“I gave her a hotel room at the usual place,” I replied. “One of the ones you keep booked for us. I figured it was the least I could do, after she pretty much saved my life.”
He nodded, slowly, but there was something else on his mind too. I had worked with him long enough to be able to tell when he was thinking about something, and I could tell from the look on his face that there was something on his mind.
“What was she like, this girl?” he asked. I paused for a moment; honestly, when I thought of her, it was just a flash of her body, her touch, her kiss, and I knew he wasn’t talking about anything like that.
“She was...she had dark hair,” I replied. “I couldn’t place her accent. She seemed confident, like she was used to doing stuff like this. I doubt it was her first time getting involved in something as serious as that.”
He nodded again. I could see him putting something together inside his head, his brain ticking over as he tried to match the pieces up. What did he know that I didn’t? Was this woman something to him? I took another sip of my beer, suddenly not feeling as hungry as I had before. I didn’t want to give anything away – I didn’t want him to be able to see how uncomfortable I was right now. I didn’t hide much from Rafael, and I felt sure he would be able to just look into my eyes and figure out all the ways I was bullshitting him.
“I think I know who you’re talking about.”
I raised an eyebrow. Okay, that wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting. How could he know who she was? I had only just met her, and completely at random, too. There wasn’t a chance she could be any more important than that. Yes, she had gotten me out of a mess, but that didn’t mean she was some major part of this game, did it?
“You do?” I replied. He nodded, and pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolling through it quickly. I felt something uncomfortable begin to rise in my chest. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see where this was going – it seemed dangerous, somehow, to admit there was anything more to her than just coincidence, even though I had known there had to be. Girls like that didn’t just drop out of the sky to save you when you were in the most need of your life. She had to be there for a reason.
He turned his phone around to show me the picture he had pulled up – and when I saw it, my heart sank.
It took me a moment to work out who I was looking at, exactly – she seemed so different than the person I had seen. The Arianna I had met, after all, had been one in jeans and a sweater, kicking around an airport and trying to make sure she didn’t draw any more attention to herself than she had to. But this one? This one was dressed to the nines, wearing a slinky black dress that clung to each and every one of the perfect curves on her body. My hands itched to reach out and touch her, even though I was only looking at a picture of her; her dark hair, soft and sweet, fell to her shoulders in gentle waves, and her gorgeous eyes were pinned on the person sitting opposite her...
She wasn’t alone. Of course she wasn’t - a woman like that wasn’t going to make an effort to look that good and not to be seen. She was gazing into the eyes of a man who sitting next to her at some fancy hotel bar. I didn’t recognize it – it certainly wasn’t much like the place I had taken her for dinner when we had arrived in Chicago. No wonder she had made a comment on it like she had.
Was she at the hotel where I’d met her? It certainly looked like it. Was her the night before I had come into contact with her? How much time had passed between this picture and me laying eyes on her for the first time?
It took me a moment to place the man she was with, but as soon as I did, I felt my heart sink down to my shoes. Arnold Schwindel. The man she was with was Arnold Schwindel, uncle of Terry Schwindel, and head of their crime syndicate. He was looking at her as though she had hung the damn moon, his eyes stuck on her as though he couldn’t imagine looking anywhere else in the world. I didn’t blame him.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded, shaking my head.
“This is her, isn’t it?” Rafael pressed, and I nodded, finally. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was no denying the truth. It was Arianna, clearly on a date with the man I had been trying to take down for the last few months, sitting there and gazing at him as though she had never met anyone more interesting or more handsome in her entire life.
“What the hell is she doing with him?” I asked. I hated to admit it, but there was a surge of jealousy rising up inside my chest as I looked at the two of them together. It was crazy, utterly crazy, I should have known better than to let it get to me, but it made me doubt every little moment of our time together. Was she with him? Was that the kind of man she wanted? Why had she decided to rush off with me? Was she just using me, luring me in so she could hand me over to Arnold himself? Maybe he was paying her off, laying a honeytrap to make sure I couldn’t get away. And it had damn near worked, too. How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have seen how obvious it was?
“She was his...temporary girlfriend while he was visiting New York,” he explained, cocking an eyebrow.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, shaking my head. So that was what she was? An escort? I stared at the picture, at the way she was looking at him, and felt something rise inside of me – something like sureness, sureness she was just giving him what she thought he wanted. When Arianna and I were together, it had been real, as real as it could be, given everything she was hiding from me.
“Yeah,” Rafael agreed, with a nod. “You got your ass saved by Arnold Schwindel’s woman, Dean.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. Nothing even close. The words caught in the back of my throat, and it took everything I had not to laugh at how ridiculous all this was.
But right now, I was finding this anything but funny. I knew how much trouble we were in – how much trouble Arianna might well have just lured me in to, with nothing but a flutter of her lashes.
Exactly how stupid was I?