Chapter 10
NICK
Iwasn’t angry. Or at least I was trying very hard not to be.
Cara and I were settling into a nice travel routine and maybe even the beginning of a friendship.
I’d hate to fuck it up by punching her ex in the face right in front of her.
Not that she’d looked thrilled about his hands being zip-tied to his steering wheel, but at least there hadn’t been bloodshed. Yet.
The situation wasn’t as bad as I’d first worried it was.
At least the asshole ex wasn’t a covert op on my trail.
But we were hours from home and there he was, right behind us, following her without her knowledge or permission.
That made him a bona fide stalker. And I would forever hold it against him that he’d broken her heart and then spent months stomping all over the shattered pieces.
While I listened to Riley demand answers about who the hell I was and why Cara was riding with a lunatic who carried zip-ties in his pocket, I called Pasco, one of HEAT’s resident IT geniuses.
“I have a situation,” I said the second he connected. “I’ve been followed.”
“Doing SIGINT now,” Pasco said without needing to hear anything more. “If you get me a visual on the hostiles, I’ll run facial recognition while I’m at it.”
Cara was doing an excellent job of stonewalling her ex, with her arms crossed over her chest and the look on her face telling him to fuck off. The woman was a master at nonverbal communication, and even the zip-tied bonehead seemed to have read her meaning and had gone quiet.
Good. Now I could focus on my call. “No need for a visual ID,” I told Pasco. “He’s not one of our hostiles. He’s known to the lady who’s giving me a ride across the country.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m not explaining this well.”
“You do seem oddly off your game,” Pasco said. “Is this unnamed lady someone special to you?”
“She’s a friend. Friend of a friend, actually. But I don’t like that we’re five hours into the drive and suddenly her ex pulls in right behind us on a deserted road.”
“And you and the lady were about to do what, exactly, on the deserted road?”
“Focus, Pasco,” I said in my most ominous tone. He was used to dealing with prickly assholes like me so my tone wouldn’t intimidate him, but it would make him understand the seriousness of the situation.
“You’re no-fun Nick, per usual.” He sighed. “Okay, I just loaded a new app on your phone. It looks like a target with a radio signal coming out of it. Tap to open it.”
I followed his instructions.
“Good. Now circle her car.”
I did that as well.
“Car is clean,” he announced. “You need a shave. Oh, and the lady is hot!”
“What the hell, Pasco? Warn a guy if you’re going to take over his camera.” I glared down at the screen. “What’s next?”
“My best guess is the guy is tracking your friend’s phone.”
I stepped closer to Cara and heard Riley calmly and quietly trying to explain to her how he’d stalked her for her own good. He wasn’t using the “s” word, of course.
“Hang tight,” I told Pasco. I motioned for her to step close to me, then lowered my voice. “Did he tell you why he’s following you?”
“He said he’s worried about me.” She glanced in his direction. “I saw you walking around my car. Do you think he put a tracer on it? That would be creepy.”
“There’s nothing on your car so he’s probably tracing your phone, which is still creepy.” I held out my hand. “Mind if I check?”
She handed her phone to me. “Do you need me to ask him anything specific, or—”
“I’ll take it from here. You can wait for me in the car.”
When she walked away, her ex called after her. I stepped into his sightline and stared him down, which silenced him again. Good boy. That might keep me from hurting him.
“I have her phone,” I told Pasco.
“Hold her phone on top of yours, like—” When I scowled, he cleared his throat. “Never mind. Okay, yes, I see it. That ex is a sneaky asshole. And he didn’t go cheap. You’d never find the bug with a regular sweep. Luckily, you have me. And now the phone is clean and pure as the driven snow.”
“So, there’s no chance he’ll find us again?” I asked.
“As long as you don’t let him follow you out of there, he’s no longer your problem.”
“Did your SIGINT sweep give you a read on his Audi’s onboard tracking system?”
“It did,” Pasco said. “And I already disabled the distress signal.”
“Perfect. Can you reactivate it in two hours?”
“Consider it done,” he confirmed, “if you’re sure you don’t want his ass to be stuck there overnight.”
“It’s tempting, but that would be overkill. I just want some time to get Cara and me far away from him. Thanks Pasco.”
“You’re welcome. Call if you need anything else. Oh, and Nick?”
I didn’t like the tone of his voice, but I responded anyway. “What?”
“If this Cara person is really just a friend, maybe you could introduce us when you get here? She looks closer to my age anyway, and...”
