Chapter Seven
NATALIE’S SHOULDER THROBBED, but she didn’t slow down until she reached the house. That kiss had been… Well, the best kiss of her damn life. And not because she was without practice.
She’d imagined kissing Ford more times than she could count, but not like that.
Not by accident, or whatever the hell that had been.
If they ever did it again, she wanted it to be because he actually liked and respected her, not because he felt guilty about abandoning her, or had momentarily forgotten who she was.
“What’s wrong?” Henri asked when she let the screen door slam behind her and entered the living room.
“Nothing. I’m just thirsty.” She strode past him into the U-shaped kitchen tucked into the corner of the open space. After rinsing her hands, she filled a glass with water from the tap. “Ford’s right behind me.”
Henri studied her carefully.
“Did you know he was in jail?” She wasn’t accusing him of knowing, just curious.
“He told me before he went to find you.” Henri crossed his arms. “Are you okay after that fall?”
Her cheeks turned hot. “You saw that?” And probably the kiss too.
His lips pressed flat and he nodded.
Yep, definitely the kiss too. “I’m fine.” She cleared her throat and shifted on her feet. “What you saw, that was nothing. Just relief and adrenaline and…comfort, maybe. It’s not like that between us.”
His gaze moved to something behind her, and she turned to find Ford scowling in the doorway from the hall. Blitz, on the other hand, walked right over and stuck her nose in Natalie’s crotch.
“Hey.” She couldn’t help but laugh. Setting her glass on the counter, she crouched down to the dog’s height and stroked both hands into Blitz’s thick neck fur.
The dog slowly turned, skin rippling in pleasure under Nat’s fingers, until she’d presented her tail.
Obliging, Natalie rubbed the sweetie’s flanks until the dog flopped onto her back for a belly rub. “Greedy little thing, aren’t you?”
But honestly, Natalie could feel her blood pressure dropping as she petted Blitz’s soft fur and warm body. A fair exchange for her labor.
Above her, Ford cleared his throat. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, we do,” Henri said, his voice gruff.
A few minutes later, she and Henri sat on the sofa across from Ford, who’d claimed an armchair with Blitz at his feet. They all had glasses of iced tea, and the cross-breeze coming through the windows had started to cool.
“You took a big risk coming here. Are you certain you were not followed?” Henri asked.
Ford nodded. “As certain as I can be. I left all my registered electronics behind, switched places with someone pretending to deliver pizza to my house, and had my assistant’s nephew rent the Peugeot.
” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it adorably disheveled.
“I ran a thorough SDR on the way out of town and took the long way here through Italy. Unfortunately, it was a risk I had to take because I have news.” He met Natalie’s gaze then.
“Someone has confirmed you’re still alive. ”
Shock skated across her skin, and she felt her face scrunch in confusion. “Why is anyone even looking?”
“I don’t know yet, but apparently a PI was asking around at the hospital recently.
My source says he got to one of the people we paid off.
” Ford’s jaw clenched. “He also managed to get video footage of that night. I have to assume if he doesn’t know about me already, he will soon, especially since I claimed to be your fiancé so they’d give me access. ”
He had? News to her. Not that it mattered now. “Do you know anything about Emma? Is she okay? Was she able to—”
“She’s alive and well.”
Natalie sat forward, heart pounding now. “Tell me what you know.”
“I had my assistant watching the news. Emma and Jason ran into some trouble, but they’re both back in LA.”
Trouble? God, she had so many questions, but the details could wait. She blew out a breath, the tightness in her chest easing for the first time in weeks. “What about Warner?”
“Dead. And Jason’s brother’s in custody while the police investigate.”
Natalie closed her eyes. They’d done it!
Their informant’s tragic death would at least have meaning.
As would her getting shot. Warner dying wasn’t the outcome they’d been aiming for, but it did mean he’d no longer be able to traffic young girls or murder anyone who tried to expose him. That was a win in Natalie’s book.
“Earl Price is also dead.”
Her eyes snapped open. “The former venture capitalist?” She frowned.
A couple of years ago, the Night Herons had exposed him for coercing female business owners to have sex with him in order to secure funding.
