Chapter 2 #2
His eyes bored into hers as he took hold of her shoulder.
“Shana? Explain this.”
His voice sounded calm, but it was weighted with expectation.
She didn’t remember the last time she’d been this shocked—outside of exposure to Dane’s charms.
She looked at his blue-as-the-ocean eyes. With a shaky hand, she took the phone back.
The signature line had been another cartoon. The Joker. She knew who’d sent this text. She knew who’d exploded their house. She didn’t need a mirror to know she’d blanched because she could feel the blood leaving her head, felt faint, swayed a little.
Dane gripped both of her shoulders tight, keeping her from falling.
“Who sent this, Shana?” Dane’s voice still sounded calm, but it was low, for her ears only and vibrating with deadly seriousness.
“It’s someone I—we arrested back in Sydney. Whitey Nash.” Dane’s eyes were unyielding, his hands hot on her shoulders then slipping down her arms. But he waited for her to continue, remaining quiet.
“There was trouble. The arrest didn’t go as planned. Nash got cut on his face in the fight when we tried to arrest him and he . . . lost an eye. He ended up incarcerated for a long stretch. He should still be in prison. In Australia, far away from here…. We need to check.”
Her heartbeat was frantic with the urgency to find out, to call the prison in Sydney where Nash had been locked up. She needed to confirm that he was still there.
Vendi called to them and gestured for them to come down the stairs.
Dane led Shana down the stairs. Vendi went through a door and flipped on the lights.
“You can use the computers in here to check whatever you need to check,” Vendi said.
Vendi had heard her and whether or not he had made out what she said, she felt mortified at how scared she must have sounded, at how she’d lost her cool. It was time to buck up.
Dane pretended that he hadn’t noticed her fear, didn’t call attention to it.
He knew she’d be mortified to show weakness in front of someone like Vendi, someone who thought she was a badass.
The thing was, Shana was a badass. Which made her palpable fear of this guy, Whitey Nash, all the more concerning.
“Someone with sophisticated telecom skills is tracking us because they got Shana’s very private cell number.
They’re checking to see if she survived the explosion.
It’s not necessarily this Joker. Unless they allow prisoners to make international calls back in Sydney.
” he said. “But very likely whoever sent the text is our mad bomber. The one who exploded our home.”
“Guess our attempt at playing ghosts went down the shitter,” she said. She gave him a full scowl.
“Not at all. Whoever sent the text doesn’t know for sure we received it. We can get past this test. But you’ll have to give up the phone. You have a backup of your contacts?”
She lifted her chin. “Of course.”
“Where is it?”
She turned white then pink and he shouldn’t enjoy the look, but he was a bastard at heart.
“On the computer back at the shack?” he said. She turned away.
“Don’t you have your data on the cloud?” Vendi asked.
“Not exactly,” Dane said. “But we do have remote data backup.” He didn’t want to tell Vendi that their remote storage and all other things data and computer system related were taken care of by Acer, his old special ops unit buddy turned IT security expert.
He would need to contact Acer, but not in the usual way. And not right this minute.
Shana darted him a glance as if she’d read his mind.
“We can trust Vendi,” she said. “You can tell him about Acer’s system.”
Vendi stood there, arms folded, giving him a look that was just short of challenging, the kind that said, you ungrateful prick—I should throw you out on your ass. Or maybe that was Dane’s spotty conscience talking.
“Give me the phone,” Dane said.
She handed it over, heaved a sigh and turned away as if she didn’t want to see her best friend executed.
Dane dropped it on the floor. Lifting a chair above the phone, he took aim and smashed it down on the phone, cracking it open and exposing its guts. He gave it a few more cracks, then picked up the pieces.
“You have a toilet down here?” he said to Vendi. Vendi pointed. Dane wasted no time moving across the conference room and tossing it into the bowl. He pressed the flusher. Twice.
Returning to the windowless conference room, he saw Vendi powering up one of the computers. Shana stood with him.
“Don’t suppose you have any dry clothes.”
“All we have here are USCG uniforms and, as fond as I am of you two, I can’t let you wear them.” He clicked a few keys and said to Shana, “It’s all yours.”
Then he came around the table in the middle of the room to meet Dane. “I’ll get you some towels for now. I can get you dry clothes later.”
“What makes you think we’re staying until later?”
Vendi stopped with his hand on the door. “Look, I get that you’re pissed. Your home was just blown to smithereens and some nasty fella is after you and he may have found you, but—”
“Shit, Vendi. We can’t stay here in case that nasty fella is nearby and you know it.”
“I can’t believe whoever is after us can track a throwaway phone,” Shana said. “But it can’t be Whitey Nash. He doesn’t have the skills. And he’s in prison, I’m sure of it. They gave him twenty years. Minimum.”
Dane looked at her and wondered about that. But he needed to concentrate on their immediate problems and speculating about her nemesis wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Figuring out whatever the hell had scared Shana to the point of fainting would have to wait for another time.
She clicked through some keys. “Shit. I can’t get the information I need without calling the prison.” She turned and looked at Vendi.
“Call if you want.” He stood by while she picked up the receiver from the console.
Dane didn’t bother asking if it was a secure line.
He held back, knowing it would piss Vendi off even more.
Instead, he concentrated on standing his ground from half a room away, watching Shana handle the call, watching to see exactly how scared she was of this guy Whitey Nash.
Wondering why the hell he had no idea who Whitey was, or that he’d even existed, until now.
She gave a false name then asked her question as if she were a journalist. She slowly returned the receiver to its cradle on the console.
One look at her face as she turned told him the answer.
She said, “He’s out.”
“We’ll need to leave the island.” Dane looked at Vendi.
Vendi nodded.
“We can’t leave by water.”
“Shit, Blaise, you’re killing me. We’re on a frigging island.”
“You have a plane. I can fly it.”
“My plane? You want me to give you my frigging plane? I just got it—”
“I can pay you for it. Double what it cost you,” Dane didn’t want to argue. He had a shitload of money sitting around waiting for an occasion such as this. A fucking emergency.
“Where the hell are you getting a hundred thousand clams?” Shana said.
Vendi laughed. “Offshore bank account would be my guess.”
Shana scowled at Dane and he almost smiled. He’d told her he had money stashed away but she’d never believed him. Until now. Maybe.
“Let me get you the towels,” Vendi paused a beat and added, “and the uniforms. Then I’ll see about the plane.” With a shake of his head, he left the room and ran back up the stairs in a hurry.
“That guy is crazy to trust me,” Dane said.
“He probably doesn’t.” Shana said. “But he trusts me.”
He looked at her soggy hair and tugged on it, then pulled her into his arms, suddenly cold and needing her warmth, even when she herself was wet and cold. He whispered in her ear, “Touché.”