Chapter 13
NICK
The next-to-last thing I needed was Lang and Pasco in my ear while I huddled in a private corner of the hotel lobby, telling me we had a problem.
“We also have a solution,” Lang said before I could spin out. “Ms. Spencer’s ex was not only tracking her; he was intercepting her texts and emails.”
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t worry. Pasco has rendered his phone useless and I’ve contacted some friends at the FBI to take a long, hard look at him,” Lang said.
“But he saw her texting with your friend Mason a couple of nights ago, before you left town with her. She used your full name and her ex was tearing up the internet, researching you.”
“Fuck. Me.” I should have punched the fucker in the face when I’d had the chance.
“And then it gets worse because he posted on multiple manosphere sites using her social media handle and your full name,” Pasco said.
“Indelibly linking us.” That was bad for me, but worse for Cara. “Is she at risk?”
“What? Of course not,” Pasco said. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Per usual, I employed my genius. Since I removed geo-locating when I swept her phone yesterday, no one will be able to see she’s moving. But then, in a stroke of genius, I went one step further.”
“Can you finish this sometime today?” Lang asked.
“Killjoy,” Pasco said. “As I was saying, I added geo-location to all her recent photos and remotely set an algorithm to do the same thing for next few days.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She’s tagged somewhere on the West Coast.”
“In a very swanky hotel in Beverly Hills,” Pasco said. “Anyone watching her to keep track of you will think you’re busy impressing your new lady.”
“I still don’t like it,” Lang told me. “I’d prefer it if you’d been a ghost this week.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Even the best of a bad situation is still a bad situation.”
“Aren’t you two little rays of sunshine?” Pasco asked. “Someone piss in both your cornflakes?”
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “I don’t know what Lang’s excuse is.”
“Yeah, it’s weird because he’s usually such a people person,” Pasco joked. “What was the deal with the all-nighter, though? Your phone tracer showed you driving straight through.”
“I had a gut feeling we needed to put more distance between us and the asshole ex,” I said.
“We’ll take off from here shortly, make a stop for one of Cara’s photo shoots an hour from here, and then I’ll sleep in the car while she drives this afternoon.
That will keep us ahead of schedule and we should arrive midday on the 22nd.
I’ll run tests the rest of that day and be ready to brief the results all the way up the chain of command, if necessary, on the 23rd. ”
How far up the chain would depend upon what I learned from the tests. Worst-case scenario, it would be to the Commander-in-Chief herself.
“A day early,” Lang said. “Our boss will love you forever if you pull that off.”
“Kat already loves me,” I said, referring to the woman who headed up Lang’s team at HEAT. “I’m a breath of fresh air after working with you assholes day in and day out.”
My phone buzzed with a message from Cara telling me the shower was available. Now, at least, I could picture her clothed. Unfortunately, my lecherous lizard brain didn’t switch gears that quickly. “I have to go get a shower,” I told Lang and Pasco.
“See you soon, brother,” Lang said.
“And don’t forget to shave when you shower,” Pasco added. “Unless your lady likes beard burn between her—”
I cut off the call and headed for the elevator.
Maybe by the time I arrived at the room, Cara would be dressed in a suit of armor and chain mail.
Not that it would matter, because as soon as I thought of that, my lizard brain came up with kinky ways layers of metal could be fun.
Fuck me. It was going to be a long two days, alone in a car with the woman I couldn’t stop wanting.
When I woke up in the passenger’s seat of Cara’ car, I knew it was late afternoon because the sun had nearly set.
I deduced it had to be after 1600 hours.
Four in the afternoon. I’d slept nearly five hours.
Not enough to make up for shitty sleep two nights ago and no sleep last night, but it was a start.
Thus far, I hadn’t moved other than opening my eyes, giving me a chance to observe Cara without her realizing it. It wasn’t that creepy since all she was doing was driving, and smiling, and looking beautiful wearing a festive red sweater and her long, dark hair in waves spilling over her shoulders.
“I can feel you watching me, creeper.” She glanced at me with a full smile. “And I’m not the only one who sleeps like the dead.”
“But the important question is, did I snore?”
“Like a chainsaw.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed. “You’re too easy.”
If only she knew. I pushed the seat lever and raised the back into an upright position. I stretched my neck and shoulders, slowing down when I noticed her stealing glances.
“Show off,” she said.
“Only when I have an appreciative audience.”
“That, you do,” she admitted.
So, we were doing this, moving to outright flirting.
That was a terrible idea when later that night we’d be staying together at a hotel.
Not in the same room, but close enough. Anywhere in a fifty-mile radius would be close enough for me to go sniffing around her door at the slightest encouragement.
I took a deep breath and sighed. I focused on the scenery outside the window, reminding myself there was a whole world full of obligations and expectations out there.
But something was wrong. I squinted, then tilted my head. “Are we off schedule?”
“No,” Cara said quietly. Too quietly.
“We should be in Little Rock by now,” I said, “but we’re not.” I studied the terrain more carefully. “Are we even in Arkansas?”
“We are not.”
When she didn’t offer any more explanation, I turned toward her as a lead ball sank in my gut. “Where are we?”
She flashed me another beautiful smile. I wanted to fall for the distraction, but I couldn’t. The next words out of her mouth were too important.
“Cara, where are we?”
“Missouri.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s the northern route. The snowstorm is moving in tomorrow.”
“Not likely,” she said. “I mean, the weather Doppler now has the chance of significant snowfall at less than twenty percent.”
My extremities went cold and numb. “What about the wind? The sleet? The mixed precipitation?” All the things that killed more people than snow did every year.
“I...” She went pale.
I almost felt guilty, but fear overrode that. The fear wanted to come out as anger, but that wouldn’t solve anything. What we needed wasn’t me being an asshole. We needed me coming up with a solution.
“All right,” I said, pulling out my phone.
“We’ll reroute from here, join up with the southern route as quickly as possible.
” I pulled up our location and studied the screen, not liking what I was seeing as I crossed off possibilities.
“A lot of smaller roads are closed in preparation for the storm. No matter which direction we go, it’s going to slow us down. ”
“Nick, I didn’t realize. I...”
“It’s okay, Cara. We’ll figure it out. There have to be major highways that will work.
” And there were, but we were far away from them.
The best option would add eight hours—the better part of a driving day—to our schedule, and that was if we beat the storm.
And to do that, we would have to drive through much of the night again.
Cara had already driven all day, and I was functioning on too little sleep to do it safely.
“Where are we headed?” I asked. “I assume you booked a hotel.”
“A bed and breakfast,” she corrected. “It’s in a great little town. I’ll do a photo shoot first thing in the morning, then we’ll leave.”
“What’s our ETA tonight?”
“We should arrive around eight.” She smiled at me again.
“And tomorrow night, we’ll arrive at the most important town for my photo shoot around six p.m. I’ll need a couple of night shots, then a few the next morning, and then we’re one-and-a-half really long driving days or two sane ones from your destination. ”
“So late on the 23rd or midday the 24th.”
“Yes. It’ll be great, I promise. We’ll check the weather in the morning and I bet it’ll be fine.”
I nodded, not because I agreed, but because I was making peace with having no other choice.
Best-case scenario, the weather would hold and our schedule would be impacted, but we would arrive in Maryland on the 23rd.
Worse-case scenario, the snowstorm would hit, we’d be further delayed, and arrive on the 24th.
Worst-case, we’d be hit with a blizzard and snowed in for days, my credibility with HEAT would be shot, and Lang’s boss would speak to my boss.
Then I’d be on everyone’s naughty list, also known as the shit list.