Did she blame me for it, whatever had happened? I wouldn’t have blamed her. I wished I could reach out to her right then and there, tell her how sorry I was, that I’d do anything to make it right.
But for now, all I could do was hold back and wait. And pray she knew how to handle herself in the sort of mess she was in right now.