Chapter Thirteen

It had started raining by the time he exited the maglev train. He trudged along, not caring that the downpour was soaking him to the bone. The two blocks back to the hotel seemed longer without Cress chattering excitedly beside him about all of her observations.

He'd already commed one of his connections for a new ID chip. It would take at least two days to arrive from the dealer, so he'd need to get everything in order before then. At the top of the checklist on his port was to decide where to travel to next, followed closely by how he would make sure that Cress couldn't track him wherever he went. His instincts told him that she wouldn't betray him, that she just wanted to get away and be free, but he wasn't sure what he knew anymore.

Once he made it to the hotel, he sloshed his way up the stairs, ignoring the irritated concierge and the staff android who offered him a towel. What he needed was a long bath, not a measly little towel. His grumbled thoughts halted, though, when he turned down the hallway towards his room.

The door was slightly ajar. Hair standing up on his arms, he threw himself back silently against the wall. He had locked the door before leaving this morning, he was sure of it. They had specifically chosen no room service for the duration of their stay to maintain their privacy. But someone had been in his room—was possibly still in there.

He inched forward, reaching his right hand behind him to grab his gun. It certainly wasn't the police in there, because he'd had many run-ins with them, and it wasn't their style to leave a door open. No, this was the work of an amateur thief or worse, someone who wanted to send him a message. If the person was still in his room, he would not let him escape. He did not need to worry about a second liability that could be tracking him.

Silently, he cursed not having run through the rain. His water-logged boots would make him sloppier in an escape. Thorne pressed his ear against the door before he nudged it open with his foot. It was quiet, save the fan in the bathroom. Gun at the ready, he slipped in, the floorboards not even making the slightest sound as they gave way to his weight.

Someone had made a mess of the room. The pillow barrier had been stripped off the bed, thrown carelessly to the side by the chair Cress sat in every morning. Clothes were strewn over the bed, some in heaps, others wrinkled and crumpled. The netscreen had been ripped off the wall, leaving a gaping hole. Its wires cut, it now rested face down on his side of the bed. Cress' bags were turned out all over the floor.

Finger poised on the trigger, he kicked open the door to the bathroom as hard as he could. There was a yell and a thud as it made it contact with whoever was inside, and he burst in. "Don't move or I'll shoot!" he roared.

Then he was pointing his barrel right at a petite blonde-haired girl that he knew quite well. She cowered on the ground of the bathroom, a hand pressed against her cheek, clearly in pain. "D-don't shoot. It's just me."

He nearly dropped the gun; it was Cress. Stashing it under his clothes again, Thorne fell to his knees before her. His hands were on her instantly, inspecting her as if he'd just shot her. "Let me see," he said, trying to remove her hand from her cheek.

She shook her head, tears already beginning to pool out of her eyes. "I t-think y-you broke my f-face," she whimpered.

He pried her fingers away gently, wincing at what he saw. There was a red gash across her right cheekbone, likely from where the door had hit her when he'd kicked it in. A welt was forming underneath it already. "Aces," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Sorry wasn't enough. He was disgusted with himself. "I thought you were long gone by now."

"It stings," she said. "And I feel dizzy."

He slipped his hand beneath her back and pulled her upright and into his chest, cradling her against him, making sure that it was her left cheek that touched him, not the injured one. She cried against him, and for the first time, he wasn't afraid of her tears. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the bed, not in the careless way he'd done when he'd first met her, but carefully in his arms. Desperate not to hurt her anymore.

He laid her down gently. "I'm going to get you some ice. Stay here."

She groaned and he ran out the door, back down the stairs. The concierge was no longer at her desk, but the staff android was thrilled to offer him another towel, which he took angrily, and then it pointed him in the direction of where he could find ice.

Scooping as much of it as he could in the towel, he ran back up stairs. "Here," he said, thrusting the ice inside one of the shirts that still lay rumpled on the bed and fastening it securely. "This will help."

He sat next to her and pressed the ice pack gingerly against her cheek. She winced at the impact.

"I know," he said, running a finger through her hair. "I know."

When she had calmed down, he stood awkwardly, wondering how long he'd been touching her in this way. He was confused too, about his guilt, about why she was there, about how he was relieved that she was there.

