The Traitor's Story (14 page)

“To my hotel, then to the airport.” He took the opportunity to look at her. Her eyes still looked a little puffy, but they were dry.

She didn’t reply, and Finn was equally happy for silence to resume. The adventure was over, definitely for her, maybe for both of them, and silence seemed the appropriate way to mark it.

Chapter Eighteen

When they reached the hotel he paid the taxi driver and she finally spoke again, a hostile curiosity in her voice as she said, “Are my parents paying your expenses?”

He didn’t like her tone and said, “What’s it to you?”

He got out of the car. The driver got out, too, and retrieved her backpack, standing it on the dry floor of the lobby entrance. Finn walked into the hotel then, leaving Hailey to carry the backpack.

They reached the front desk together, and he asked for his bill and for someone to bring his bag down.

Hailey seemed to understand immediately why he’d done that, and said, “You could’ve gone up for it—it’s not like I’m gonna run away.” He looked at her, bemused, wondering if she saw the irony of what she’d just said. She did, and sounded petulant as she added, “I don’t have anywhere to go, remember—not anymore.”

“Maybe, but I’ve come a long way to risk losing you again.”

“Are my parents paying your expenses?”

“No.”

“Why would you do that?”

“As a friend?”

She raised her eyebrows, so arch an expression that he nearly laughed.

He turned back to the receptionist and said, “I wonder, could you call SAS and see if you can get us two business seats on the eleven o’clock flight to Geneva?”

“Of course, I’ll do that for you right now.”

“Business?” He turned back to Hailey as she said, “What I said earlier, you know? This is a nice hotel, and you’re flying business, paying for me to fly business, and you’re not taking any money off my parents. What’s it all about, Finn? You’re not that much of a friend. In fact, I can’t even think why my parents would ask you in the first place.”

“I found you, didn’t I?”

The receptionist interrupted, saying, “Mr. Harrington, the eleven o’clock flight is fully booked.”

“Really? Just business or the whole flight?”

“The whole flight. There are two seats available on the late-afternoon flight, but only one in business.”

It wasn’t something he’d allowed for, that he might need to travel back on a day when it seemed everyone else in Sweden wanted to get to Geneva.

“Okay, well I suppose—” A thought struck him, immediately beguiling. “No, wait, how about flights to Paris?”

“I’ll check.” Finn and Hailey watched as she negotiated with the SAS office. Then she covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “There’s a flight to Paris at thirteen thirty-five, arriving sixteen ten, and they have two business-class seats available.”

“Good. We’ll take them.” He could detect Hailey’s gaze, trying to work out what was going on, but he ignored it, concentrating on the details of the booking. When that was finished he said, “We’ll wait in the lounge for an hour before leaving for the airport. Could we have some coffee and pastries, please?”

“Of course, or would you rather go into the breakfast room?”

They left Hailey’s backpack at reception and walked through to the breakfast room. He expected Hailey to tell him she wasn’t hungry, but she assembled an ambitious breakfast and set about it with relish. Only when she’d finished her bacon and scrambled eggs, and sat stirring the muesli in the bowl in front of her, did she look up at Finn again.

“You didn’t arrange a connecting flight from Paris.”

“I know. We can take the train directly to Lausanne.”

“Flight doesn’t get in until after four—it’s gonna be pretty late getting a train.”

“We’ll get a train in the morning. We’ll stay with Adrienne’s brother tonight. Adrienne’s there, too.”

She’d raised a spoon of muesli almost to her mouth but she hesitated now, the milk dripping off and back into the bowl in small splashes. “Will Adrienne be okay with that? Didn’t she leave you or something?”

“Yeah, she left me or something. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

She ate the spoonful of muesli, chewing for a while. She looked ready to ask him another question, but dug the spoon back into the bowl and kept eating. Finn leaned back, drinking his coffee as he looked around the room, taking in the other guests, mostly business people sitting singly at tables. When he turned back, it was because he heard her put the spoon into the empty bowl and push it away.

She got up and went and got more coffee, then came back. Once she was sitting again, she said, “How did you find me?”

