“Of course, I’ll do that for you right now.”
“Business?” He turned back to Hailey as she said, “What I said earlier, you know? This is a nice hotel, and you’re flying business, paying for me to fly business, and you’re not taking any money off my parents. What’s it all about, Finn? You’re not that much of a friend. In fact, I can’t even think why my parents would ask you in the first place.”
“I found you, didn’t I?”
The receptionist interrupted, saying, “Mr. Harrington, the eleven o’clock flight is fully booked.”
“Really? Just business or the whole flight?”
“The whole flight. There are two seats available on the late-afternoon flight, but only one in business.”
It wasn’t something he’d allowed for, that he might need to travel back on a day when it seemed everyone else in Sweden wanted to get to Geneva.
“Okay, well I suppose—” A thought struck him, immediately beguiling. “No, wait, how about flights to Paris?”
“I’ll check.” Finn and Hailey watched as she negotiated with the SAS office. Then she covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “There’s a flight to Paris at thirteen thirty-five, arriving sixteen ten, and they have two business-class seats available.”
“Good. We’ll take them.” He could detect Hailey’s gaze, trying to work out what was going on, but he ignored it, concentrating on the details of the booking. When that was finished he said, “We’ll wait in the lounge for an hour before leaving for the airport. Could we have some coffee and pastries, please?”
“Of course, or would you rather go into the breakfast room?”
They left Hailey’s backpack at reception and walked through to the breakfast room. He expected Hailey to tell him she wasn’t hungry, but she assembled an ambitious breakfast and set about it with relish. Only when she’d finished her bacon and scrambled eggs, and sat stirring the muesli in the bowl in front of her, did she look up at Finn again.
“You didn’t arrange a connecting flight from Paris.”
“I know. We can take the train directly to Lausanne.”
“Flight doesn’t get in until after four—it’s gonna be pretty late getting a train.”
“We’ll get a train in the morning. We’ll stay with Adrienne’s brother tonight. Adrienne’s there, too.”
She’d raised a spoon of muesli almost to her mouth but she hesitated now, the milk dripping off and back into the bowl in small splashes. “Will Adrienne be okay with that? Didn’t she leave you or something?”
“Yeah, she left me or something. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
She ate the spoonful of muesli, chewing for a while. She looked ready to ask him another question, but dug the spoon back into the bowl and kept eating. Finn leaned back, drinking his coffee as he looked around the room, taking in the other guests, mostly business people sitting singly at tables. When he turned back, it was because he heard her put the spoon into the empty bowl and push it away.
She got up and went and got more coffee, then came back. Once she was sitting again, she said, “How did you find me?”
Finn gave a small shrug. “I didn’t buy that you’d run away because you were afraid. I found the shoebox full of receipts in your room, went to Fate, found out that you’d made a new identity for yourself. It suits you, by the way.” She gave a little grimace, the kind she would have produced if her parents had tried to talk about sex or the latest music—apparently Finn was too old to have any worthwhile view on fashion. “Anyway, that convinced me you’d gone away to meet someone. Jonas helped me find out where.”
At the mention of his name, Hailey looked dumbstruck—a mixture of betrayal and annoyance. She shook her head. “I can’t believe he would do that. What a jerk.”
“Did you ask him not to?” She didn’t understand the question. “If you’d told Jonas where you were going and asked him not to say anything, he would’ve protected you.”
“No, he wouldn’t! You don’t know him. He can’t lie. I don’t mean he’s congenitally incapable of lying. I don’t buy that whole Asperger’s thing my parents are obsessed with, not at all, but he just doesn’t lie. He’s just too laid-back to believe that the truth could ever be really harmful.”
“Well, you’re right, I don’t know him that well, but I think if you’d asked him he would have lied for you. And he helped me because he was worried.”
She shook her head again and said, almost to herself, “Jerk.”
“Jesus, I don’t know you too well, either, but I’m beginning to see that you’re a complete bitch.” She looked as if she’d been slapped around the face, so unused was she to anyone talking to her like that. “Okay, let’s just think about it for a second. Let’s think about what you put your parents through—that’s if you’ve given even a moment’s thought to how distraught they’ve been this last week—”