"I think you'll agree with me when I say that you and I need to work on our communication," he said, pulling at his shirt. It was still dripping wet. "We should try to avoid this whole…you being sneaky and suspicious and me nearly killing you…scenario in the future." He had been trying to lighten the tension, though in reality it had been the third time that this had happened, so he added meekly, "Where were you, Cress?"

She sat up a little too quickly, eyes wide, before wincing again. "Ow." Thorne propped up some pillows for her to lean on, but she pushed them away. "There's no time," she said. "I have to get out of here. Someone was following me."

He sat down on the bed again, alarmed. "Who, Cress?"

"I don't know. I noticed him on the train. He was one of the people we were observing. About your age, blue hat pulled over his eyes?"

Thorne tried to remember everyone on the train, but he'd seen so many people pass him while waiting for her at the station that he doubted he would remember anyone but the red-head he'd flirted with.

"When I followed you into the other car, he followed me. At first I thought it was a coincidence but then he followed me again when I was going to exit the train." She dropped the ice pack. "Help me get up, I have to get out of here."

"Cress. Calm down. Maybe he just wanted to talk to you. You're a cute girl, remember?

"No. The more he watched me, the more I thought that I recognized something about him. I think he knows me, Thorne. I think…" She drew in a shaky breath and gripped his arm. "I think Sy—my captors sent him for me."

"Why didn't you just get off the train? Maybe I could have helped."

She shook her head fervently. "I'm not going to bring you into this mess. I thought if I didn't get off at the stop, he would forget about you. Maybe think it was just a coincidence that we were sitting next to each other before."

"But how could they have found us?" he said, helping her to her feet when it was evident that she would refuse to continue lying down.

"They're—" she hesitated. "Lunars, remember? They know things we don't. They have spies everywhere. I have to leave." Cress frantically began collecting the clothes on the bed, pushing them into messy heaps again.

"Cress, did he follow you here?" His voice was calm, but his brain was grappling with this information. The idea of Lunars on Earth was something that he had tried to get out of his mind since she'd first confessed who had kidnapped her all those years ago. But she'd been on a satellite, not Earth. How many of them were actually able to sneak into Earthen borders?

"I think I lost him near the Sacré-Coeur."

"That's on the opposite side of the city! How did you get over there?"

She started shoving the clothes into the bags on the floor, little by little. He bent to help her, worried that she would hurt herself with too much exertion. "I locked myself in the bathroom until the next stop. When I got out, so did he, so I just ran."

Thorne tried to imagine Cress running wildly through the winding streets of Paris, somehow ending up near the ancient basilica. It occurred to him that he had never bothered to think about just how panicked she must be at the thought of being caught again, which made him feel like a prize idiot. Of course she was terrified. They never would have met otherwise. The fear that was in her eyes when he'd first attacked her on the satellite must have been nothing compared to how she felt surrounded by Lunars.

He shuddered at the thought. He wasn't normally paranoid, but Lunars were a whole different class of fiends. And the thought of her back in their clutches made that familiar gutted feeling come back to his stomach. She had said they would kill her if they ever found her again.

Thorne stood up and discarded the bag he was trying to fill. Cress was now talking to herself, doing that thing where she pretended to be some imaginary person that would give her the strength to continue. He now knew why she did it.

"I'm sorry again," he said, trying to pull her from her thoughts. "I really didn't—don't—want to hurt you."

"I'm sorry too," she said, then started speaking fast. "I didn't want to leave you, but I thought you'd be here when I got back to the hotel room but then I wasn't sure if they'd taken you too and so I just started throwing everything together in case he had managed to find me here or had other people following you and I didn't know what to do and I just—I have to leave—"

"Hey," he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. She blinked up at him, and he stared back into those gorgeous, haunted, little oceans, trying to ignore the swelling and discoloration popping up on her cheek. "I understand." He hesitated, knowing he would probably regret the next words out of his mouth. "And that's why I'm coming with you."

"Really?"

"Really," he said with more conviction. She gripped his waist, startling him momentarily before he relaxed, letting her hug him. "Just next time, make sure you've shut the door properly, okay? I really did almost shoot you."

He could feel her grinning into his chest, and he couldn't help but smirk.

Then she pulled back and frowned. "By the way, why are you so wet?"