Or just straight up assaulting them when they came to pitch his company.
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“He came after your friend last week.”
Her heart jolted. What? Why was all this happening now?
Had Price been after revenge? Was the timing coincidental, or was he linked to the events in Lucerne, to the men who’d attacked her and Emma?
“Ford, I have to get in touch with Emma. If someone knows I’m alive and is looking for me, they might be coming after her too. ”
“Who do you think it is?” Ford asked, looking grim.
She threw up her hands. “I wish I knew.” Although, if Price had somehow figured out that Emma was involved in his downfall, others might have come to the same conclusion.
The Night Herons did their best to distance themselves from the stories they investigated, but if someone with a lot of resources knew where to look and started to dig, they might be able to piece things together. Nat’s stomach knotted.
The Free Pen Project—FPP—was a nonprofit she and Emma had founded to ensure important stories didn’t get buried. Initially funded in part by the settlements the pair had received from the Remy Blaze case, FPP hired legitimate journalists to chase the news.
The pair also used the organization as their cover while working for the Night Herons.
Every once in a while, they even had a byline, but she and Emma passed along most of the stories they uncovered to a small network of journalists working for the world’s largest news organizations.
The scheme was a win for everyone. Well, everyone except for the bastards who finally had to face consequences for their actions.
“I need a computer,” she told him.
He sighed and glanced at Henri, who’d remained remarkably silent. “It’s a security thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I do for a living. I understand how to stay anonymous on the Internet.”
His mouth flattened. “And yet, someone found you in Lucerne.”
Dammit. He wasn’t wrong. “I don’t know how they tracked us.
Maybe we were followed from the meeting with the informant, or maybe the drive we got from him had a virus.
” Or maybe the team had been infiltrated in some other way.
She was so confused. “Regardless, I need to get in touch with Emma and warn her that someone is still looking for me.” She really needed the whole team to be on alert, but she couldn’t tell him that.
“I have a secure way to make contact. With Warner and Price dead, she may think the danger has passed. She needs to know it hasn’t. ”
And if she couldn’t tell her family, she needed someone to look out for them.
“Let me think about it,” Ford said, his face gaunt, his posture sagging.
“We don’t take deliveries at the farmhouse, and if any of us is going to be out in public, we need to make some changes to our appearance.
My arrest rekindled interest in Henri’s story.
Both of our pictures have been in the news again. ”
“You think that’s a problem this far away?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. This house is registered under a name not connected to either of us.
Unless Deschamps, or whoever’s after you, knows exactly where to look, security cameras shouldn’t be a big threat.
They’re not as ubiquitous here as some other countries.
We’ll just have to hope there aren’t any Swiss super-recognizers on vacation in Aubagne or Marseille who saw any of the news over the last few weeks. ”
Natalie wanted to laugh like it was a joke, but she actually knew a super-recognizer, the rare one or two percent of the population who basically never forgot a face, even when seen only once, even in a photo.
Because their skills rivaled—and sometimes surpassed—facial recognition software, several law enforcement agencies in the UK were now famous for having teams of people with the special ability.
They were so good, they could often spot a target wearing a face mask, hat, or wig, and some could recognize the back of a person’s head.
Cool, but scary for anyone in her line of work, or current position.
Super-recognizers aside, a change in appearance was probably a good idea.
“Either way, now that someone’s actively looking for you,” Ford said, “we need to be even more careful. To start, I figured if they can’t find me, then there’s no link to either of you.
” He took a deep breath, looking more uncertain than she’d ever seen him.
“How do you guys feel about having another roommate?” At Blitz’s whine, he added, “And a dog?”
She looked to Henri for his reaction, but the man just shrugged. In general, he’d lightened up since confronting her for snooping in his room.
Making him laugh or smile had become her new personal challenge, a feat she’d only managed a few times.
He was more difficult to crack even than Ford.
He had been great about speaking English, though.
He’d even shared a few stories about growing up in Belgium.
The grumpy old man had become a friend of sorts.
She still hated being stuck here, but having someone to talk to and pass the time with had made her confinement bearable. Certainly easier than whatever Ford had experienced in jail.