Page 45 of Afraid to Hope

“Fine.” Natasha exhaled loudly before handing Bane the agreement and manifest. “You’re right, of course. I just wish, how I wish I could keep these to myself, but I can’t.”

“You’ve made the right decision.” Bane smiled encouragingly at her, kissed her, and then glanced at his watch. “We’ve gotta get a move on. I need to get dressed. I don’t know about you, but I need to eat.” His stomach growled on cue. “You wore out my reserves and then some.” He winked and gave her his crooked sexy grin.

“Really, Bane?” she chided, lifting her chin and arching her eyebrows at him.

He shrugged and attempted to look sheepish. “Yeah,” he said, leaning forward and placing his hands on the armrests on either side of Natasha, effectively pinning her in, his mossy eyes full of heat. “Really,” he breathed into her ear. Bane kissed her leisurely, then straightened and searched her eyes. “We’re good?”

Natasha tilted her head, shaking her head and grinning ruefully. “You’re something else. Thanks for helping me see reason, for having my back. I’ll bring breakfast in here while you’re changing. We can tackle the other side of the cabinet and the desk while we eat.”

“Works for me.” He laced his fingers through hers and pulled her up and close. Natasha’s scent of honey and lemongrass unleashed vivid images of what they’d done last night and into the early hours of the morning, and her passionate and uninhibited responsiveness replayed in his mind, bringing him to full attention. His hands slid down over her hips and he pulled her against his hard length. “As much as I’d enjoy enticing you into another round, it’ll have to wait.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Damn. What you do to me.”

Natasha freed herself from him, a saucy smile lighting in her eyes. “Go get dressed.” She waved him away and headed to the kitchen.

Bane was back and had begun emptying out the other cabinet compartment before Natasha returned to the office with a tray holding coffee, warmed milk, dates, croissants, jam, cheese, and fried eggs. Files, papers, and photos lay around him in small piles.

She stirred warmed milk into her coffee, watching him work. “I didn’t ask, but since you had coffee earlier this morning, I went with that.”

He stopped working and shifted easily to sit cross-legged, facing her. Patting the rug next to him, he said, “Thanks. Sit?”

Natasha placed the tray on the desk next to a small globe, poured him a coffee, and handed him a full plate and a mug. She spread jam over her croissant. “I think I’ll stand. All of this”—she swept her hand across the cabinet’s emptied contents—“makes me anxious.”

Talking between bites and drinking coffee, he said, “I’ve gone through all of those already and kept them in order,” indicating the largest pile of folders. He leaned against the wall and uncrossed his legs, drawing up his knees and resting his forearms on them. “I’ll return them to the cabinet and, before you ask, yes, I checked the secret compartment. I didn’t find anything else. I closed it back up.”

Natasha murmured, “You’re efficient.”

“Years of doing this kind of thing.” He eyed her steadily, contemplating what else he was about to share. “I found correspondence and other manifests in plain sight. In files labeled benignly, such as Pool, Garden, andRiad.I used one of the expanding folders to hold them. Information pertaining to, say, the gardens, had notes like the perfect fertilizer, information on plants, and a blueprint of the gardens. Clever man, your grandfather.” Bane jerked his head toward the folder at his right hip. “He used the labels as codes, kinda like metaphors. Take the ‘gardens’ again. The folder also contains lists of artifacts, antiquities, and shipments dates. All of them are dated.”

“You work quickly. So of course I am curious. What was in theriadfolder?”

“Well, that’s where it gets interesting.” Bane pulled a ratty, dog-eared notebook from the expandable folder and stood. “I would have passed on this due to its condition alone, but since we’re looking for needles in a haystack, I went through it meticulously. Among the pages about theriadand its maintenance and upkeep was a different kind of record. Your grandfather appears to have usedriadto represent the network. This notebook is a gold mine, a ledger of operatives in the American, from the date of the agreement, listing himself and, I assume, the other signees. It covers decades. The last date a person was recorded as an operative nine years ago.” He opened the notebook, flipped through to the page he sought, and ran his finger down the page, stopping on the last entry. Bane glanced up at Natasha when he heard her sharp intake of breath.

“What is it?”

“That’s two days before Pépé died. He was found far away, south of Tangier, in Asilah, a coastal village. That in itself was quite a shock. Mémé had no idea he was there until she received the phone call that he’d been found. He had told her he would be in Rabat for meetings and staying the night.”

“Why Asilah? Was he from that area?”

“No. France originally. Alsace.”

“Beautiful area.”

“It is,” she agreed. “Pépé was a much-sought-after architect. Asilah’s architecture is quite something due to the influences of the Roman, Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Mémé felt he may have been working on the restoration of the ramparts and the palace. Pépé was often called in to consult on architectural jewels like those, but he hadn’t mentioned anything to her, which was unusual. She did share with me years later that Pépé had seemed distracted and forgetful in the days leading up to his death.” Natasha pinched the bridge of her nose with her right forefinger and thumb, as if warning off a headache. “Oh my god. Bane, what is the last name in the ledger?”

He squinted at the tight cursive. “It looks like ‘le fantôme.’ Does that mean anything to you? It has”—he tapped his finger over the writing—“three sixes after it.”

Natasha’s cup shattered on the corner of the desk, the milk-infused coffee running off the surface and coating the broken ceramic and rug. Her face paled and she began to tremble.

“Nat?” He stood to pull her against him. “Shit. Easy. I have you.” He kneaded her back until the trembling subsided and then kissed the top of her head. “What is it? Talk to me, sweetheart.”

“Le fantôme.The ghost.” Her damp cheek rested in the crook of his shoulder and he rubbed her upper arms. “It was the name of the small blue fishing boat that breached on the rocky beach below the Asilah’s medina wall.”

“How does this relate to your grandfather and his death?”

“Pépé was found in the boatLe Fantôme,heavily tangled in fishing net. He drowned.” Tears streaked her face.

Chapter 23

“I’m good.” Natasha wiped her eyes dismissively, then held up her hands.

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