Asylum

Chapter 50: A Romantic Subtropical Getaway

Wednesday night

It was just past midnight when I finally rang the bell at Ivan's Miami home. Still dressed in the charcoal jeans, fitted black sweater, and knee-height leather boots I had worn to my lawyer's office, with my ankle-length cashmere coat slung over my arm and no bags other than the bucket tote I carried for essentials, I couldn't possibly look less prepared for a romantic subtropical getaway. Of course, since I'd likely be either on a return flight to New York or dead before the night was over, my lack of a suitable wardrobe change was the last thing on my mind.

The house was eerily silent, and I was just beginning to wonder if I'd guessed completely wrong about Ivan's whereabouts when Marshall yanked open the front door.

"Jesus, Lex, what the fuck are you doing here?" He looked over both my shoulders then leaned cautiously out the door to further check the surroundings, which was when I saw the gun he held, cocked and ready at his right hip. Deciding that I was indeed alone, he motioned me into the foyer, locking the door, slipping the safety back on, and holstering his gun after I was in.

"Mateo and I didn't know you were coming," he apologized. "Freaked us out to hear the doorbell."

"It was sort of a last-minute thing," I explained.

Marshall bobbed his head. "Sorry to hear about your grandma," he rumbled quietly. "Ivan said the two of you were close."

I nodded and carefully laid my coat on the console table, but kept my bag. "Thank you, Marsh. Yes, we were close."

"Funeral's over then?"

I nodded again. "The memorial service was on Monday, and yesterday was the burial." I looked around, expecting Ivan to come to greet me any second now, or Mateo to appear to further investigate the late-night intrusion, but Marshall and I were still alone. I suddenly had a horrible thought.

"He is here, isn't he?" His bodyguards were here, but there was a chance that Ivan might be with Emilio again, without me or his security detail there to back him up, The idea sent my blood pressure spiking off the charts. And the thought of Sofia being there alone with him as well ...

"Yeah, yeah, he's out back by the pool."

"Thanks, Marsh," I said, my pounding heart beginning to slow. I was turning for the back door when the burly bodyguard reached out quickly to stop me with a light touch on my arm.

"Lex, he's ... um ... I don't know. He's in a weird mood."

"Weird how?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. He's been gone, 'walking and thinking' he said, for a few days, and then he just announced late last night that we were coming down here this morning, no explanation, no idea of how long we'll be here, nothing. He barely said a word the whole trip down, and then he went and holed himself up in his office for the whole day. Now he's just out back, doing ... I don't know what he's doing. Just being ... weird." He shook his head again, as though trying to clear it of his concern for his boss. "I'm glad you're here. Maybe you can snap him out of it."

More likely that I was about to make things even weirder. I smiled. "I'll see what I can do."

I picked my way carefully through the darkened house and across the upper terrace. I passed Mateo, also armed, standing at the top of the stairs where he could watch over his boss while Marshall had been checking the door. He, too, holstered his gun when he saw me, but otherwise did not acknowledge my presence as he left, presumably to head back to sleep.

I carefully descended the white stone steps leading to the pool, each tread glowing softly in the lambent moonlight. My breath caught as I finally spotted Ivan coursing relentlessly back and forth across the small, decorative pool, face buried in the water, flipping under the surface to push off the wall every five strokes or so – the amount of effort it took for him to cross from one end to the next. I was reminded suddenly of all the orcas and dolphins stuck in tiny tanks at marine parks, endlessly circling and criss-crossing their unnatural enclosures in a frustrated, fruitless stab at normal activity. That's what he was – a confined, wild thing desperate to be free.

He hadn't seen me yet, wasn't aware of my presence as I approached the pool, and I was reluctant to disturb him. Or more accurately, reluctant to begin the conversation I came here to have. I allowed myself a few more moments to just watch him, admire the long, sculpted muscles of his arms and upper back, and the power of his lean legs as they propelled him through the churning water. This could be the last time I could watch him like this. My breath quickened and my stomach started lurching spasmodically again, and I rapidly decided against delaying the inevitable any longer.

I walked to the end of the pool and crouched by the edge. I could feel myself beginning to sweat in the humid evening air – perfect for a late-night swim, perfectly dreadful for a midnight confrontation with your soon-to-be-ex in an outfit chosen for a climate about 1,200 miles further north. Between my stomach and the sweating, I was fighting the encroaching edge of panic.

"Ivan," I said finally, interrupting him as he lifted his face for a breath a few feet from the wall. He lurched to a stop, with heated, salted water splashing in all directions as he stood upright in the shallow pool and shook the droplets from his eyes.

"Lex." He wiped his face with a long-fingered hand and checked the area around the pool, for a towel or one of his bodyguards or a maybe hidden camera crew – I didn't know which. He finally met my eyes. "I wasn't expecting you."

Not much in way of a greeting. Not even a smile, I noted. Marshall had been right; he was acting weird. Then again, the last time he'd seen me, I'd left him without a word or even a backward glance, just walked out the rear door and disappeared for four days without a single phone call or text by way of explanation. I'd never even responded to his offer of help. I would probably be a bit upset, too, in his position.

Ivan moved slowly closer, still looking around the pool rather than at me. Thinking that I could at least make him a tiny bit more comfortable, I stood and stepped over to the table and chairs nearby, snagging the oversized towel draped over one of the backs and bringing it to the edge of the pool.

"Thanks." He accepted the towel quietly, dried off his face, and passed it over his dripping hair a couple of times before crumpling it in a pile on the lip of concrete in front of him. He paused. "What are you doing here?"

Of all the ways I'd imagined this horrible conversation starting, this particular opening hadn't been one of them. "I went by the loft earlier today to see you, but Sammy said you'd left early this morning with luggage. I guessed that you would probably be here."

"So you just jumped on a plane and flew to Miami on a hunch? It seems like a text or a phone call would have been the next logical step." I froze in silence. "Tips at Asylum must be better than I thought to support such a jet-setting lifestyle."

Huh. Perhaps "a bit upset" didn't quite cover his mood. "I had to see you," I explained lamely. Now it was his turn to be quiet. "Are you ... are you going to get out of the pool?"

"Do I need to get out of the pool?" Yep, he was mad; his accent had thickened, as it always seemed to do when he was angry.

"I guess not. No." He was quiet again, his gaze locked somewhere around the tip of my right boot and the muscles in his jaw clenching and relaxing in a disjointed rhythm. It was hard to imagine this going much worse, though I knew full well it was about to get much, much worse.

"There's something I need to talk to you about," I began. "Something I need to tell you." It was uncomfortable crouching down like this, but sitting and standing both seemed wrong, so I stayed where I was, lowering my knees gingerly to touch the damp cement.

"Is it about your grandmother?" Ivan asked.

I blinked. "No. I mean ... not really. Well, yes ... I guess it kind of involves my grandmother, in the sense that her death has forced me to confront a bunch of things that I had been avoiding thinking about, things that I really didn't want to think about ..." I floundered; I knew I was rambling, but was at a loss for how to really begin.

"What do your people always say?" he prompted me. "'Just spit it out'?"

Just spit it out. Right. That made as much sense as anything else right now. I took a very deep breath and released it all at once.

"My name isn't Alexis Bryant," I said quickly. No going back now. I reached into my tote and pulled out the badge wallet I had retrieved from my condo this afternoon and slowly flipped it open to hold it at arm's length in front of him. "My name is Lärke Hellström, and I'm with the New York Police Department."