Chapter 25
T he elevator ride was unbearable. Neither Jane nor Blue seemed to know what to say to each other, and so they stood side by side in heavy silence. The only saving grace was that Jane lived on the fourth floor, and the time was blessedly short. Once out of the elevator, it seemed easier to breathe, if not easier to talk.
Blue was driving his own car. He hauled Jane’s suitcase into the trunk, and then they started to drive. “How have you been?” he asked after he was safely on the road.
“Well,” Jane assured him, “Really well.” He did not need to know about the few weeks of misery she’d suffered after his departure. Eventually she was able to shove her sadness down into a pit, one so deep it rarely surfaced anymore. “And you?”
“Great,” he said, smiling.
Jane turned to stare out the window, trying not the let the word lance her heart. Of course he had been great. He had likely gotten over her so quickly and easily it was as if they never met, at least in his heart and mind. For Jane, who tended to love in an everlasting sort of way, it was likely she would never get over him completely. The only way she had been able to get over Nick was because he repeatedly cheated on her and broke her heart, and even then she wasn’t able to let go of him completely, keeping him not only in her life but also in her apartment. After Emily moved out, it would be the two of them. They would likely be those old people who stayed single but never got back together, bickering roommates forever, like Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert. Maybe someday they would adopt a redheaded orphan and bicker over her upbringing, buy a farm on Prince Edward Island, make it official. The prospect made her stomach lurch. She wanted more than a love/hate relationship with her ex.
“I forgot how still you get,” Blue noted.
Jane turned to look at him and saw him regarding her with a look of warm affection. Her heart turned over. “I forgot…” she began but petered out before she could continue. I forgot how much being with you affects me, how deep my attraction to you goes, how much I like you, how right it feels when we’re together. “My lip balm,” she continued lamely. “I left it on my nightstand.”
“You can have some of mine,” he said, his gaze dropping to her lips before returning to the road.
Jane turned to stare out the window again, not sure what to do with that statement.
“I guess congratulations are in order,” he said a few minutes later.
She bestowed her attention on him again. “Hmm?”
“On your wedding. Nick said you two are getting married in two weeks,” Blue said.
She blinked at him. “Nick said what?”
“I asked him when the wedding was. He said two weeks.”
Jane pressed her lips together. Nick most assuredly knew what Blue had assumed when he saw her wearing Emily’s wedding dress. She could almost hear his words when she confronted him about it. What? I never said you and I were getting married. I simply went along with his assumption. Then he would grin at her in aggravating Nick fashion, assuring she wouldn’t actually be able to maintain her irritation with him. She whipped out her phone and fired off a text to him, pausing to turn on her phone again after he’d turned it off.
You are seriously one messed up individual, and I am ridiculously angry with you.
He replied a minute later. I did it for you, to give you a security net and ratchet down the awkward tension. You’re welcome.
He hadn’t done it for her, she knew. He had done it for his own jealously and orneriness. But she would take it for the gift it was and use it as a buffer between her and Blue. Goodness knew she had no ability to resist him on her own.
“Thank you.”
“Where’s your ring?” Blue asked, touching her left hand.
“In a box on Nick’s nightstand.” That part was true. After she refused his proposal, Nick told her he would leave the box by his bed (meaning her couch) for whenever they decided to get together and “make it official.” That was exactly the moment when Jane downloaded the Taylor Swift song and began playing it on repeat. She would never get desperate enough to take Nick’s sloppy, backhanded proposal. She might not be someone’s first choice, but she was no one’s leftovers. “Are you seeing anyone?”
He returned both hands to the wheel. “I’ve been seeing a lot of people. No one in particular, and no one on repeat.”
“Hmm.” Hearing him answer her question had given her an excuse to look at him. She stared at his profile and realized she had forgotten none of it. Over the last few months she had been able to conjure his face as easily as if he were standing beside her. In a ridiculously short time it had become much beloved by her, like a favorite painting. They reached a stoplight and he faced her, returning her frank stare, a small smile playing on his lips.
“I missed you, Jane,” he said and someone behind them honked. Blue faced forward again and accelerated through the green light.
“I missed you, too,” Jane admitted, forcing her eyes away from him as she faced forward.
“Really? In the midst of getting engaged and planning a wedding you found time to miss me?” he asked, a hint of bitterness creeping into his tone.
“I…” Jane began, but didn’t know how to continue. Blast Nick and his lie, and blast her weakness for going along with it.
“Never mind, we’re here,” Blue said, holding his credentials aloft to the security guard who oversaw the agency’s parking lot. He parked and she reached for her door, but he held her back. “One more thing I want to tell you before we go in.”
She turned curiously to him.
“I sold your app.”
She blinked at him. “My app?”
“The translator for social awkwardness. They loved it, it’s been selling like hotcakes.”
She gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth in excitement. “You’re joking.”
He shook his head, grinning. “I’m not, it’s been selling better than Threeple. I’m thinking of buying another Jag, one for the weekends. I’ll get you one, too. What’s your favorite color?”
“I don’t want a Jag, but I do want to see the app.”
He pulled out his phone, pressed a button, and handed it over. It featured a quick response for every conceivable social setting, as well as conscious relaxation exercises and reminders. “This is fantastic,” she said.
“Do you want to see your Easter egg?” he asked.
She looked up and froze. He was very close to her face, mere inches away. She could smell him now, and the pheromones were a powerful reminder of her attraction to him, as if she needed one. She nodded. He took the phone back, his fingers brushing hers as they made the pass. He pressed a button and turned the phone toward her. With effort, she settled her eyes back on the device in time to see a cartoon drawing of what was obviously the two of them on his screen. Jane sat on a bench, Blue knelt in front of her, and she took his face in her hands and kissed him. The cheesesteak shop was behind them.
