Soulmates

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

The slamming of the cell door was jarring. Lisa had been ready for it, bracing herself for the sounds she knew would come—the bone-grinding clash of metal upon metal, the grate of a key turning in a lock to seal her fate. But prepared though she was, the sound ripped through her body like a gunshot when the metal door finally clanked shut.

She tried not to let her anxiety show, waiting until the guard left before she let out the breath she'd been holding. The musty, stale stench of damp concrete and old urine threatened to smother her. The walls seemed to close in on her, and it took all her willpower to keep from flinging out her arms in a vain attempt to hold them back.

God, she hated confining spaces. She always had.

Looking around at the small six-by-six-foot cell, she couldn't believe how her life had turned upside down in a matter of hours. The possibility had always been in the back of her mind that she'd end up right where she was right now, only the crime would be espionage, not murder.

Italy had no death penalty for murder, just a life sentence behind bars similar to these. But Lisa found that a small consolation. It was only a matter of time before the authorities looked into a past that didn't exist and learned the truth about who she really was.

Then she was as good as dead, because they did shoot spies here.

*

"Oh, this is terrible. What are we going to do?" Jennie paced the length of the living room and back, her hands twisting in her white apron until Jisoo thought she might tear the material in two.

"I don't know. It certainly throws a bit of a kink in things, doesn't it?"

"A kink?" Jennie looked at her with disbelieving eyes. "A man is dead, and Lisa is in jail for murder, and you call it a kink?" She closed her eyes and shook her head, then resumed her frantic pacing. "It's a catastrophe, that's what it is."

"No," Jisoo softly corrected her. "I think the volcano incident was a catastrophe. This is more like a mini-disaster."

Jennie glared at her.

"Don't play semantics with me. You know what I mean." She marched over and flounced on the couch with a melodramatic flare, burying her face in her hands. "Oh, we are doomed."

Jisoo felt Jennie's censure, even though she hadn't come right out and said it was her fault. But she did blame her. She could tell.

Jisoo admitted she probably deserved it this time. She felt guilty that she hadn't been paying close enough attention to the comings and goings at the site and had allowed Jungkook to slip past.

"It's not like I could have stopped it." Jisoo tried her best to defend herself. "By the time I got there, Jungkook was already dead, and the police had arrested Lisa."

"Oh, this is not good." Jennie looked up from her lap. "De La Cruz is going to have a fit when he finds out about this."

The mention of their boss's name made Jisoo squirm in her overstuffed easy chair. Then, as an idea came to her, her mood brightened a bit.

"Hey, you don't suppose this is another one of those tests he's been putting them through, do you? If that's the case, we might not be in too much trouble."

Jennie immediately doused all hope.

"Oh, I don't think so. He prepared us for the test when the Germans came looking for Lisa. I certainly think he would have alerted us to something as important as Jungkook's murder."

"It wasn't murder!" Jisoo felt compelled to stand up for Lisa. "It was self-defense."

Jennie shook her head at her again, correcting her without saying a word. Jisoo really hated when she did that.