Body Surfing

star-shaped violet flower that sat on the breakfast table, the one his dad had bred in honor of his mother, and then he remembered that he hadn’t told his dad he loved him. He hadn’t told his dad he loved him and he hadn’t had sex with his girlfriend—hadn’t had sex with Q.’s girlfriend for that matter—and it was this latter fact that sealed his fate. Jasper Van Arsdale was going to die a virgin, and he was going to have eternity to contemplate his mistake.

9
    I leana packed quickly. Exchanged the heavy boots for a pair of huaraches, moved the stone blade to a garter beneath her skirt. The rest, what little there was, she tossed in her duffel.
    She never carried much. A change of clothes, her cell, the most recent passport the Legion had issued her. The briefcase she’d lugged through the refugee camps had been a prop for Dumas’s benefit—she’d stolen it from a businessman in Fez and had no idea what was inside it. The stone blade was a sentimental accoutrement, but it was easy to transport—it didn’t set off the metal detectors at airports. Like the watch, it had been Alec’s, but unlike the watch, he had given it to her when he was still alive.
    The sound of distant sirens snapped her from her thoughts.
    She went to the balcony and peered through the curtains. Two, no, three Sudanese police vehicles squealed to a halt in front of the hotel. It seemed unlikely some other disturbance had brought them here. But how had they discovered Soma’s body so quickly?
    Ileana stepped back from the balcony. She hurried to the door, cracked it open. The main stairs led to the lobby, but there were fire exits at either end of the hall. As she trotted toward the one on the right, she could hear booted feet on the tiled floors downstairs. There were shouts and cries as guests were confronted by the police.
    She reached the stairwell, eased the door open. A pair of uniformed officers were guarding the lower exit. One of them glanced up and started shouting. She jerked back as a hail of bullets ripped through the plaster over her head.
    She ducked back into the hallway. She could hear the police galloping upstairs. She ran down the hall to the other fire exit. Just as she was about to duck through the door, a guest came into the hallway in his bathrobe and slippers. His eyes went wide as he saw Ileana running toward him.
    “Sorry about this.”
    “Pardon —?”
    Ileana took him down with an elbow to the jaw. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. She pulled him through the stairwell door and wedged his bulk against it.
    “A piece of advice,” she said to the unconscious body. “Next time you hear gunshots, head the other way.”
    She ducked through the far door. The first three rooms were locked but the fourth was open. She slipped inside. She had only a minute or two before the police got the stairwell open. Then, when she whirled around to scan the room, she realized her minutes had been reduced to seconds.
    A man and a woman lay on the bed, naked, their mouths already open.
    Instinct took over. She reached beneath her skirt and pulled the knife from its garter. She didn’t speak, just put the index finger of her free hand to her lips.
    The couple stared at her in terror. The man pulled the sheet up to cover his companion’s breasts—a touching gesture, considering the dainty little whip and neatly stacked pile of cash on the dresser.
    Ileana went to the balcony. The alley appeared to be deserted, but it was still a fifteen-foot drop, and she wasn’t Mogran. She couldn’t keep flooding her body with hormones without expecting to pay a price.
    Someone—the man or the woman—let out a low moan.
    “Quiet! Just be quiet and no one will get hurt. Do you understand?”
    The couple stared at her blankly, their mouths open as if they were screaming but someone had muted the volume.
    Ileana gauged the distance, wondering if she could jump to the next building. Probably not from a standing position, but if she got a running start…
    Just as she turned to assess the length of the room someone began pounding on the door.
    “Shorta!” the man and woman began shouting in chorus. “Police! Help!”
    Ileana tossed her bag to the street and vaulted over the railing after it. She landed hard but managed to tuck into a roll. She heard her knife clatter across the alleyway, wasted precious seconds groping through the gravel until her fingers locked onto the leather handle. A sentimental accoutrement. But Alec