“Our first kiss,” she muttered, her heart somersaulting around her chest. He nodded. “I love it, it’s perfect. Congratulations.” Unbidden, her arms slid around him, hugging him.
He hugged her in return, an innocent hug of friendship. Or at least that was how it started out. Eventually he swallowed convulsively and dropped his head, inhaling her hair. “Jane,” he whispered, and his phone buzzed with a text. He froze.
“Work?” she guessed.
“They’ll be wondering where we are. I was supposed to retrieve you poste haste.”
They pulled away. “Let’s go then,” Jane said, stepping from the car and heading toward the building before her.
They were at Blue’s office. Jane had only been there once before, so she was still fascinated by the layers of security. She peered curiously at everything, intrigued by the rare glimpse into the underbelly of spy life. If one didn’t know what it was, it would have appeared like any other corporate office with worker bees scurrying to and from cubicles.
After they were through the many layers of security, including retina scans for both of them, they stepped onto an elevator that took them up multiple levels to a secure conference room. Jane was intent, taking it all in, staring at the elevator keypad as she tried to envision what was on all the other floors. It was a bit like The Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter, each floor providing a different function. Blue’s floor was on the twelfth level, high up but not the top. The secure conference room was on the fifteenth. There were twenty floors. What was on the top?
“I love that look on your face when you’re curious,” Blue noted, and Jane realized he’d been watching her for some time.
“The nerd look?” she guessed.
He nodded, smiling. “You should patent it.”
“I don’t think there’s a big market,” Jane replied.
“I’d buy it,” he said, his fingers brushing hers. There was something different about him, but Jane couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He seemed more intent, in some way more resolved. Before she could puzzle over it, the elevator doors opened and the rest of his team was there—Ridge, Maggie, Ellen, Babs, and Ethan. And they were all staring at Jane and Blue.
Jane froze, a deer in headlights. “I’m going to need your app,” she whispered. It was her worst nightmare, being the center of attention among a group of strangers who all knew each other. Though she wasn’t exactly a stranger, a fact proved when Ridge offered her a friendly smile and greeting and his wife, Maggie, stepped forward to hug her.
“Did Blue warn you Maggie’s a hugger?” Ridge asked.
“Eventually you stop fighting it and begin to enjoy it,” Babs promised as Jane awkwardly returned Maggie’s hug. Whether it was the hug or the warm welcome, her tension dissipated enough not to make her blurt something stupid or offensive.
“Hi,” she said, smiling like a normal person as she added a little wave for the group.
“I think we’re all here,” Ridge said. “Let’s get started.” He led the way to the conference room and held the door for everyone as they filed past him. Once seated, he ascended to the front of the room and picked up a remote.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice, Jane,” Ridge said.
“No problem,” Jane said, though she still wasn’t sure what she was doing there.
“I’m sure Blue explained our situation,” Ridge said.
“Eh, no,” Blue replied.
“Why not, Blue? What were you doing instead?” Ethan prodded, grinning in a way that reminded Jane strongly of Nick. Across from them, Maggie reached for her phone and fired off a text. Blue’s phone buzzed. He picked it up, snickered, and shook his head.
“Right, okay, then let me get you caught up. After we captured the smuggler, we were able to apprehend the terror cell he’d been working with. Some things were prevented, and it was a happy ending all around, except we were never able to find the forger. Our smuggler blabbed a lot, but the forger had been careful, covering tracks and leaving blinds and bluffs that, frankly, have kept us on a wild goose chase all this time. Things have been quiet until two days ago. Another transaction was made, this time with the proceeds going to a new terror cell. We’ve revised our earlier opinion and now believe the forger is actually the mastermind, and not merely a pawn in the scheme. We intercepted a picture of the artifact.” Ridge clicked a button on the remote and a canopic jar sprang to life on the screen. Jane stood and walked forward to inspect it, tilting her head.
“This one’s a fake,” she declared after only a few minutes of looking at the picture.
“You can tell this easily and from a picture?” Ridge asked.
“Definitely. And this was not done by the same forger as before. This work is sloppy, amateurish. You would only need the barest knowledge of the field to be able to spot the ineptness of this work,” she said.
“That’s our problem,” Ridge said. “You’re the second person to tell us that information, but it complicates things for us. The original forger is still the one driving the sales, still the one pumping money into our terror cell. Why he’s brought on an amateur is what has us baffled.”
“I think it might be because of me,” Jane said. She perched on the edge of the table, staring at the picture on the screen.
“How so?” Ridge asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, awaiting her answer. It was easy to forget the other people in the room, to pretend they were the only two there having a discussion. The topic was familiar and comfortable to Jane, bypassing her normal social anxiety triggers.
“He or she knows the fakes are being authenticated, that I’m looking into them, keeping an eye on the market. Last time he ordered my kidnapping, and his smuggler was caught before things could advance further. Maybe this time he reached out for help to flood the market, to keep me so busy I don’t have enough time to authenticate everything. That way the sophisticated fakes can slip through unnoticed, thereby covering his tracks.”
“That’s what we thought, too. It’s why we brought you back. With your agreement, Jane, we need you to help us flush him out,” Ridge said.
“What did you have in mind?” Jane asked.
Ridge smiled. To Jane it looked a little calculated. “How would you feel about becoming a full fledged spy?”