Page 23 of Between the Lies

Robert took that to mean creating IDs that got you through more sophisticated scanners. This was helpful, particularly because no one with a clear conscience got a fake ID.

Robert leaned in, dropping his voice. ‘And can your pal Finn help me locate Nina? For the right price, of course.’

CHAPTERELEVEN

Tomatoes – the room looked like the streets in Spain after the tomato harvest festival. What did they call it? Nina couldn’t remember. She’d been to Spain that time of the year, a few years ago, and spent the day hiding in her room, remembering Holi, the festival of colours, in her own home country. Only – Nina sniffed – it didn’t smell pungent or acidic but rather musky and metallic, like… blood?

She dug her elbows into the hard floor, wincing at the pain, and pushed up. The scene was straight out of Stephen King’sThe Shining.

Blood pooled on the concrete floor; her shirt was drowning in it. There was splatter on the walls.

Nina shivered at the sight, and then from the cold in the room.

She turned her head and saw… him.

‘Jonas! Jonas!’

Nina moved her legs to sit up and slipped, smacking right back into the blood – Jonas’s blood.

‘Jonas!’ Her hand landed on him, and she shook him. ‘Jo?—’

His lips were blue – too blue. Nina gripped his wrist, trying to slow her own heartbeat so she could listen. But no matter what, no matter how long she clutched his wrist, she knew – no one could have survived that sort of gash across their throat.

She’d slit Jonas’s throat, then lain in his blood?

Bile rose up, vomit threatening to erupt, but instead?—

‘Noo!’ Nina jerked awake, her limbs kicking as if fighting the dream… nightmare… memory?

She massaged her forehead, trying but failing to keep her hands from shaking. It was too vivid to be a dream.

Maybe her brain had imagined the blood… The scene had been bloody, but there was only so much a human could lose.

Nina scrambled up, resting her head back on the bed’s headboard to gulp oxygen.

He’d been dead before the building had caught fire. And if she hadn’t slit his throat, she’d certainly left him to his own devices in a burning building.

Nina stumbled out of bed, still shaky. As an investigative reporter, she’d encountered a lot of gut-churning stuff – the worse humanity had to offer. But that scene… Nothing had ever been so personal.

As she dressed, Nina knew she had to rip the bandage off. Sooner or later, a diligent police officer would find her, and she hadn’t exactly taken measures to protect herself.

The fire would have made it harder for the forensic team, but coupled with the images in Jonas’s camera – which she’d belatedly realised came with “Cloud Sync” technology – any halfwit prosecutor had a case against her.

Nina tied up the laces of her boots and picked up her backpack. The hotel’s card beeped against the scanner when she unlocked the door.

No, she would fight this in the only way she knew how.

Nina had to do what she’d initially set out to – investigate sham marriages taking place in the UK under the name of love but for the sole purpose of acquiring a visa. That would give her answers to what had happened – to her and to Jonas.

Nina shut the door and descended the steps.

Glasgow’s Merchant City buzzed with people. It wasn’t a weekend, but the sun had made a particularly rare appearance given it was November, and when the sun appeared, most Glaswegians – in Nina’s opinion – went raving mad.

The chairs and tables on the pavement were filled with groups drinking, eating, and blethering. In fact, there were so many tables, she barely had space to walk on the pavement.

If she’d been living in this area full time, she’d have hated this. Too many eyes, too easy for someone to hide amongst the crowd and spy.

Nina sidestepped a group meandering down the road as if they had nothing better to do with their time. She supposed with the right company, particularly a man with soft, spiky blond hair, kissable lips and a hunky built, she could be encouraged to do so too.

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