Oh, but she had done something really stupid last night, and today she was paying the price for it. Isobel slumped against the wall, waiting to be let in to the course room for their second day. She said hello to a few of the other participants, and then withdrew into herself.

Yesterday, against her better judgment, she had Googled Alexander just before she went to bed. It had been an impulse and so goddamn idiotic. She’d known it was a mistake and yet she had done it. And sure enough, she had found brand-new pics of him, eating lunch at Riche with some incredibly attractive, incredibly young woman. The pair had been holding hands, leaning in close, toasting one another. Definitely more than an ordinary lunch. They had been spotted, photographed, and ended up on social media. Stockholm’s jet-set prince and some Stureplan personality. Of course there were photos on Instagram.

It hurt so much, even though it shouldn’t. Alexander had succeeded in making her feel singled out, special. But it had been a game from the start, and now, rather humiliatingly, Isobel had to accept that she was just one of the many women Alexander had chased, slept with, and dumped. And she did accept it. Couldn’t he just have waited a little longer, though?

Once inside the classroom, she headed for the back. She had slept terribly, of course, and all she wanted was to close her eyes and disappear somewhere dark and quiet.

A tall, tanned man came into the room. Straight-backed, an excessively serious look in his eyes.

She scratched her nose and wondered whether Leila would find out if she skipped the course. It was a rhetorical question, of course; Isobel had never skipped a class in her life.

“My name is K-G. Yesterday you talked about safety. Today I’m going to teach you how to act when safety disappears. If you get abducted or captured.”

He practically roared the last few words, and Isobel’s mood sank further. She had met his type before; the refugee camps and bases were teeming with them. Macho military men who just had to show who was in charge.

“You won’t be rescued, for a start. You have to understand that rescue operations are prohibitively dangerous. In that kind of situation, the most common outcome is that the hostages die, so it’s pointless.”

People were silent, and Isobel had the unfortunate impulse to laugh out loud. She looked down at her notepad and thought that she had liked Tyra more. K-G started a PowerPoint presentation.

“The phases of capture,” he bellowed.

She studied the headings. They were fine, in theory, but she knew from experience that when you were captured, your pulse would be close to one hundred beats a minute. You got tunnel vision and were so afraid you didn’t think logically. The likelihood of remembering what you’d once read in a PowerPoint presentation somewhere in Stockholm was virtually zero.

“Is there anything else we should know?” The blond reporter had spoken up.

Yeah. Don’t get captured.

“They’ll almost certainly try to dehumanize you, so try to get them to see you as a person. Keep clean, if possible, as neat as you can. Remind your kidnappers that you have a family, that you are valuable. Try to stay alive—captivity can be long. Be polite. Try to learn their names, which of them you should avoid for being crazy, psychotic, or high. Who could be an ally.”

“Should you tell them who you are, what you do?”

The reporter again. She typed out everything K-G said on her iPad, her fingers making a constant tap tap sound against the screen.

“It’s good to convince them you’re worth money. That you will be useful.”

People started to raise their hands now.

“How long are people held hostage?”

“Some are there for years. Two to three months is seen as a short amount of time.”

“What about rape?”

K-G frowned and put his fists at his hips. “You should count on torture. Rape too, unfortunately. Even if it’s not quite as common as you might think, particularly in the Muslim countries. We’ll talk more about that after lunch. Any more questions? No? Let’s move on.”

Isobel looked down at her notes as K-G continued. She hadn’t asked any questions.

She studied the words she had written.

Hostage. Torture. Rape.

And she had thought this wouldn’t be any fun.

It was probably a bad idea, coming here, Alexander thought as he walked through the front door and pressed the button for the elevator. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly when he’d called Leila, and now he was here, on the way up to some kind of training room, to look for Isobel.

He leaned against the wall of the elevator and waited for a wave of nausea to pass. He couldn’t remember when he had last been so hungover. It struck him that it must have been that time Isobel came to his office. Could that really have been a month ago? He had taken it so easy the past few weeks that he’d lost some of his tolerance to alcohol. But yesterday he’d done a month’s worth of drinking, making his very best efforts to completely empty his bar. So now he felt the way he deserved to.

The elevator doors opened. He came out into a hallway full of numbered doors and a wall-mounted information board showing what meeting was taking place in each of the rooms. A door opened. A bearded man came out and turned off toward the restrooms. Alexander headed for the door, pushed it open, and peered in. A dozen or so people were listening to a tall, arrogant man gesturing exaggeratedly at a whiteboard behind him. Cropped hair, tanned, combat pants. Ex-military. Alexander could spot one from a mile away. Black T-shirt with a company logo. Sunglasses hanging from his collar.

The man caught sight of him.

“Can I help you?” His voice was loud.

Alexander’s eyes swept across the rows of seats. Saw red hair and got the information he needed.

“Didn’t you see this room was booked?” The military man was almost yelling now.

Alexander just ignored him and pulled the door shut.

Leila had said the course lasted until six.

At two minutes past, he heard the scraping of chairs moving, and he opened the door and put his head in again. The ex-military man spotted him. His face was decidedly less friendly now.

“Are you still here? Are you looking for something?”

But he had found her. “I’m looking for someone. Isobel?”

She looked up from whatever she was doing and froze.

“What are you doing here?”

She sounded about as welcoming as the course leader. But it was a good question.

