Page 57 of The Number of Love
Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, given the number of agents in Spain and the fact that she knew he was a part of Thoroton’s network, she could have easily calculated the chances of it being him. Could have. But hadn’t.
She pushed away from the table, tossed her napkin into the place where her plate had been, and spun away. Perhaps it made sense, in a way. Who better for God to tell her to pray for than her new friend’s brother? Dot would have been devastated had he been killed in the field. Her last close relative, gone.
It was for Dot. Surely. That was why God had whisperedEighteeninto her ear over and over again.
Her fingers curled into her palm, bit into the flesh. Though she wasn’t aware of giving them the instruction, her feet had taken herto the window. The curtains were drawn, of course—it was dark outside, and the blackout restrictions were in place. She gained nothing by standing here. She couldn’t see out. Couldn’t track the clouds. Couldn’t watch raindrops race and tumble down the glass.
But she could feel the cold radiating off it, and she could see her own window in her mind’s eye instead of this one. Those grey clouds that had broken up and chased each other across the sky on that wretched day. She could hear Lukas, now as then. Smell the tea Dot had pressed into her hand that day.
She could hear that blighted number echoing over and again in her ear.Eighteen. Eighteen. Eighteen.
Her palms stung from where her nails, always kept short and utilitarian, dug into her palms.
“What did I say?”
She jumped at the voice, so close to her side. The wrong voice. Not Lukas or Dot or the landlady.Him. Her head snapped his way, that blood that had gone cold now raging. “You.” It came out low, accusatory. As if he could help that God had brought him to her mind. “I prayed for you.”
His brows knit over that knot in his nose, and he reached out a hand to the opposite window frame to brace himself. His hand shook, but she suspected it wasn’t from her revelation. “Thank you? Though I’m not certain why you sound so angry about it.”
“Notnow, after you came home.Then. Before.” She dragged in a breath, huffed it out. “Eighteen. God kept bringing the number to mind, ever since I decoded that report from Thoroton for DID. Not long after Dot and I met.”
His fingers bit into the wood like hers did into her palm. “Wait. Thatyoudecoded?”
“I’m not a secretary, Drake.” She spat it, hurled it at him, hoping it would hurt him and not quite sure why she hoped that. Or why she thought it would. She was nothing to him, and his preconceived notions being challenged couldn’t really affect anything. “I’m a cryptographer.”
“You?” Incredulity flickered across his face, chased by denial,amusement, and then simple blankness. “All right. You’re a codebreaker. And you decoded one of Thoroton’s reports for the admiral. So you read about Agent Eighteen and...?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to be talking to him, frankly, but unfortunately the powers of her mind stopped rather short of moving her by sheer will through time and space, and there were far too many people between her and the door who wouldn’t let her storm out of her own birthday celebration. Blast them all. “And God kept bringing the number to mind at odd moments. Telling me to pray. That first day, the Tuesday. And then a Sunday in the park, after Mass. And—”
“Tuesday and Sunday,” he muttered. When she peeled her eyes back open, she saw his brows were furrowed again. “The day I ran into Jaeger in the warehouse. And then in the city.” His gaze clashed with hers, tangled. “Your prayers may well have saved my life those days.”
“Bully for you.” She jerked her head back toward the blank window again and folded her arms over her chest.
He shifted closer, something tense and pain-filled in his movement. His side, no doubt. “Do you really hate me that much? That you begrudge having prayed for me?” Or maybe not his side.
She pressed her lips together, but still pressure built inside her head. Blast and blast again. She shook her head. “Of course not. It isn’t you at all. It’s just...” She wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t tell him. Why should she? It was none of his business. He was nothing to her. Nothing but the brother of a friend.
Nothing but the man God had told her to pray for when sheshouldhave been praying for her mother. Something hot and wild heaved its way from her stomach upward, making her shoulders convulse. She squeezed her eyes shut again. “That day. She was lying there on the floor, already gone, and all that was going through my head was that stupid number. My mother was dead, and God was concerned foryou.”
“Margot.” He stepped closer, so close she could smell his soap. So close she could tell that he was blocking the view of her fromthe others. Shielding her from their attention as brine scalded her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.” It wasHis. She shuddered and leaned into the window frame, trying and failing to wrestle it all back down. “I should have been praying for her. Not you. That morning, when I was juststandingthere, waiting for her to come. He should have brought her to mind then. Should have told me to go home, but no. He let me get that stupid fever that muddled my mind, and He saidnothing. No numbers to warn me or spur me home oranything. He just let her die and didn’t let me help.”
“Maybe you couldn’t have.” Fingers brushed her shoulder, retreated. “Maybe He wanted to spare you that pain.”
“What?” How did that make any sense at all? Prying her blurred eyes back open yet again, she turned her head to glare at him.
He was too close. Under normal circumstances, she would have backed away or made him do so. Just now, she knew it was to keep their conversation private, and with that she could agree. No one else needed to hear her falling apart. “I could have saved her. If I’d just gone home earlier—”
“Why do you assume that?” His face a careful mask of dispassion and yet, somehow, empathetic, he held her eyes. “Do you hold the powers of life and death in your hands?”
As if that deserved a response. She pursed her lips.
“Margot, sometimes there’s simply nothing we can do. You want to think you could have helped, that a few minutes or hours would have made a difference. That she could be here still.” He spread his hands. “But what if it wouldn’t have? What if, no matter what you did that day, she would have died? Do you think it would be easier now if you’d seen it happen? If she’d been in your arms?” Now his face contorted. “It wouldn’t be. Trust me. I was with my mother in the boat when it overturned. I tried to get her to shore, I tried to save her. I was barely more than a lad, but I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t. I watched her face mottle and her soul fly away. You never forget that. Never. You ought to be thanking the Lord for sparing you such a memory.”
She shook her head. “Better bad memories for me than her dying alone.”
“Really? You think she’d have wished that on you? What if her last prayer was for you, that the Lord spare you that?”
