Page 101 of Born for Starlight

"No doctor." Bruno didn't raise his voice. He opened the plastic bag on the floor and set bottles on the desk in a neat row. "I brought her medication from the hotel, and something for the nausea. I've been through this with my sister before. She needs her pills, and she needs peace and quiet for two, maybe three hours. That's all she needs."

"But—"

"Peace," Bruno repeated. "And quiet."

A knock at the door.

Ferraz stepped in without waiting for an answer, and Vargas and Pinto came in behind him, because apparently we were selling tickets now.

Great. Just great. How many people can this room hold?

“Deke,” I groaned. “The smell of that rag…” He caught on immediately, and left with the dirty cloth.

Julian took a small sideways step behind Costa, and his hand crept toward his pocket. The phone slid out, low against his hip, screen tilting up toward me.

I tipped my head toward Matthew.

He came off the sofa in one motion and had Julian's wrist before the phone cleared his hip. Julian cried out like he'd been shot.

"I said no filming."

"You didn't tell me that!" Julian tried to twist free and got exactly nowhere. "It was the other guy who said it!"

Sweet baby Jesus. How dumb could one man be?

"Consider us all the same person." Matthew plucked the phone out of his fingers and slid it into his own jacket.

Julian threw a fit. A real one, voice cracking.

"That's press equipment! That's my property!"

"You'll get it back when we leave," Matthew said.

"Do you have any idea who I am? Four million downloads. Four. Million."

It was up to four million?

"You'll get it back when we leave," Matthew said again, slower this time like he was talking to a petulant toddler.

Bruno leaned in close to me and lowered his voice under Julian's noise. "How are you doing? Really."

"Fine."

"Don't you dare lie," Jase snapped in my ear.

I turned my face into the wet cloth and whispered it. "I'm remembering. Okay? I'm remembering. But now's not the time for a pity party. I'll have one when I'm back in the States, I promise. Right now we've got bigger fish to fry."

Bruno held my eyes. He didn't push.

Across the room, Ferraz had drifted two steps closer, his head angled our way. He was watching my mouth, trying to catch the words. I needed to get rid of Ferraz.

I moaned. Loud, ragged, right from the diaphragm. Years of voice coaching went into that moan.

"What's wrong?" Bruno asked.

"Too many people." I let my voice wobble and pressed the back of my wrist to my eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm feeling claustrophobic. All these people, I can't, I can't breathe in here."

It worked like a charm. Costa herded Julian out with both hands and apologized the whole way. Ferraz took one last look around the room, and at the bottles on the desk. Then he followed. Vargas and Pinto stepped out behind them and pulled the door shut.