Chapter 46

“Sounds perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

He stayed long enough to settle Beatriz for her nap, tucking her in with her now very dog-eared yellow blanket, and gave Erik another, proper kiss before pocketing his wallet and the spare key for the hotel room, and heading out.

Into the warm, wet heat of Valencia in high summer.

Andreas wasn’t from Valencia. He wasn’t even from the east coast. He was Navarran. He’d grown up in the wetter mountains of the north, with thick forests coating the wilderness and hot summers giving way to bitterly cold winters every year. He still spoke Spanish with hard consonants and the tight edges of Basque, even though he didn’t speak much of the latter.