“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Can you pick me and Elena up?”
“Of course. Tell me where you are.”
Elena waited outside, watching Shane punch in a phone number. She tried to imagine whom he was calling. And why. Was he going to turn her over to Lincoln Kinkead? Or maybe he was calling someone at Rockfort Security, the company where he actually worked.
She thought about that as she watched him—just as he was watching her. She saw he was waiting for someone to answer. Then she saw when the person on the other end of the line picked up. She could tell he was relieved to have gotten through, and she tried to decide what that meant. Was someone coming down here to get them? Or were they going to another meeting point? Their car was back at the safe house—unless the police had taken it away—but she didn’t think they’d go back there to get it, not after the thugs had found the location.
Her tension mounted as she watched him talking. Luckily, the call was short. Shane hung up the phone and motioned for her to come back into the house.
She didn’t like the speculative look on his face as he studied her. She wanted to ask, “Now what?” but she kept the question to herself. What she truly wanted was for him to put his arms around her and pull her close. She wanted to know that she hadn’t totally messed up their relationship by sneaking out to make the phone call, but she couldn’t say any of that. And she had to wonder at her own motivation.
She’d trusted him with her emotions enough to make love with him. But she hadn’t trusted him with her fears about her brother. That made an interesting contrast.
She saw him cross to the kitchen area and start opening cabinets and the full-sized refrigerator. He found a carton of milk, opened it, and made a face before putting it back. Instead he gestured toward several cans of soft drinks. “The milk’s bad, but these should be okay.”
She took a Coke, popped the top, and took a few swallows while he took several boxes out of the cabinet. Cookies and crackers.
She munched on some, watching him do the same.
“We’ll go back to the boat and get rid of the evidence that we were there. Of course, the owners might wonder where some of their clothes went,” he muttered under his breath, “unless they’ve got so many that they won’t miss them.”
Again, she wanted to ask who he had called, but she kept the question locked behind her lips.
After their unorthodox breakfast, he wiped down any surfaces they might have touched. Then he closed the window where they’d both entered. Finally, they exited through the side door, and he led the way back to the boat, where he started straightening up the bed. “Get your clothes,” he ordered.
She retrieved them from the bathroom and brought them to the cabin.
Shane held out a plastic bag. “Put them in here.”
When she’d finished, he added his clothing from the night before, then gave her a long look. “Are you going to get into trouble if I leave you for a few minutes?”
“Of course not.”
“Then stay here while I deep-six these.”
She watched him get off the boat, pick up some rocks from the shoreline, and put them in with the clothing. After making some holes in the bag, he went down to the end of the dock, slung the bag around in a circle to give it momentum, and threw it far into the water, where it quickly sank below the surface.
When he returned, he looked at his watch, which was apparently still functioning after their late-night swim. “Still too early to leave.”
“Where are we going?”
“Away from here.”
“Shane…”
“Yeah?”
The look on his face made it clear that he didn’t want to have a conversation with her. Instead, he sat down and picked up a fishing magazine from the table in the main cabin and began reading it.
She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to explain what she’d been thinking. But he looked so closed up that she couldn’t get any words out.
Seeing him deliberately ignoring her made her stomach clench, but she struggled to keep her own expression neutral as she took a seat opposite him and tried to focus on one of the gossip magazines there. When she found herself reading the same page over and over, she gave up and looked at the ads.
Chapter 18
Jerome Weller tossed restlessly in his bed. Finally, he heaved himself up and staggered to the window where he looked out at the early morning scene. He had not slept well, for obvious reasons. When he’d first said he could deliver the S&D information to an interested buyer, the project had seemed easy. He’d only had to study the personnel files and zero in on Arnold Blake.
Blake had been a spectacular failure.
Yesterday everything had been on track again. But now he thought he had only a fifty-fifty chance of getting that information. And if he didn’t? Unfortunately, he’d made it sound like he could deliver, and he’d already taken a down payment. What would the buyer do if he thought he was being stiffed? Jerome tried not to think about that eventuality.
Instead he pictured Alesandro Reyes downstairs in the torture room. The guy was in bad shape because Jerome had taken out his frustrations on the weakling. And when this was over, Alesandro was going to be dead. Jerome was going to make sure he didn’t end up the same way. He’d been thinking that if he had to, he could take his money and disappear. He’d always known it might come to that one day, and he already had several false identities set up. It was only a matter of putting those plans in motion. But if he could avoid leaving the comfortable surroundings he’d cultivated for so long, he was going to do that.
He took his time showering, shaving, and picking the shirt and slacks he wanted to wear. When he was a kid, most of his clothing had been handed down from his older brother. When he went off on his own, he’d vowed that he’d only have new clothing—and the best that money could buy. In this case, shirts, slacks, and jackets from a London tailor who had his measurements on file.
Finally, he was satisfied with his appearance, but he was too edgy to eat any breakfast, only coffee with heavy cream and a lot of sugar—his favorite way to drink it. Taken that way, it was almost like candy, but he barely tasted it this morning. Setting down the mug, he went out in the garden and walked the pebble paths of the boxwood maze.
Around nine, he finally got the call he’d been hoping for.
“We know where Gallagher and Reyes are holed up.”
“Spit it out,” he demanded.
“They’re on an estate a couple of miles down the river from where we lost them.”
“And they’re not going to slip out of your grasp again, right?”
“Right,” the man on the other end of the line said, his voice firm.
“You’d better hope so,” Jerome said, knowing he was transferring some of his own anxiety to the caller.
Shane tried to read the magazine he’d picked up, but his attention kept swinging back to Elena. She was slumped in her seat looking miserable. If this had been a normal situation, he would have pulled her into his lap and cuddled her against his chest while he stroked his hand through her hair.
Lord, she’d been so sweet and giving in bed. Could a woman fake such tender emotions? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to make himself vulnerable to her again.
She might look miserable, but she was the one who had gotten herself into trouble. Repeatedly. Well, he amended that assessment. The hostage situation hadn’t been her fault. Unless there was something going on there that he didn’t know about.
He checked the time again. He hated sitting here with nothing to do—with a woman he didn’t trust as far as he could throw her, if you wanted to use a cliché. If he hit her with a bunch of questions, could he get the truth out of her? Or was that a waste of time?