CHAPTER 13
NICK
The last thing I needed at 0800 hours was to be thinking about Cara, naked and soapy and slippery in a hot shower, three floors above me. We’d begun to trust each other yesterday and that had led me into all kinds of confusing-as-hell feelings. Then I’d spent all night driving and thinking about how perfectly she had fit in my arms and how I wanted to hold her and do so many more things with and to her. And then she’d woken up a couple of hours ago and looked at me like a starving woman seeing her first meal in weeks. Nine weeks, to be precise.
The next-to-last thing I needed was Lang and Pasco in my ear while I huddled in a private corner of the hotel lobby, telling me we had a problem.
“We also have a solution,” Lang said before I could spin out. “Ms. Spencer’s ex was not only tracking her; he was intercepting her texts and emails.”
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t worry. Pasco has rendered his phone useless and I’ve contacted some friends at the FBI to take a long, hard look at him,” Lang said. “But he saw her texting with your friend Mason a couple of nights ago, before you left town with her. She used your full name and her ex was tearing up the internet, researching you.”
“Fuck. Me.” I should have punched the fucker in the face when I’d had the chance.
“And then it gets worse because he posted on multiple manosphere sites using her social media handle and your full name,” Pasco said.
“Indelibly linking us.” That was bad for me, but worse for Cara. “Is she at risk?”
“What? Of course not,” Pasco said. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Per usual, I employed my genius. Since I removed geo-locating when I swept her phone yesterday, no one will be able to see she’s moving. But then, in a stroke of genius, I went one step further.”
“Can you finish this sometime today?” Lang asked.
“Killjoy,” Pasco said. “As I was saying, I added geo-location to all her recent photos and remotely set an algorithm to do the same thing for next few days.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She’s tagged somewhere on the West Coast.”
“In a very swanky hotel in Beverly Hills,” Pasco said. “Anyone watching her to keep track of you will think you’re busy impressing your new lady.”
“I still don’t like it,” Lang told me. “I’d prefer it if you’d been a ghost this week.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Even the best of a bad situation is still a bad situation.”
“Aren’t you two little rays of sunshine?” Pasco asked. “Someone piss in both your cornflakes?”
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “I don’t know what Lang’s excuse is.”
“Yeah, it’s weird because he’s usually such a people person,” Pasco joked. “What was the deal with the all-nighter, though? Your phone tracer showed you driving straight through.”
“I had a gut feeling we needed to put more distance between us and the asshole ex,” I said. “We’ll take off from here shortly, make a stop for one of Cara’s photo shoots an hour from here, and then I’ll sleep in the car while she drives this afternoon. That will keep us ahead of schedule and we should arrive midday on the 22nd. I’ll run tests the rest of that day and be ready to brief the results all the way up the chain of command, if necessary, on the 23rd.”
How far up the chain would depend upon what I learned from the tests. Worst-case scenario, it would be to the Commander-in-Chief herself.
“A day early,” Lang said. “Our boss will love you forever if you pull that off.”
“Kat already loves me,” I said, referring to the woman who headed up Lang’s team at HEAT. “I’m a breath of fresh air after working with you assholes day in and day out.”
My phone buzzed with a message from Cara telling me the shower was available. Now, at least, I could picture her clothed. Unfortunately, my lecherous lizard brain didn’t switch gears that quickly. “I have to go get a shower,” I told Lang and Pasco.
“See you soon, brother,” Lang said.
“And don’t forget to shave when you shower,” Pasco added. “Unless your lady likes beard burn between her?—”
I cut off the call and headed for the elevator. Maybe by the time I arrived at the room, Cara would be dressed in a suit of armor and chain mail. Not that it would matter, because as soon as I thought of that, my lizard brain came up with kinky ways layers of metal could be fun.Fuck me. It was going to be a long two days, alone in a car with the woman I couldn’t stop wanting.
When I woke up in the passenger’s seat of Cara’ car, I knew it was late afternoon because the sun had nearly set. I deduced it had to be after 1600 hours. Four in the afternoon. I’d slept nearly five hours. Not enough to make up for shitty sleep two nights ago and no sleep last night, but it was a start.
Thus far, I hadn’t moved other than opening my eyes, giving me a chance to observe Cara without her realizing it. It wasn’t that creepy since all she was doing was driving, and smiling, and looking beautiful wearing a festive red sweater and her long, dark hair in waves spilling over her shoulders.