Finn gave a small shrug. “I didn’t buy that you’d run away because you were afraid. I found the shoebox full of receipts in your room, went to Fate, found out that you’d made a new identity for yourself. It suits you, by the way.” She gave a little grimace, the kind she would have produced if her parents had tried to talk about sex or the latest music—apparently Finn was too old to have any worthwhile view on fashion. “Anyway, that convinced me you’d gone away to meet someone. Jonas helped me find out where.”

At the mention of his name, Hailey looked dumbstruck—a mixture of betrayal and annoyance. She shook her head. “I can’t believe he would do that. What a jerk.”

“Did you ask him not to?” She didn’t understand the question. “If you’d told Jonas where you were going and asked him not to say anything, he would’ve protected you.”

“No, he wouldn’t! You don’t know him. He can’t lie. I don’t mean he’s congenitally incapable of lying. I don’t buy that whole Asperger’s thing my parents are obsessed with, not at all, but he just doesn’t lie. He’s just too laid-back to believe that the truth could ever be really harmful.”

“Well, you’re right, I don’t know him that well, but I think if you’d asked him he would have lied for you. And he helped me because he was worried.”

She shook her head again and said, almost to herself, “Jerk.”

“Jesus, I don’t know you too well, either, but I’m beginning to see that you’re a complete bitch.” She looked as if she’d been slapped around the face, so unused was she to anyone talking to her like that. “Okay, let’s just think about it for a second. Let’s think about what you put your parents through—that’s if you’ve given even a moment’s thought to how distraught they’ve been this last week—”

“Of course I have!”

“Then your best friend—good God, am I glad I never had a best friend like you—you know full well the unique way his mind works, and you completely manipulated him—”

“How did I?”

“This is me you’re talking to. You encouraged him to hack into Gibson’s network. You got him to create the scenario that would allow you to run away. It was a lucky break that Gibson asked your parents about it, but the break-in, the car following you, none of that happened.” He was guessing, but she stared down at her coffee and was silent. “So you used Jonas, too, and all of that so you could hoodwink some guy into being your boyfriend, with not a thought of the consequences. Anders told me you wanted to come here before Christmas, when you were still fourteen, a small difference that could have landed him with a few years in prison.”

She looked up, her face red, but in what appeared to be anger rather than embarrassment, and said, “Why do you think I didn’t come? I checked. I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, I’m not accusing you of being stupid, Hailey. I have to admit, I even had some admiration for the way you planned it all, for how devious you’ve been. No, I’m not accusing you of being stupid, I’m accusing you of being cold and selfish and manipulative.”

She pushed her chair away from the table and stood in one fluid movement. For a moment, it looked as if she might pick
something
up and throw it at him, but she sounded quite calm as she said,
“I have to go to the bathroom.” She approached one of the waitresses
and asked her directions, then left the room.

Finn waited a moment, then followed, telling the waitress he’d be back. He walked only as far as the lobby, knowing she couldn’t leave the hotel without him seeing her.

She was only five minutes or so, and when she came back her eyes were newly reddened. He’d gone too far, perhaps, forgetting she
was
still only fifteen, and that she would have to face worse from her parents. He felt a little hypocritical, too, in just about everything he’d said, and yet he simply hadn’t been able to sit there and listen to her running Jonas down like that.

It was true, he hardly knew the kid, but he knew he deserved better than that. Maybe one day she’d see that, too, even if it was years after she and Jonas had gone their separate ways and lost touch with each other.

Hailey didn’t look at him as she approached, offering no reaction to the fact that he still didn’t trust her not to run. She walked past him and resumed her place at the table. He followed her in, and got himself another cup of coffee before sitting down again.

She sipped at her own coffee, but then pushed it aside and got up, coming back a moment later with a fresh cup. Once she’d sat down, she looked him straight in the face and said, “I’m not a bad person.”

“If you were, I wouldn’t have bothered saying those things.”

She nodded a little, as if accepting that as a truce marker, then said, “How did he know where to look?”

“He knew you’d gone by train—the InterRail page you had up on your computer.” She nodded again, like a master criminal looking back on the small mistakes she’d known about all along. “You also gave away one day that you were on Facebook—you told him you’d played a game on there, then tried to say you were just browsing, but—”

“You can’t browse on Facebook.”

