EIGHT
Ryan looked across the truck at Emma. She hadn’t spoken in ten minutes.
“You surprised me back there.”
“Why?” she asked.
“The FBI offered you protection. You picked me.”
She didn’t say anything.
“How come?”
She turned her gaze out the window. She still wore the plaid flannel shirt she’d bartered for and the gas-station flip-flops, and her hair was a mess, all wild and curly around her face. And when she’d walked out of that diner with him, he’d wanted to pin her against the building and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.
The pair of unmarked cop cars in the parking lot had put his plans on hold, though. One of them was still in his rearview mirror, and Ryan had no doubt the other was lurking nearby, waiting to pick up the tail.
“The FBI is a bureaucracy, an institution.” She looked at him. “My father’s part of the oldest institution in American history. I’ve seen institutions up close, and I don’t trust them.”
“You’re a cynic, huh?”
“Aren’t you? Institutions are made up of people, and people are fallible. Not just fallible, sometimes downright selfish and destructive.” She gave him a long look. “And anyway, you were right. She never explained exactly who called me from a government number.”
They drove in silence for a while as Ryan kept an eye on the tail. He was going to have to lose it at some point. He figured it would take about half an hour of skilled maneuvering. He looked at Emma. “What exactly happened with your dad?”
“Nothing.”
He shot her a baleful look. They’d been circling this topic for weeks, and he was ready for her to open up to him.
“I really don’t think you’d be interested in all my family melodrama.”
“I asked because I’m interested.”
“You really want to hear this? Fine.” She folded her arms over her chest. “He cheated on my mom while she was dying of cancer.”
Ryan looked at her. “That sucks.”
“Yes.”
“That must have been hard for you. On top of everything else you were dealing with when your mom was sick.”
She looked out the window. “It was hard for my mom, not me.”
“She knew about it?”
“He didn’t have the decency to cover his tracks well. I mean, it was really pathetic. I figured it out, and I was only eleven.” She shrugged. “But hey, you can’t blame him, right? What was he supposed to do? He was in love.” She rolled her eyes. “He even married her.”
“When?”
She pursed her lips. “Twelve months and nine days after my mom died.”
“So he waited a year.”
“The obligatory year, yes. He had an image to think about.”
Damn, what an asshole. But Ryan was glad she’d told him what the deal was. It explained a lot—her distance from her father, her unwillingness to ask him for help.
Her distrust of men.
“But you want to know what’s even more pathetic?” She looked at Ryan. “I still loved him growing up. Even after everything he did.” She gazed out the window. “Sometimes I hate myself for that.”
Ryan didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.
Sometimes families sucked. His family had gone through some rough years when Callie was sick. His dad drank all the time. His mom went to church obsessively, as if that would fix anything. Ryan got into fights at school and got himself kicked off the football team.
He remembered hurting. Constantly, day and night. He remembered the rage and frustration and wanting to pound anyone who got in his way to a bloody pulp. Sometimes he hoped someone would give him shit about something—anything—just so he’d have an excuse to throw a punch.
“I stopped asking for his time and attention,” Emma said. “It hurt my feelings too much when he wouldn’t come through. He’d pass me off to some staffer, and it felt like crap, so finally I decided not to expect anything from him.”
“Do you see him?”
“Occasionally.” She shrugged. “Christmas, Thanksgiving, maybe a weekend during the summer. But he doesn’t show up in my life unless it makes a good photo op. Renee’s funeral, for example. There were plenty of cameras there.”
Ryan didn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m sorry you aren’t close.”
“So what’d you think of Mays?” she asked, deftly changing the subject.
He looked at her. “I think she holds her cards close.”
“That’s what I thought. But she told me Ambassador Conner has been under investigation since March. I think she told me that for a reason.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. I could be wrong.”
“So far, you’ve been right about damn near everything. What are you thinking?”
She brushed a curl from her eyes. “Well, there was this scandal in the spring at the embassy. Some passports went missing. You know how tourists come in for replacements when theirs get lost or stolen? So we had some blanks in the embassy vault, and a stack of them disappeared.”
“Was Conner implicated?”
“I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t. A staffer was fired over it. She had access to the vault. I think they were pursuing charges against her, but I haven’t really kept up with the case.”
