224
BEN MEZRICH
couches and bucket loveseats, glad that the place was fairly deserted for ten at night. He still felt out of place in these bastions of affluence and half-expected some Swiss security guard to come after him with a hose and a bar of soap; maybe on their next trip he’d convince Khaled to let him pick the hotels. Nobody had ever felt self-conscious sweating his way through the lobby of a Courtyard by Marriott. Thankfully, David reached the elevator without incident. After hitting the button with a damp palm, he was carefully wiping the damn thing dry with the sleeve of his sweatshirt when the gilded doors slid open. Without looking up, he stepped forward—and nearly crashed headlong into a woman on her way out. “Excuse me,” he started, and then his eyes widened and he froze. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and dark jeans, ankle-high leather boots, and a white cashmere scarf wrapped around her long, angled neck. Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her high, almost elvish cheekbones glowed in the light from the lobby’s chandeliers. Her dark cat eyes peered out at him from behind anime-length eyelashes, and her eyebrows crooked upward as her full red lips pulled into an amused smile, revealing more of her startlingly white teeth. “Are you going to let me out of the elevator, or are we going to stand here all night?” David blinked. Her accent was unexpected—decidedly French, though her vocabulary seemed perfect—and she was much taller than she’d looked the night before. Then again, the night before she’d been seated at the bar—and now she was standing right in front of him, arms crossed, impatiently tapping a leather heel. “Are you following me?” David croaked, feeling foolish the minute he’d said the words. The girl’s eyebrows moved up another notch—and then recognition flashed across her chiseled features. “You were in the bar in London. Sitting with a young Arab gentleman. You were drinking Perrier.”