“That’s right. It says something for his loyalty to you that Jonas had never looked at your page until I asked him to. Naturally, he knew your email address, and he knew your password. From there it was easy. I was at the restaurant last night—I followed you back, found out where Anders lived.”

She looked briefly transported back to Domtrappkällaren, and said quietly, “It was such a great night.” Her voice was full of regret—that it was over rather than remorse for what she’d done. “It’s been a great few days.”

“I’m sure it has.” She looked defensive, as if sensing another attack, but he smiled. “I doubt you’ll ever look back and regret this. You might regret aspects of it, as you should, but it’ll be one for the memory bank.” She became glum, the bigger picture not something she wanted to contemplate right now. “Hailey, let me ask you, how did you imagine this panning out? How long did you think it could last?”

She gave a little twitch of her mouth—a gesture he’d seen before, her version of a shrug—and said, “Longer than this. If you hadn’t gotten involved, or Jonas.” Again, Jonas’s name was said with a certain bitterness.

“You really have it in for Jonas, don’t you?”

“Because he’s maddening.” She was about to drink from her coffee cup but was overtaken with thoughts and put it down. “You must’ve noticed the way his mind never settles on anything for more than, like, two minutes. He’s just so random, it’s untrue. It’s partly his fault anyway, that all this—”

She stopped abruptly, gave the minimalist shrug again as if to suggest it wasn’t worth saying, and finished her coffee.

“Why was it his fault?”

“I didn’t say it was his fault, just partly.”

“But why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

She looked more bashful than he’d so far seen her, looking down at the coffee cup as she spoke, turning it around as if searching for a maker’s mark.

“Because if he’d shown any interest in me—proper interest—
I wouldn’t have gone on Facebook. I wouldn’t have done any of this.”

“Oh, I see. Maybe he didn’t realize you liked him like that.”

“Of course he did.”

She looked up at him, and Finn made a show of accepting the point, then said, “He’s certainly a very good-looking guy. We went to a coffee shop and the waitress couldn’t take her eyes off him. Two girls at a neighboring table were the same.”

“It’s like that everywhere we go, and he’s not interested. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look at a girl like that. I’m not saying I think he’s gay, he’s just . . .” Finn was smiling now, and she stopped, looking a little offended as she said, “What?”

“Hailey, Jonas doesn’t look at other girls because he’s in love with you.” She looked as if he’d said something ridiculous. “I’m serious, I’ve known him a few days and I can assure you that he’s crazy about you.”

“I would know.”

“Clearly not. But you would probably need to make the running on this one, although it might be an idea to let the dust settle. And I also think you need to make a full and frank apology first, telling him exactly the ways in which you lied to him, and why.”

Even as he spoke, he realized his advice applied more urgently to him than it did to Hailey.

She shook her head, saying, “He’d never forgive me.”

“He would.”

“Anyway, it wouldn’t work now even if he does like me. I’m in love with Anders.”

She probably expected the usual adult response, that she was too young to know what she wanted, that Anders was a grown man, a grown man who almost certainly didn’t want anything to do with her now. Instead, Finn nodded and stood up. She stood, too.

“Life is like comedy—it’s all in the timing.”

She stared at him for a second, taken with the thought, perhaps flattered because he hadn’t given the adult-to-child speech, but then said sadly, “So what happened with you?”

With you and Adrienne
, was what she meant.

“I suppose I’m not as funny as I thought I was.”

She smiled.

“You’re pretty funny,” she said, encouraging. “I wouldn’t give up writing the books . . .”

He laughed a little, and they walked out of the breakfast room and retrieved their bags. He’d warmed to her through that final part of their conversation, perhaps just because of the eternally innocent situation of two kids not realizing they were each in love with the other, misunderstanding all the signals, all the words spoken.

Of course, Finn wasn’t a kid and nor was Adrienne, and she’d know exactly why he’d chosen to turn up at Mathieu’s place with Hailey. He was using the girl as a convenient shield, someone he could hide behind while he tested the water and tried to find out how things stood between them.

It was cowardly, and he wished he could follow even a little of his own advice, and be open and truthful with her—about who he was, about how little she’d known of the real him this last four years. But how could that be a solution, when the truth was worse than what she had run away from?