Finn left, and made a point of turning on the lights in his apartment when he got inside. If Taylor was out there somewhere, Finn wanted him to know he was home.
He checked his answering machine, disappointed that Adrienne hadn’t called, unsure what he expected from her, feeling a brief wave of despair at the possibility of her never coming back. Until now, he’d still seen it as temporary, something that would be overcome, a wake-up call for him to change, but perhaps, far from being in a state of flux, it was already settled.
For all he knew, their one-night stop in Paris had been a final unexpected and unwelcome meeting for Adrienne, and she’d breathed a sigh of relief as he’d walked out the door. He went into the bedroom and looked again at her clothes, trying in vain to see some sign in what had been left there.
He’d promised to call her. Do what you have to do first, she’d said. It wasn’t much to hold on to, but it wasn’t a closed door. And he was doing what he had to do, and was glad that she wasn’t here now, just as a part of him wished that Hailey wasn’t here, that he’d failed to find her at Domtrappk?llaren.
He walked through the apartment and turned off the living room light, then after a few moments, edged back into the darkened living room and toward the window. It brought back a bittersweet memory of first seeing the lovelorn Jonas on his lonely vigil.
This time there was no one on the street, no new cars parked below. He tried to think, desperate to see how this threat would manifest itself. And as he stared down at the streetlights and the shadows between the streetlights, he had a terrible sense that he’d missed something, that he’d been missing something all along.
He headed back downstairs and found the Portmans preparing for bed. Hailey was already in her room. Debbie brought him a duvet and a pillow, asked him if he needed anything else, then left him alone.
He put the bedding to one side, arranged things on the coffee table in front of the sofa, took his boots off, and lay back. It reminded him of the night spent on the sofa in Mathieu’s apartment, something that already seemed a distant memory, and one that was surprisingly happy.
The only light on in the room was a small lamp on a table behind his head. He was just about to reach back and turn it off when he heard movement and Hailey came in, wearing her pajamas.
He sat up. “You should try to sleep—everything’s okay.”
“I know,” she said, and was distracted then, looking at the gun sitting on the coffee table, a density about it that pulled her thoughts away from her. “You have a gun.”
“This is Switzerland—a lot of people have guns. I haven’t used it in a very long time, and I’m sure I won’t use it anytime soon.”
She nodded, finally pulling her eyes away and back to him, and then remembering why she’d come in she said, “I just wanted to say, about earlier. I don’t need to know the details, I don’t want to know them, but I’m glad you did what you did. If it was one of the men who hurt Jonas . . .” Her throat tightened up, as if she’d been wanting to say this for the last hour or so and yet was still surprised by the emotion of it. After a brief pause, she said, “I’m just glad, that’s all.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.” It was a stock response, nothing more, but no sooner had he said it than he realized it was true—it did mean a lot to Finn that she thought no less of him for killing a man.
She went back to bed and Finn lay down, and after a few minutes he turned off the lamp. He stared up into the darkness, lying awake for a long time, thinking of Jonas and Hailey and what they’d lost without ever knowing they’d had it; thinking of Adrienne, thinking of Mathieu’s happy and chaotic household.
He slept then. He woke once when a car drove past on the street, and slept again. He woke a second time, and wasn’t sure how long he’d slept or what had woken him. He lay for a second, not moving, and then he felt his body tense, an automatic response that seemed a step ahead of his senses and thoughts, operating at a purely instinctive level.
He wasn’t aware of having heard anything, and still now the apartment was silent. Yet his body was ready, pumping with adrenaline, his muscles tightly coiled—he didn’t know how he knew, but he knew without doubt that someone else was in the apartment.
Chapter Thirty-One
Finn swung his legs off the sofa, picked up his gun, stepped over his boots, and moved between the furniture shadows toward the door. He could hear the deep breaths of sleep coming from Ethan and Debbie’s room, but even in the dark he could see that Hailey’s door was open.