“For what?”
“Taking ten years off her life. Not having a bodyguard everywhere I go.”
“Does she expect you to?”
“She’d like it. But I can’t live my life that way.” Cross sighed. “Even if this gives her more ammunition.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“My horrible ex.” Rusty gritted his teeth. “Fuuuuuck! I can’t believe I slept with that asshole. I can’t believe he was that much of a fuckweasel!”
“That was probably partly my fault too. I threatened him, and I could tell he didn’t like it.”
Rusty turned quickly. “No. You were helping me out. Ah, screw it, he kidnapped us. It’s his fault. And whoever tall-fucker was.”
“Agreed.”
“Are you sure your foot’s okay? Scared the shit out of me when I saw you drop.”
“Wasn’t my smartest move. Sometimes I forget I’m that crippled up. But Zapata made a good catch.”
“You should probably have it checked at the hospital.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Sudden recall made Rusty sit bolt upright. “What about Mrs. Murinko? They had her phone. Did they hurt her?” He held his breath.
“Amy can find out.” Cross turned to the agent behind them. “Can you contact Ms. Nelson? Ask her about Rusty’s landlady, Mrs. Murinko. Urgent. They used her phone to lure Rusty.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the agent got on his phone, Rusty clenched his fists and closed his eyes.Let her be okay. Let her be okay.Cross rubbed his arm reassuringly.
The SUV rumbled along for a few minutes, then picked up speed. Rusty opened his eyes to watch the Eugene roadside go by. Five minutes became ten.
Then the agent in the back reported, “Ms. Nelson says Mrs. Murinko is unharmed. Apparently they stole the phone from her house while she was sleeping last night. She was still imagining she’d misplaced it when our people contacted her.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” Rusty pressed a hand to his chest.
Cross put an arm around him. “I’m glad she’s okay. I’ll buy her a new phone, if it’s confiscated for evidence.”
Rusty hadn’t even thought past her safety but yeah, fuck Tyler sideways with a corkscrew for stealing from an old lady. “Thanks.” Feeling like he could breathe again, he stretched the kinks out of his fingers. “Say, what was with everyone yelling, ‘Pelican’? You got a thing for birds?”
Cross chuckled. “Safety code. Amy always has a code word she can give her security people so my family know who’s on their side. Right now, ‘pelican’ means someone’s on our side and everything’s under control. ‘Albatross’ would’ve meant thebad guys weren’t neutralized and to let the bodyguards get us to safety.”
“Oh. Makes sense. I guess.” The thought of living in a world where you needed a code word in case you got attacked made his stomach hurt. But that was how Cross lived, all the time. Rusty tightened his grip. “Does it change? The code word?”
“Yeah, periodically, and after an episode for sure. I don’t know what she’ll come up with next. It was weird vegetables like courgette and aubergine once.”
“Ever think your life’s just a bit odd?”
“It has occurred to me. From time to time.”
Rusty nudged his knee against Cross’s and left it there as they drove through ordinary, boring traffic on the way to the hospital.
The hospital was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Cross’s status and his bodyguards got them a private room pretty quick, but then they sat there, bored, for over an hour, waiting for the docs to check them out. Rusty felt like a fraud when they finally got an exam, because all he had was a bruise on one temple where tall-guy clocked him, and a reddened cheek from Tyler bitch-slapping him. The doc hummed over Cross’s ankle, though, and prescribed a CT to check up on it.