He had been thinking about her. Had sat with his phone in his hand and been on the verge of calling her at least twenty times since they’d parted on Sunday. Why hadn’t he just called? He had no idea, just knew that he’d thought it was better to let things die off before they got too serious. It still felt like the smartest move. And yet he was here.

“Are you done? Can we go sit somewhere?”

Her entire body seemed to be saying she’d rather not.

“It’s been an intense couple of days.…” she said.

“Please? Just for a while. We can go somewhere nearby. Do you have your bike?”

They ended up in a sidewalk café on a street near Stureplan. The evening was sunny and warm, and there were people everywhere. Isobel locked up her bike, sat down on a chair in the shade, and ordered a coffee and mineral water.

“How did you know where I was? Leila?”

He nodded. God, he hadn’t realized how much he had missed her.

“I just wanted to say hi, see you.”

Isobel’s eyes moved over his face. He hadn’t shaved that morning and assumed he looked exactly as bad as he felt.

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” he answered honestly.

She gave him a skeptical look. A doctor’s look.

“Hungover,” he admitted.

“Right.”

Her foot bobbed up and down, and she drummed her index finger on her cup. Not a good sign.

“Isobel, I …” he started, only to be interrupted by an enthusiastic shout.

“Oh, my god, Alexander! Hiiii!”

He reluctantly got to his feet. “Hi, Petra,” he said. She was an old friend from school. One of the many women he flirted with as if by reflex.

Petra threw her arms around his neck and gave him a long hug. Automatically he hugged her back.

He could feel Isobel’s eyes on them, sensed she was on the verge of getting up to leave.

He’d chosen a bad location. If his brain had been working, he would have taken Isobel someplace else.

“Really good to see you, Petra, but I’m kind of in the middle of something.…” he said, backing away from her, feeling oddly self-conscious.

“Oh?” Petra flashed Isobel a curious look, and then smiled at Alexander. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Call me sometime,” she whispered, and disappeared.

Alexander sat back down.

Isobel gave him a blank look.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

Her face was completely calm. If he hadn’t studied her closely, he wouldn’t have noticed anything other than the cool exterior. But the storm in her eyes gave her away.

He shrugged. “For everything, I guess.”

For being a shit, for not treating you like you deserve, for not being able to leave you in peace even though I should.

“I thought you were in New York.”

“Nope, still here.”

Her eyes flashed, and he wished he was able to interpret what that meant. But he had hurt her, he could tell. The very last thing he wanted to do.

“So. What did you do this week?”

That cool, passionless voice again.

“I had a few things to take care of.”

“Things?”

Her tone was neutral, but he heard a hint of something. It took a moment before he realized what it was. Anger. But why? They hadn’t made any promises. And it was four days since they’d parted, not four weeks. Wasn’t she overreacting a bit?

“I just wanted to see you,” he said. “That’s not strange, is it? I like you, Isobel. I hope I’ve made that clear.”

She gave him yet another cold, gray look.

“Maybe we could go out. There’s time. You aren’t leaving until next week, are you?”

She paused, studying him, and he had the feeling he had said something stupid.

“You’re thinking we’d get together again? Before I go to Chad?” she said slowly.

“Yeah, it would be nice. We could go out and eat?”

“Like maybe dinner, you mean?”

Something wasn’t right. He hadn’t been counting on her overflowing with happiness, but he had a feeling he’d missed something vital.

“Isobel, I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch. But I’d like to see you again.”

She cocked her head.

“Just have a bit of fun, right? See where we end up?”

“Exactly,” he said, relieved.

She shook her head. “This was a mistake.”

“There’s something wrong with that, you mean?”

“Not at all. It’s your life, you live it how you want. But I feel pretty done with all this.” She waved a hand, covering him, her, the table. She smiled a cheerless smile. “So you’ll just have to find someone else to eat dinner with. Or lunch. See where you end up.”

Fuck. She’d seen Qornelia and him.

“I can explain. It was …”

She held her hands up in the air, as though she was stopping a car. “You know, that’s probably my least favorite expression. Nothing good ever came after ‘I can explain.’ And honestly, you don’t need to. I think I understand pretty well as it is.”

She stood up and adjusted her purse on her shoulder.

What the hell?

“Are you really leaving? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Isobel, you’re overreacting. Sit down.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, there’s surely nothing a woman appreciates more than being told she’s overreacting.”

“I didn’t mean …”

“Bye, Alexander.”

With quick steps she left the table. He wanted to say that he hadn’t meant to sound like an idiot, that he wanted to make it up to her, that he felt things. But instead he watched her unlock her bike, drop her purse into the basket, and cycle off without looking back. The last thing he saw was a blaze of her fiery hair in the sun before she turned a corner.

He stared at her untouched coffee.

Well, this had been a catastrophe from start to finish.

“Everything okay?”

He nodded to the waitress.

“Check, please.” He took out his credit card, laid it on the table, and pulled out his cell.

He scrolled through his speed dial numbers, chose one, and rested his forehead in his hand while he waited.

“It’s me.”

“Alexander? Been a while. How’re things?”

“I’ve had enough of Sweden. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“About fucking time,” said Romeo. “I was starting to think something had happened.”

He entered his PIN, left a tip, and got up. “Nothing happened.”

Nothing important, anyway. I just ruined something I should’ve been careful with. And I’ve had it.

“I’ll send a car to the airport. Let me know the time. And Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”