Chapter 23
I hardly slept that night. And not because of nerves or worry or fear, but because every time I closed my eyes, I saw Bray. I felt him pinning me to the wall, his mouth against mine. My blood looped through my veins in ways that had my hands finding all the places on my body I wanted him to touch.
I checked my phone an embarrassing number of times while dozing off between fantasies and waking with my heart racing, hoping for a text.
I didn’t hear from him until he walked in the door carrying to-go coffees and a takeout bag the next morning.
He was freshly showered and shaved, smelling like mint and soap.
At the sight of him, I half wanted to punch his handsome face and half attack it with kisses for sentencing me to a lonely night dreaming of his mouth.
“Good morning,” I said as he set the breakfast offering on the island.
Simmons was in the living room watching the morning news, and I was sipping coffee and scrolling a takeout menu on my phone.
I still wore my pajamas and had my hair piled on my head in a sloppy bun, but when Bray’s eyes raked over me, a flush filled his cheeks.
Good. Even if he was acting aloof and like last night didn’t happen, his body couldn’t deny that it had.
He opened the takeout bag and slid a wrapped breakfast sandwich at me. “Wheels up in an hour, so hurry up and eat.”
I took his offering and peeled the foil back. Scent of egg, bacon, and cheese wafted out and made my mouth water. “Wheels? Where are we going?”
“Houston.”
I stopped with the sandwich halfway to my mouth.
Bray unwrapped his own sandwich. “Ramesh was able to track Wallace’s last moves before he died. He visited a bank in downtown Houston that same day. Security log shows he accessed a safe-deposit box.” He let the words linger with an obvious weight.
My head briefly spun as I kept up. Wallace was murdered in Houston; the diamond was last known to be in Houston; Wallace had visited a bank the day he died. “So, the diamond is in the box? It’s right where this whole thing started?”
Bray nodded. “He either put something in the box or took something out of it.”
“He couldn’t have taken it out. They would have found it when they killed him, and none of this would be happening.”
“I agree. So, we need to get to Houston and see what’s in that box.”
I shoved another bite into my mouth, still sorting it out.
“So, to summarize, Wallace finds out Olena is on to us, has me relocated, makes a pitstop in Houston, and never makes it back out. That means they were able to follow him to Houston. They must know he’s protecting me, or at least that he knew where I was. ”
Ice slid through my veins. We didn’t know what was in that safe-deposit box, and neither did they. They might not even have known Wallace went to the bank. They were tracking him—they killed him—to get to me.
“And I led them straight to me.” I numbly finished my thought aloud.
“What?” Bray asked and unwedged one of the coffee cups from its tray.
The pieces were crashing together in my mind. “That’s how they found me, Bray. That day in Del Rio when I thought Wallace was calling me, it was Olena’s guy on the other end, and I blabbed my own location to him. He had Wallace’s phone because he killed him.”
Bray considered with narrowed eyes and then pulled out his own phone and tapped at it. “I’ll have Ramesh run Wallace’s phone records from after his death. He didn’t look further than that, but I bet you are right.”
I palmed my face. “It’s my own fault they found me.”
“You couldn’t have known,” he justified.
“It was still a stupid mistake,” I muttered and let it all sink in. Wallace was trying to protect me. He died trying to protect me.
I thought back to that night on the phone with him. The scrape in his voice, the cracking sound. The way he’d called me by my real name. It was a goodbye.
Bray’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Erin, I’m sorry about last night. I crossed a line, and it won’t happen again.”
I startled at the abrupt change in topic, half shocked he was addressing it at all. A coy smile bent my mouth. “Which part, when you yelled at me or when you pinned me to the wall and kissed me to within an inch of my life?”
His lips pressed together. His cheeks turned pink. “You know which part.”
I shrugged. “I like it when you cross lines.”
“Well it’s not going to happen again. I’m sorry.”
I held his eyes with a look that said I wasn’t sorry. That I’d let him do it again right now.
“We should go,” he said, breaking the spell and severing the chance at anything happening.
“I have to get changed.” I shoved a big bite of my sandwich in my mouth and slowly turned away from him. I felt his eyes on my back as I walked toward the hall, and wondered if he’d keep his promise.
