****
I didn't need directions. Twice now, I'd been to her apartment.
Pulling into the lot, I reached behind my seat. The umbrella was heavy in my hand. Marina eyed it, then me, with a wry smile. “Worried we'll melt?”
Her casual humor sucker punched me. Helplessly, my lips rose at the corners. “You'll thank me when you don't catch pneumonia.”
“My hero.” She crinkled her eyes, all slyness and sass. For a long moment that got away from me, I just watched her.
Breaking the bubble, I opened the door and let the umbrella expand. It kept the worst of the drizzle off of me. Circling to her side of the car, I waited for her. The wrinkles on her brow said, 'Why are you being such a gentleman?'
She never voiced the thought, so I was freed from having to think of a response.
Together, our shoulders close to snuggling as we shared the umbrella, we climbed to her apartment door. We were masquerading as a wandering couple. Anyone catching a glimpse of us would have thought we were about to kiss under the canopy, or stumble into the apartment, cheeks flushed and our eyes dazzling as we laughed and got frisky.
Crushing the umbrella's handle, I stood over her as she bent for her keys. Marina and I were no giggling, cavorting couple. We were not dating or any interpretation of the word. Imagining it was ridiculous and pointless.
But I imagined anyway.
“Huh,” she said next to me. Her face was screwed up, tense lines and confusion.
“What is it?” I asked, noting how she had her hand perched on the door knob like it was a grenade.
Briefly eyeing me, she completed the turn of the handle and led us inside. “Nothing. Come on, I'll get something hot going.” Stepping over newspapers, she headed right into her kitchen and didn't look back at me.
I watched her shake her hair, smoothing water from the top. The ends were curling like vines from the weather. It was cold inside. Worse than the last time when I'd been here with Jacob.
Shaking the umbrella out, I used it to shut the door so I didn't need to touch it. I was still keen to leave no fingerprints. I didn't plan to come here again after today.
In the kitchen, Marina ran water from the sink. “Your choices are green tea, or this package of lemon that might be full of toxic mold.”
Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, I folded my arms. “I like to live dangerously, but green tea is fine.”
She put two mismatched mugs onto the counter. “Good call. I'd hate to worry about explaining your corpse to the cops.” Her smile was brittle.
We stood together in that tiny room. It was barely enough space for the stove on one side, a cupboard on the other, and her in between. With me blocking the exit, an easy thing to do with my size, Marina couldn't escape.
“The cops,” I said softly. “You wouldn't call the paramedics first?”
She leaned on the opposite wall and shrugged. “Would you?”
Marina poisoning herself would do me no good, even if she thought otherwise. Looking her up and down, I reached over and knocked the lemon tea package into her too-full trash with the back of my hand. “I told you,” I said briskly. “I'll help you find your man. You can't do anything if you're croaking from toxic tea.”
“That's an easy claim to make.”
“It's the truth.”
Crossing her arms, she pushed into the dented wallpaper like she wanted to melt away. “It's the top half of the truth.”
The tiny kitchen was getting warm. I adjusted my heavy jacket. “How do you mean?”
There were razors in her smile. “You can't let me die yet, can you?”
I did everything in my power to keep my face neutral, but she must have seen something or felt something.
She said, “If I just died right now—right here—it would fuck you and Jacob over. Right?” Her voice was heating up, she'd stopped leaning away and was now hunching towards me. “That's your real fucking truth! If I die before you and him get my letter, you know you're screwed!”
Looking down my nose at her, I forced my hands to remain still at my sides. “Why are you bringing this up?”
She was breathing heavy. It put all the wrong images in my brain. Her beautiful eyes shrank, becoming sharp black diamonds. “Because I didn't think you'd want out of our contract so bad that you'd break into my fucking apartment just to try and find the letter.”
The bones in my spine became barbed wire. I came close to asking how she could know about that. Hadn't we been careful? We'd put everything back like it was.
Then it hit me.
Shit.
I remembered how she'd reacted when she was opening her front door. Unlike when she'd let me in the first time, it hadn't jammed. It should have jammed. Jacob's lock-picking must have fixed the mechanism.