“How many passports are we talking about?”
“I don’t know exactly. Hundreds.”
“Big money on the black market.”
“I know. And I was thinking about what Mays said about Avedo and the human trafficking.”
“I see where you’re going, but what does this have to do with Renee Conner getting killed in a plane crash?”
“I’m not sure.” She looked at him. “I wish I had my computer. There are some things I’d like to look at. I guess we can’t go back to my hotel room in San Diego, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Our safe house is burned, too,” Ryan said. “And my apartment, because you said someone shadowed you when you drove by there last week. But I might have a line on another place we can stay. When we stop for food, I’ll call Jake and get an update.”
“Ryan.”
Something in her tone caught his attention, and he looked at her across the truck.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
He shook his head.
“I mean, I appreciate you saving me back there with Mays. I really don’t want to be under the FBI’s thumb. But you don’t have to babysit me. I know you have other things you should be doing right now.”
“I’m on leave.”
“You are?” She sounded surprised.
“Yep.”
“Well . . . didn’t you have plans?”
“I was planning to go to Florida, but I’ll do it next time.”
“I’m taking you away from your family. And your friends back home.”
He glanced at her, and somehow he knew she meant female friends back home. He caught the hint of jealousy in her tone, and he liked it. “Emma, I’m going to say this once. Are you listening?”
She just looked at him.
“There is no place in this world I’d rather be right now than in this truck with you.”
Her look turned skeptical. “This old, crappy, stolen truck with FBI agents following us and our lives at risk?”
He didn’t respond, just let it sink in. Between her father and her ex-fiancé, she really had some stuff to get over. So this new situation was going to take some getting used to.
Situation.
Ryan wasn’t even sure what the situation was, and he wasn’t really eager to put a label on it. But he knew what he knew. He wanted to be with her. As much as possible. Being with her naked was his first choice, but he’d take whatever he could get.
He had to seize the day, because the odds were stacked against them. He was overseas all the time. She lived in Seattle. Could they make something work long-distance? He’d never been much good at relationships, and he’d never even attempted anything serious since he’d become a SEAL. It was something he’d always put off for later or maybe even never.
So, yeah, this situation was a little intimidating. But so what? He’d been intimidated plenty of times in his life, but that hadn’t stopped him. If anything, it made him more determined to prove himself.
So that was what he planned to do now: prove himself to Emma. Make her understand that she could trust him, that she should give this thing a chance.
The concerned look on her face made him smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t get you.”
“I know. We’ve already established that. Where do you want to eat? I need to call Jake. And then we need to shake this tail, and that could take a while. I’d just as soon fuel up first. How much money do we have left?”
She poked through the cash and coins in the cupholder. Jesus, this was humiliating. She came from a rich family, and he was pretty sure she’d never had to scrounge up loose change for a meal. When this was over, he was going to get a wad of cash from the ATM and take her somewhere nice.
“Four dollars, seventy-eight cents,” she said.
“Sounds like we’ll be sharing.” He exited the freeway and started looking for signs.
“So I’ve been thinking about the safe house being burned,” Emma said. “I think I know a place we can stay tonight.”
“Where?”
“My apartment in Los Angeles.”
He did a double take.
“Well, not mine, exactly. I’m subletting from a friend. My name isn’t on the lease or anything. It doesn’t connect to me.”
Ryan pulled into an In-N-Out Burger and swung into a space. He parked and turned to face her. “Why are you subletting an apartment in Los Angeles?” he asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“Let’s hear it.”
She took a deep breath. “Well . . . you know Juan Delgado?”
Oh, shit. Maybe he didn’t want to hear this. “The doctor who was in the plane crash with you,” he said. God damn it, the guy was fifty-five.
“I met him when we started doing those aid missions together. He was a very inspiring man.”
Ryan gritted his teeth.
“After watching him work, I started thinking about a career change. I applied to graduate school. Then in May, I was accepted into the nursing program at UCLA. Classes start at the end of the month.”
He stared at her. “You’re going to nursing school.”
“Yes.”
“In Southern California.”
“Yes.”
He watched her, at a complete loss for words. How many hours had they spent together and she’d never mentioned this?
Her brow furrowed. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem at all. Where’s this apartment?”