I hadn’t been on a chartered plane in years. Not since Wallace put me on a job tracking art theft in an elite ring of one-percenters. I’d otherwise flown commercial, usually coach, but then, I hadn’t been palling around with a DSA director’s son.
Simmons stayed behind, leaving the small, sleek bullet of a jet empty except for me and Bray, the pilot, and one flight attendant.
“How long is this trip?” I asked once we were in the air. We’d taken off from Oakland.
“Just under four hours. We should be on the ground by five p.m. local time,” Bray answered. He had his laptop balanced on his knees and was clacking away at it.
“Are you talking to your guy in the chair?” I asked, leaning across the narrow aisle to see his screen where he sat opposite me. The plane had room for six passengers, with beige leather seats and wood paneling.
“My what?” he asked, and didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“Ramesh. Your guy in the chair. You know, the agent who stays in the office and tells the agents in the field what to do.”
A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I am talking to my guy in the chair. He says Wallace’s phone’s geotag jumped from Houston to Del Rio after he died, so you’re right. They used it to find you.”
My heart sunk at the thought I’d made such a foolish mistake. “I wonder what else they found on there,” I muttered.
“Hopefully not much. It’s been remote deactivated by now.”
“Which means they know we know.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It’s DSA protocol to deactivate devices when an agent passes. They only had a slight head start because Wallace’s death wasn’t immediately reported.”
I shrunk back into my seat, feeling deflated.
“I’m sorry,” Bray said when he noticed. “I know he was … important to you.”
“Another interesting choice of words,” I said and gave him a sad smile.
I thought about what we’d learned in the past several hours.
If we were right, if Wallace’s dying act was having me moved to protect me, that rewrote everything I thought I knew about our relationship.
My real father had held a gun to my head last night, and this man, this stranger who’d draped his coat over my shivering, scared shoulders on the worst night of my life, had sacrificed himself for me.
Yes, he’d spent a decade bossing me around and using me for his own gain, but ultimately, he’d saved me.
And I’d undone his work by leading Olena right to me. I couldn’t let his death be in vain.
I turned to Bray with resolve. “We have to end this.”
We headed straight to the bank when we touched down in Houston. A sporty black sedan was waiting for us at the airport. Bray got behind the wheel and handed me an earpiece to match the one he was wearing.
“Ramesh?” I asked as I buried it in my ear like an invisible bug.
“And me,” Bray said. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what we are walking into, so I want open comms.”
“You got it, buddy,” Ramesh’s voice said, crystal clear in my ear.
“Hey, my very own guy in the chair, what a privilege,” I said.
“Happy to be of service today, Ms. Daniels,” Ramesh said.
“Don’t call her that,” Bray instructed as he turned the car onto a highway.
“Roger,” Ramesh said. “What should I call her?”
“Not Roger,” I said. I expected Bray to chime in with some made-up name, but instead, he turned to me.
“You pick. What do you want to be called for this job?”
The question had never been posed to me. Not once in my decade of service. I’d always been handed a folder with an identity already designated. I thought about it for a second and knew right away.
“Katherine. It was my mom’s name.”
Bray nodded. “Katherine it is, then.”
Ramesh helped us navigate downtown, and soon we were parking a few blocks from the bank Wallace had visited.
The late spring air was already ripening with signs of summer, but still pleasant enough we weren’t sweating in our coats as we walked up the street.
The city’s skyscrapers towered over us, casting portions of the busy street in long shadows.
I hadn’t set foot here since that night in the hotel room, yet it somehow felt the same.
Like a familiar acquaintance I didn’t particularly want to see welcoming me home.
“Take a left,” Ramesh said into our ears. He was tracking us through our cell phone pings sending signals to him, and I assumed staring at a map.
“You sure we weren’t followed?” I asked with more than a hint of nerves at being on an open street after days sequestered away in the condo.
“From the Bay?” Ramesh asked. “Yes, I’m sure. Your trail has been wiped. Entrance to the bank is half a block up.”
I took a breath to try and calm myself. Bray had let me bring my gun this time. I felt its cold presence against my back, near where he’d touched me. My heart rate picked up as we closed in on the bank.
Its glass front walls spanned the bottom floor of a tall, silver building. A security guard patrolled out front, and inside, I could see smiling employees conversing with customers at glossy desks. A row of tellers lined the back wall.
“Fancy place,” I muttered.