FOUR
Emma’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked around, surprised to see that it was dark. She’d rested her head against the window for just a moment, but the steady hum of the engine had put her to sleep.
“You awake?”
She looked at Ryan beside her, his arm resting casually on the steering wheel as though he’d been driving this pickup for years.
She sat up straighter. “Where are we?”
“East of San Bernardino.”
He seemed to have a direction in mind. He always seemed to have a direction in mind, no matter how chaotic the circumstances. It was one of the things about him that had impressed her in the rain forest.
Cool air whipped through the truck cab, making up for the lack of air-conditioning. She looked out the window at the rugged canyon dotted with fir trees.
Ryan slowed and pulled onto the shoulder, and she watched with apprehension as he rolled to a stop and put the truck into park. When he turned toward her, the dashboard lights cast his face in a greenish hue.
“I need to ask you something.” He held her gaze. “And I need you to be honest with me.”
Her nerves fluttered as he picked up her hand.
“Did they hurt you?” He searched her face.
“You mean . . . did they rape me?”
He nodded. “There’s a hospital not far from here. I can take you in, get you anything you need.”
Emma’s chest squeezed. “They didn’t hurt me. Not like that.”
“You were drugged.”
She’d given him an overview of everything she remembered about the kidnapping, but after the needle prick, it was mostly a blur. She looked away and focused inward, searching her body, her subconscious, for anything wrong. She’d been through these thoughts earlier, and she’d come up with nothing. “I think I’d know. I don’t feel anything like that. And my clothes were all intact, so . . .”
“You can tell me. If you need anything at all, I want you to tell me.”
“I will.”
He watched her for a long moment, and she saw the tension in his jaw.
“Really, I will.”
He squeezed her hand and released it, then put the truck into gear and pulled back onto the highway. Emma checked the mirror. Still no one behind them.
“This road seems pretty remote,” she said.
“Yeah, I’d just as soon avoid the highway patrol.”
“How long have we been driving?”
“About two hours.”
Wow, she’d really conked out. Talk about an adrenaline crash.
“I’m sorry this happened,” he said quietly.
“Me, too.”
He cut a glance at her, and she read the look on his face: guilt.
“You sound like you feel responsible,” she said. “Don’t.”
He grunted.
“I mean it.”
“You were under my protection.”
She gaped at him. Was he serious with this? “You took me to a safe house. I walked out. What happened after that is on me.”
The muscles in his jaw tightened again.
“I mean it, Ryan.”
He slid a look at her. “Why did you, anyway? Walk out on me?”
She sighed. “You pissed me off.”
“Which thing, exactly?”
She rolled her eyes. “What happened this morning.” Damn, was it really only this morning? Time felt amorphous. “You broke a promise. You called my father behind my back and told him to fly out here.”
She was angry for other reasons, too. Like him basically telling her he regretted sleeping with her, that he shouldn’t have let it happen, as though it was all up to him.
Silence settled over the truck. She looked at him. No apology forthcoming, but then, she hadn’t expected one.
“So have you had a chance to think about why this is happening?” he asked.
“I wish I knew.”
“You do know.”
She shot him a look.
“Come on, Emma. You’re a smart girl. You have to have some idea why all this shit’s going down.”
She looked out the window again. “Don’t call me a girl. I’m twenty-six years old.”
“I know.”
“It’s belittling,” she continued. “I can’t believe your girlfriend lets you get away with that crap.”
“You know damn well I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I don’t know anything ‘damn well,’ because you haven’t seen fit to tell me. You know all about me from reading my State Department file, and yet I know almost nothing about you.”
“Not true,” he said.
“True.”
“I told you about Callie.”
“Callie?”
“My little sister.”
She felt a stab of guilt. His sister had died of leukemia when he was a kid. He’d told her that during the night they’d spent in the jungle when they’d been talking to pass the time.
At least, that’s what she’d thought he’d been doing, simply passing time. Was it possible he’d been trying to get to know her? She refused to believe that, because it gave her hope, hope that there was more between them than a temporary bout of lust brought on by life-threatening circumstances. He didn’t necessarily feel anything for her. She was the one who’d been reckless enough to let her emotions get involved here.
A pair of headlights came up behind them, and he slowed to let the car pass. He was keeping right to the speed limit, no doubt because they were in a stolen vehicle.
He glanced at her. “You really think I’d take your clothes off last night if I had a girlfriend?”
Her cheeks burned at the memory, and she looked away. He’d given her two exquisite orgasms without even shedding his clothes. And then he’d slammed on the brakes. She’d practically had to beg him to sleep with her.
He was watching her now, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m not like that.”
“Which is precisely my point. I don’t know what you’re like, because you’ve told me next to nothing about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
She didn’t reply.
“Seriously. Ask me anything.”
