Page 135 of The Favorites
“The key to my hotel room,” Ellis said. “They have actual security there. And working deadbolts. And a pretty bomb breakfast buffet.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I’m sleeping elsewhere tonight, and there’s no sense in letting a perfectly good room go to waste.”
“You got a hot date or something?”
“Did I mention the buffet?” Ellis waved the card back and forth. “Not one, not two, butthreedifferent kinds of blini.”
I stared at him until he rolled his head back with a groan.
“Fine, yes, I have a date. A certain silver fox with a golden voicemayhave invited me over for a vodka martini nightcap.”
I made a face. “You andKirk?”
“He’s old enough to be your father,” Heath said.
“Which makes him the perfect age to be mydaddy.” Ellis waggled his well-groomed eyebrows. “And I don’t want to keep him waiting, so could you twopleaseset aside your pride and accept this gesture of simple human kindness before I change my mind?”
I glanced at Heath. His posture was tense, but he didn’t protest. Wherever Ellis was staying, it had to be an improvement on the actual crime scene that awaited us inside.
“You know, Ellis,” I said. “You’re a pretty good guy when you want to be.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He slapped the keycard into my palm. “You better not tell anyone, bitch.”
Ellis Dean:I’d never seen Kat like that. She looked scared.
Veronika Volkova:How many times must I repeat myself? I had nothing to do with it.
Kirk Lockwood:The Russians tried to hush up the whole thing. The Sochi Games had enough bad press already, what with all the unfinished construction and the corruption. Not to mention the Russian government’s blatant homophobia.
Veronika Volkova:Wild accusations, without proof. Still to this day you have no proof, and yet you continue to ask me about this. It is insulting. Tell me why I should not get up and leave right now.
Ellis Dean:When I let Kat and Heath stay in my hotel room the night before the free dance, I really thought that would be enough. I thought that’d be the end of it.
Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha emerge from a taxi outside the Radisson Blu Resort hotel in Sochi, Russia. As Heath pays the driver, Katarina catches sight of the camera filming them from across the street, but she seems too weary to summon a glare.
Ellis Dean:Unfortunately, it was only the beginning.
Chapter 77
Ellis’s room at the Radisson was so generic, we could have been anywhere in the world.
It was absolute heaven. I took my first hot shower in days, then rigged up a cold pack for my throbbing foot with the plastic bag from the ice bucket, while Heath figured out how to connect his phone to the Bluetooth speaker on the nightstand. We both availed ourselves of his painkillers before he hopped in the shower too. He was on the same pills I’d been prescribed after my fall at 2006 Nationals, and I was already looking forward to the warm-bath sensation that would wash over me once they kicked in.
He came out of the bathroom wearing a towel around his waist, beads of water clinging to his back. The hot water had made his scars stand out in sharp relief.
“How’s your foot?” he asked.
“Better. The ice is taking the swelling down.”
I moved over on the memory foam mattress to make room for him, and he lay back against the pillows, shoulder touching mine. His moody folk-rock playlist wrapped around us like a soothing sonic blanket, but I still wasn’t feeling anything from the medication.
“Let me see,” Heath said.
“It’s gross.”
“Katarina.”