I stared hard at my phone screen because even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he was still watching me. “Listen Pasco, because you and I are friends, I’m going to forget you ever said either of those last two sentences.”
“There it is. The truth. Well, you and your friend have fun on the rest of your drive, and be sure to do all the things I would—”
I disconnected the call to cut him off. I stalked back to the driver’s side of the Audi to deal with my real annoyance. Spotting his phone on the passenger’s seat, I walked to that door, pulled it open, and scooped up the device.
“What the hell, man? I use that for my work.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. I wedged out the SIM card, dropped it onto the macadam, and ground it under my heel. “Hope everything’s backed up on the cloud.” I tossed the phone deep into the high grass. Then I lifted his key fob out of the cupholder beside him and pocketed it.
“Now you’re stealing my shit? I should have your ass arrested.”
I shrugged. “You could try. I’ll even give you my federal badge number if you’d like.”
His face fell. “She’s dating a fucking cop?”
“Something like that.” I crossed back to his side of the vehicle.
“When roadside service arrives in a couple of hours from now, maybe they’ll help you look for your phone.
In the meantime, let me give you three things to think about.
One, I’m currently carrying multiple weapons and I’m extremely proficient at using each and every one of them.
Two, your days of tracking, stalking, and otherwise harassing Cara are over.
There’s lots of nasty, criminal stuff involved in the shit you’re doing.
I don’t think you want my friends looking into it. ”
I sawed at the zip-tie, not quite cutting through it.
He tugged, but remained bound. It would give way soon, but we’d be long gone by then.
I’d already spotted the water bottles in his back seat, so I wasn’t worried that the dumbass would dehydrate.
I nodded, pleased that my work here was almost finished.
“That was only two things.” He grinned. “Guess you cops aren’t great at counting.”
“Maybe not.” I leaned against the side of his car. “But we are great at talking. And I didn’t forget that I have one more thing to tell you.” I leaned down so we were at eye level. “She’s over you.”
“You sure about that? Because she sure is anxious to respond to my booty calls.”
Shit. I should have deduced that from the way she talked about their breakup. But if she was finally over him like she’d said, I’d bet money they hadn’t been together recently.
“It’s been a while, though, hasn’t it?” I asked.
I knew from the expression on his face that I’d hit pay dirt.
Good for her for getting this asshole out of her system once and for all.
But he wasn’t the type to take her actions at face value, so I would have to embellish to get him to back off.
“Don’t you find it interesting that as soon as she climbed into my bed, she stopped wanting to get into yours? ”
“You asshole,” he muttered. He tugged on the zip-tie and the cut I’d made deepened.
If he freed himself while we were still there, he’d be stupid enough to lunge at me and things would get ugly, so I needed to wrap it up.
I stood up straight. “So, to recap for you: One, I’m armed and dangerous; two, you’re leaving Cara alone from here on out; and three, if you ever start to forget about one or two, you can think about her riding my dick.”
As I said the words, an image flashed through my mind.
Cara on top of me. Naked. Writhing in ecstasy.
I was being a fucking idiot. The kind who thinks with his dick, even when his dick wants someone way too young and too different and too.
.. Well, I couldn’t come up with anything else in the moment, but I knew my lust, like my lie, was wrong.
Unfortunately, it was also working. Her ex scowled and swore at me, so I doubled down. I clapped him on the shoulder and winked. “While you’re out here all alone, ruminating on the error of your ways, remember, she really, really loves riding my dick.”
He screamed bloody murder at me. As I walked away, I pushed the fob button to roll up his window for him.
I slid into the driver’s seat of Cara’s car and smiled at her like we’d just finished a picnic lunch together.
And like I hadn’t just been thinking about her naked, wishing the lie I was telling her ex was actually true, and relishing rubbing her ex’s nose in it.
“Ready to hit the road?” I asked. I did my best to sound innocent and chaste, and not like I had a hard-on so stiff it hurt.
She glanced back at the Audi, then nodded, thankfully oblivious to everything that had transpired a minute earlier.
I made a U-turn and headed back the way we’d come.
I waved at her ex as we drove past his car.
He yanked his hands free and grabbed at his door.
Cara twisted in her seat to watch him. I glanced in the sideview mirror in time to see him hop out of the car and run into the middle of the road.
I hit the gas and sped back toward the highway, the smile never leaving my face.
“Wow.” Cara settled back into her seat. “What did you say to him to get that reaction?”
“I told him a few things he needed to hear.”
“Things I don’t want to know, or things you don’t care to repeat?”
“Both,” I said. “But trust me, you really, really don’t want to know.”