“Okay. What’s Crew?”
Silence.
“See?”
“It’s my team.”
“I got that,” she said. “But it’s not just a regular SEAL team, is it?”
“No.”
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. She’d known he wouldn’t. He was just proving her point.
“We don’t exist. We take missions that don’t exist.” He gave her a dark look. “Like yours.”
The mission to rescue her from the wreckage of that crashed airplane, he meant. Her government had sent in a team of special-ops warriors to find survivors and whisk them to safety amid a hail of bullets.
“Which brings us right back to the subject you’re trying so hard to avoid,” he said. “Come on, Emma. You’re a smart woman. Don’t tell me you don’t have any idea what’s going on here.”
———
Ryan waited, his gaze trained on the highway. He’d wait all night if he had to, but he planned to get answers.
“I don’t know anything for sure,” she said. “It’s all just a hunch, really.”
“A hunch based on two years working in a U.S. embassy. Based on two years of knowing Ambassador Conner. Based on being aboard the plane the ambassador was supposed to have been on when it was shot out of the sky. It’s not just a hunch, Emma. It’s a highly educated guess, and I want to hear it.”
He glanced over, and she was watching him warily. Her hair was all wild again. And her shirt was dirty and rumpled, and damned if he didn’t want to pull her into his lap and kiss her.
But they had some things to get out of the way first. Such as why someone kept trying to kill her.
“You admit the plane was shot down,” she said.
“We both know it was shot down.”
“Ambassador Conner should have been on that plane, but he got tied up at an economic forum in Singapore.”
As the personal assistant to the ambassador’s wife, Emma would have been familiar with both the Conners’ schedules.
“People have speculated that the plane crash wasn’t really an accident,” she said, “but a botched assassination attempt on an American ambassador.”
Ryan nodded.
“I think they’re wrong.”
“You do?” He didn’t bother concealing his surprise.
“In fact, I know it.” She looked at him. “I don’t think the attack was botched at all. I think the goal of the attack was to kill Renee Conner. And they succeeded.”
———
Ryan looked at her, and she could tell he didn’t believe her. “The ambassador’s wife was the target,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“Your direct boss.”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that?”
She looked away.
“Come on, Emma.”
She sighed. “A lot of things. For one, it had happened before.”
“Someone tried to kill her?”
“Someone put an IED in her Mercedes a few months ago. Her driver spotted it. We brought the embassy bomb techs in to disarm it, so nothing happened.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody did. It was kept secret.”
“How come you know?”
“I was at the embassy when the call came. I saw everyone scrambling. And I’m friends with one of the Marines on her security detail.”
He frowned.
“And it turns out that incident wasn’t the only time, either. My friend told me they recovered another IED from Renee Conner’s vehicle a few weeks later. Not her husband’s vehicle, hers. And from some of the paperwork that crossed my desk, I know Renee was in the process of hiring some additional security from the States, beyond what the embassy provided.”
“You mean outside contractors?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I just know that she was looking into it.”
He got quiet.
“What?” she asked.
“Does the FBI know all this?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you tell the task force investigating the crash?”
“I thought I had a meeting with Alexa Mays, but that turned out to be a hoax, so . . .”
“So you finally get a meeting with someone inside the investigation so that you can share this theory of yours,” he said, “and next thing you know, you’re having near-death experiences.”
“That about covers it.”
“And now you’re feeling a little paranoid.”
“Just a little.”
Silence settled over them. Emma stared out the window with a knot in her stomach. It had been there for weeks now. The only time it had gone away, in fact, was during those hours she’d spent at the safe house with Ryan. Something about his presence gave her a sense of security, a sense that no matter how screwed up everything got, it would ultimately be okay. Maybe it was because he was a SEAL. He was a battle-hardened fighter who could survive pretty much anything.
Or maybe it was something much more complicated, something she shouldn’t allow herself to dwell on if she wanted to get through this crazy experience with her heart intact.
A highway sign came into view, and Emma didn’t recognize any of the towns listed. They really were off the beaten path, which suited her fine.
She looked across the truck at the man who’d helped her out of so many dangerous situations she was losing count now. He seemed deep in thought over everything she’d told him.
Deep in thought was good. Much easier to ignore than the way he’d been earlier, sliding those heated glances over her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Or—even harder to ignore—the tender way he’d looked at her when he’d pulled over and asked if she’d been raped. A lot of men wouldn’t have had the guts to ask, but Ryan didn’t shy away from anything, no matter how uncomfortable. He faced problems head-on. It was yet another thing she admired about him. She had quite a list going.
Emma settled her head against the side of their stolen truck, the truck she fully intended to replace if she ever got through this.
Ryan glanced at her. “Thanks,” he said.
“For what?”
“Telling me your theory.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for saving my life. Again.”