He said nothing for several moments. Ellie fidgeted as she waited for him to reply. He really shouldn’t, but she deserved some kind of answer. She’d already proved she wasn’t going to put up with his non-answers for much longer. “The people I work for, we’re . . . a relatively secret organization, but I can assure you that we’re not bad guys in the truest sense of the word.”

She grimaced. “What the hell does that mean?”

He swallowed. “It means . . . it means that what we do is condoned—”

“You work for the government?” she accused. “Is that what you’re telling me?” She shook her head with a grunt. “And you do know that I’m a contributor to an underground newsletter that exposes government corruption, and—so you work for the government on black ops or something?”

“Not always,” he said quietly. “But we are about doing what’s right, about justice, and let’s just say that your digital snooping ran the risk of exposing our organization, too. We needed to make sure . . . well, I’ll be honest with you, Ellie. We can’t be exposed.”

“So you’re the same kind of group as Guardian Knights?” she scoffed. “Why am I not surprised? If you’re not doing anything wrong, what difference would it make?”

He sighed with frustration. He hadn’t exactly been honest with her, and she sure as hell didn’t want to share information with him. Why should she, when he didn’t reciprocate? In the motel room, it had only taken her fifteen minutes to track where her money had gone. She knew where it was and how to get it back. So he was surprised when she spoke—and by what she told him.

“Before working on locating my money and getting it back, I did a little more digging into the Knights. I found some documents marked confidential but didn’t have time to get into them before . . . well, before all hell broke loose. I did track a couple of invoices, some paperwork that went through a shell company, and then another . . . I was right, Asher. They might be supplying weapons to top bidders around the world. Or selling something even worse. They may be hiding a domestic terror group. They might be doing a lot of things that they shouldn’t be doing. Who’s behind it, and how to prove it, I have no idea.”

She paused and stared at him, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. He didn’t blink.

“You know why I’m telling you this?”

Again, he didn’t answer.

“Because I’m trying to show good faith. Something you might want to try.” Ellie took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then continued. “I couldn’t tell if it was a particular person in the security company, or the entire company itself acting as a cover.” Again, a pause. “I need more time to . . . explore. Do you understand? That’s why I need my computers. I need to get back home—”

“Not going to happen,” he interrupted. “You said you did your best to hide your digital footprint.” He glanced at her and she nodded. “They found you anyway. And it doesn’t look like they’re planning on giving up any time soon. You can’t go back there. They’ll be expecting that. The people you hacked are obviously very good. Good enough to hack you back. And worse.”

She sighed again, staring out the passenger window. “I know.”

“I’m guessing this is the first time your hacking has compromised your safety?” She didn’t respond. “I’d even venture to say that the fact that they discovered your intrusion so quickly scared the crap out of you. Could they be associated with the government? Could they be associated with an underground network bigger than you imagined? Could they—”

She turned toward him. “I’m going to be brutally honest. No offense, Asher, but I don’t trust you. If you can’t be honest with me, why the hell should I trust you?” He turned toward her as she shivered. Not from cold. It was warm in the truck. No, Ellie was shivering from fear. It was written all over her face. “How do I know that you’re not associated with the people responsible for this?”

How indeed. And he couldn’t prove it to her. “You’ll just have to take my word for it, Ellie. Until I contact my . . . my boss, for lack of a better word, I’m not at liberty to discuss any more.”

He slowed the truck and approached a dark, four-way stop sign at a deserted intersection near the edge of civilization. Asher looked left and right, and then proceeded. He wasn’t taking any chances that a highway patrol officer or state trooper wasn’t waiting out here, ready to pounce on a driver ignoring the law.

She grunted, a half laugh, a half snort.

“You may not trust me, Ellie, but think about this. I’ve had numerous opportunities to torture you, kill you, and dispose of your body, but I haven’t. Why is that?”

She didn’t respond, but with a sigh, pulled a cell phone from her back pocket, tapped the screen, and—

“What the hell?” He stared at her, eyes wide. He slammed on the brakes so abruptly that his seatbelt locked, digging into his collarbone. Asher slammed the truck into park.

“What?”

He stared down at the phone and he saw the moment recognition dawned. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh, shit indeed.” Without hesitation, he pressed the button for the interior cab light, snatched the phone from her hand, slid open the back of it, and examined it carefully. “They can ping—”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I forgot—”

“They could also have placed a tracker under the battery when the phone wasn’t in your possession, so don’t take the battery out, or they’ll know we found it.” Shit, shit, shit, shit!

“I should have . . . fuck . . . why didn’t I think of this before now?”

Asher pressed the button that rolled down his window and tossed the phone onto the side of the road, where it half-buried itself in the sand. “It won’t take them long to track that signal, and if it is bugged, or if they’ve been pinging it . . .”

She nodded, refusing to look at him. Was she still frightened? Ashamed? He cursed under his breath again, gripping the steering wheel so hard it creaked. Damn it. Of all the stupid . . . 

She was a hacker. She should damn well have known better. He sucked in a breath, running a hand over his face, then put the truck back in drive. She was also a civilian, who had gotten caught up in something she was ill-equipped to handle. It was his fault. He should have made sure.

Asher made a U-turn, then sped off the way they had come for a hundred yards before taking another road that snaked its way southwest, away from the phone yet still away from Boston. He took another turn onto an even more rural road and continued through the darkness illuminated only by his truck headlights. No traffic.

“Where the hell are we?” she finally asked.

“Not sure.”

She didn’t ask any more questions after that. A headache blossomed in his temple. Unbelievable. This entire babysitting task had turned into a mess. He glanced over at her, the strain on her face visible in the glow of the dashboard lights. With a silent oath, his jaw tight, he tightly grasped the steering wheel, every once in while muttering under his breath.

* * *

They’d been driving for nearly an hour, but Asher was still cursing himself, Jackson, and anyone else he could think of, in his head. He tried to calm himself, tried to find his equilibrium, but it eluded him. Giving up, he let the movement of the truck gently jostle his body and gradually felt his muscles relaxing. He was exhausted. Not physically. Mentally. How was he supposed to protect her against an invisible enemy?

He glanced at her. Ellie’s eyes were closed. She wasn’t sleeping. No. She had retreated—mentally, much like he had. It was only when the truck bounced up and then pulled to a stop that she opened her eyes.

He pulled into the parking lot of another motel. This one looked decrepit and old, but the vacancy sign glowing in the lobby office window was nevertheless a welcome sight, even though it flickered erratically. Paint peeled from portions of the wood siding along the length of the one-story building units. The awning covering the office had faded with time and torn near the front, the edges of the jagged tear dripping threads that blew gently in the breeze.

“Wait here.”

She didn’t respond as Asher quickly climbed from the truck, locked the door, and then walked across the cracked asphalt to the registration office. His senses on high alert, he scanned the darkness, listened for anything that wasn’t normal. A squealing tire, a rush of footsteps, the sound of the metallic slide of an automatic preparing to fire. Nothing moved in the darkness. An owl hooted way off in the distance but nothing else.

In a matter of minutes, he returned to the truck, grasping an old-fashioned, diamond shaped plastic key fob. He unlocked the doors and grabbed their meager belongings. With a sigh of relief, Ellie slid from the truck cab. Her knees almost buckled as her feet hit the ground, and he extended a steadying hand. She looked straight ahead, ignored him. Damn. He needed to pull it together.