Chapter Ten
Katrina stared through the train window at the platform in dread of seeing Martí rushing up to the high-speed AVE, with the intent of dragging her off it. He would have to go through Mitch and his two friends first. Having witnessed their response to danger, her brother wouldn’t stand a chance, she reassured herself. As the doors closed for the last time and the train began to creep from the station, she drew her first full breath and sat back.
Mitch, seated across from her, had been watching the platform, too. At one point, he had pressed his face to the glass, his gaze sharply alert. Whatever he’d thought he’d seen had apparently turned out to be nothing, for he’d eventually sat back, settled into his seat, and closed his eyes.
Across the aisle from them, Austin and Chuck had laid out a game of cards on the tabletop between them. As the train pulled away from the station, Katrina watched them for a moment, amused by their competitive natures. Losing interest, she entertained herself by studying a sleeping Mitch. His head lolled. His broad shoulders swayed gently with the rocking motion of the train. He looked younger in his sleep—perhaps no older than she was.
Guilt pressured her as she realized she was the reason for his weariness. He must not have slept as she had in the few hours preceding their flight from the hotel. Thinking back on their tense departure, she marveled that she had handled it as calmly as she had. Now that she could reflect on the fact that she’d left her home, perhaps forever, sorrow ambushed her. Turning her face to the window, she let tears fill her eyes and spill over.
Mitch slept on. Wiping her tears away, Katrina reconsidered him. The sun had risen behind the telephone poles running parallel to the tracks. Their shadows blipped across his countenance like frames in an old movie. Something about him inspired a deep respect and gratitude in her. The man had gone well out of his way, more than once, to help her.
Without warning, his head lifted and his eyes opened, jolting her with the sudden burst of color and with self-consciousness for having been caught staring. She jerked her attention outside again.
Having left Barcelona’s suburbs, the train was streaking along the plateaus of the Central Depression at 125 kilometers per hour, making the backdrop look like a movie playing in fast-forward.
“You okay?”
The softly spoken question invited her into conversation.
“Sure.” She sent him a brave smile, one that faded instantly as thoughts of her father’s death and her present predicament entered her head.
“Ever thought about living in the States?” he asked.
Her pulse picked up. Was he inviting her? “Sometimes I have, yes,” she said. “I have family in Kansas. I’ve used to visit them every summer when my mother was alive.”
“Do you have dual citizenship?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What about a passport?”
“I have it with me. I renewed it last year for my vacation to Italy.”
He guarded his thoughts behind an inscrutable expression. “Maybe you should visit your family in Kansas,” he suggested.
Disappointment pricked her. “But there aren’t many hotels where my cousins live,” she protested. “That’s what I do best—manage hotels.” It had occurred to her there had to be dozens of hotels in a place like Virginia Beach.
“I’m pretty sure you could do anything you set your mind to,” he said.
The affirmation warmed her, thought it wasn’t quite the invitation she found herself hoping for. Distracted by a man stepping from the vestibule between the cars into theirs, she glanced up and her heart stopped. Dark eyes intercepted her astonished gaze. Armando froze in the act of reaching for the lavatory door. His gaze cut to Mitch, who looked over his shoulder at Armando and stiffened.
Snatching his hand back, Armando turned and exited their car at a near run.
Katrina met Mitch’s grim gaze, her stomach churning.
“What’s he doing here?” His tension had returned, making him seem suddenly years older.
Inwardly cursing their misfortune, Katrina moistened her dry lips. “He works for a franchise with offices in Zaragoza,” she recalled.
“He’s getting off at the next station, then,” Mitch inferred, having obviously paid attention to their route.
“Yes.”
“Do you think he’ll tell anyone he saw you just now…with me?”
She wanted so badly to reassure him—to reassure herself—but Armando would take pleasure in bad-mouthing her to her older brother. He would most certainly inform Martí of where he’d seen her and with whom. “I’m afraid so.”
To convey her sincere regret, she reached for Mitch’s hand where it rested on the table between them and covered it. “I can get off too, if you prefer, and go back,” she offered. “I’ll turn myself in to the Benemérita.”
One moment, her hand was on top of his; the next, it was firmly and gently trapped beneath it. “No,” he said, calmly. “You’re better off coming with us.”
He sounded so certain, she didn’t bother to argue with him. Besides, she had no desire to part company with Mitch. From the moment she’d first kissed him, she had felt like they belonged together.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
His small smile assured her he had heard her. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say, You’re welcome.
***
Four hours later, they neared their destination with only one more stop—in Cadiz—before arriving in Seville. Mitch surveyed the dry, arid landscape of Andalusia, absorbing details as he’d been trained to, but his thoughts remained on the reflection he had glimpsed in a pane of glass covering a large, mounted advertisement at the station in Barcelona.
Could Capitán Rodrigo del Rey be following them?
One moment a dark pair of eyes had been regarding him through the glass. Then people walked by, obscuring Mitch’s view. When he could see the ad again, del Rey’s reflection had disappeared.
Mitch wanted to think he’d imagined it.
Something told him, though, that the man had traced the incoming number on Chuck’s sat phone to Katrina Ferrer’s cell phone. Subsequent research could have brought some very significant information to del Rey’s attention, making him curious to know more.
Not for the first time, Mitch asked himself if bringing her along was a big mistake. It was one thing to remove her from the threat Martí presented. It was something else to associate himself with a person linked, albeit indirectly, to a terrorist act.
Yet on a personal level, he enjoyed her company. Quiet and easygoing, she had napped for a portion of the journey, awakening in time to share the lunch he’d bought them from the food car. After thanking him, she had dug into her overstuffed backpack, produced a book, and lost herself in its pages.
As she read, she nibbled on her lower lip. The memory of the kisses they’d shared awakened the hope that he’d soon be kissing her again.
But what if del Rey was following them? Mitch’s disquiet refused to leave him. Running into Armando at the outset of their trip had struck him as a seriously bad sign.
When they arrived in Seville, a day earlier than scheduled, he’d be smart to offer up a different credit card than the one he’d used to make all three of their reservations. That way, del Rey would have a harder time tracking them down.
As Katrina adjusted her stance, Mitch caught a glimpse of the cover of the book she was reading. “Wait.” Astonishment rooted him.
She glanced up inquiringly.
“Are you reading Walden?”
She blinked in confusion then showed him the cover.
He started to smile at the unlikeliness of the circumstance. “Did you notice the author’s name?”
She flipped to the cover to read it. “Henry David Thoreau.”
“Yeah, that’s my last name. He was my great, great uncle.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you teasing me?”
He laughed at her reaction while welcoming the sign that everything would be okay.
“Not this time,” he assured her. “But I reserve the right to tease you in the very near future.”
His flirtatious response brought a blush to her cheeks.
“Don’t move,” he said, finding his cell phone.
She eyed him mistrustfully “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking your picture.” That was about all his phone was good for overseas.
“Oh, no,” she protested. “I look awful. I haven’t washed my hair.”
“Silence. You’re beautiful,” he insisted. The bright Andalusian sun had turned the highlights in her hair to shimmering gold. “Smile for me,” he requested, pulling a self-conscious smile out of her as he captured his shot.
Mitch put his phone away, glad to have a memento of her in the event that he was left with nothing more. Whether they ended up together wasn’t a question he could answer at the moment. All he knew was he intended to make love to her.