Torres didn’t get a choice about being put in the car. His hands and ankles were tied, and he was given a shot to make sure he was easy to maneuver. Strike packed up, leaving her to sleep in the front seat. She was already out by the time they got moving.

When she woke up, the sun was intrusive, blazing through the windshield. Rora whimpered and turned her head to bury her face in Strike’s groin. But it was only after he reacted to her squirming that she realized she was rubbing her face on his dick through his jeans.

“You woke up in a good mood,” Strike said, his fingers drifting through her hair.

Choosing to let her eyes close against the light, she rolled to her back and smiled up at him. “Killed anyone today?”

“Not yet,” he said, his wrist resting on the top of the wheel. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Why are you always talking about hurting people?” Torres’ voice came from the back seat. “Is that the only time you’re happy? When you’re hurting someone?”

“Only time I’m happy is when I’m inside my girl,” Strike said, and she noted how his chin rose, so she’d guess the men were making eye contact in the mirror. “That’s right, my girl, let that sink in, and don’t forget it next time you get near her.”

Rora rubbed her face, choosing to ignore the tension between the men. “We might need more help… now we’re a man down,” she said, waiting for Strike to glance down at her again.

“Anyone going to tell me what happened with Junker?” Torres asked, his tone suggesting he didn’t think he’d get an answer, but he asked anyway.

Thinking about Junker, she had more questions than answers, and couldn’t wait to get Strike alone so they might actually begin to make sense of this.

“We’re going to have to decide how to deal with the Jewel,” she said.

“What about Burke?” Torres said. “He’ll be around with a squad of—”

“I’m not worried about the NSA,” she said, stretching as she sat up. After running her fingers through her hair, she slid close to Strike and kissed his cheek, he turned to touch his mouth to hers too. “Are you worried about the NSA, Flame?”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Feds? No, baby, I’m not worried about feds.”

She twisted to look over the back of her seat to see a disheveled and disgruntled Torres. “You aren’t used to being on the road.” That observation probably didn’t help his mood. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll get a chance to rest soon.” Turning back to her love, she linked her fingers on his shoulder and pulled herself close. “We have to talk… alone.”

With his eyes on the road ahead, he nodded once. “I’ll drive another few hours. We’ll talk when we find somewhere to stop for the night.”

Rora agreed with that, it would be better that they had time rather than tried to rush a conversation at a truck stop. “You don’t think he’ll turn on you the first chance he gets?” Torres asked. “Trusting him will be your downfall.”

Strike inhaled, but she whipped around to glare at Torres before her love could speak. “And just what is it that you’re offering me? Seriously, Torres, I think you’d get bored giving the same speech over and over. I’m not interested in anything you have to offer.”

“Guess one guy screwing you over wasn’t enough,” Torres said. “That is what happened, right? Junker took off. It’s that or one of you killed him.”

“Though I don’t guess we’d admit that to you,” she said.

“And this is the life you told me you wanted,” Torres said. “I don’t think you have the first clue what you want, Kero. You’re sure not thinking about the future.”

“I know exactly what I want,” she said and fumbled for Strike’s hand.

“One day his luck is going to run out,” Torres said.

Strike picked up her hand to kiss her knuckles. “It’s not luck, it’s skill,” she said, pulling Strike’s arm around her so she could nestle closer to him. “And we like the quiet… so just keep your opinions to yourself, Torres. And don’t forget that you came to us. You’re an outlaw now, just like the rest of us. So why don’t you think about what you’re going to tell the court or your maker, who knows which one you’ll meet first.”

 

 

Rora was asleep again when Strike stopped. She was still drowsy as she watched Strike drag Torres across the parking lot and into a new motel room.

She sighed. Motel room to motel room. Maybe after all of this was over, she’d ask Strike to take her somewhere tropical where they could just be for a while.

But there was no time to think about what would happen after this when there was no guarantee they’d live through it. She could suggest to Strike that they dump Torres and take off, but how long would they last after Junker found out he didn’t have the Point. How long would Leandra last after Bella decided the woman knew nothing about the Point?

Watching through the windshield, she saw Strike come out of the room to return to the car. She admired the long, lean lines of his capable body. The curve of his muscular arms, the breadth of his chest and the certainty in his stride.

He approached the car and pulled open her passenger door. “You want me to carry you in too?” he asked.

Smiling, she shook her head and took his hand when he offered it to help her out. She clutched Opal against her chest and waited for him to grab a couple of bags out the back. He’d gone through most of Junker’s stuff and decided what to keep and what to leave behind, and as she’d come to expect of Strike, he didn’t trust much of the other man’s possessions.

She was surprised when they went inside to find they were in a living room, it was small, but there were three doors at the back of the room and Torres wasn’t in sight. “Where is—”

“Two bedrooms,” he said, dumping the bags and going to open one of the doors to reveal a free bedroom. “He’s in the other one.”

That made her feel better, because she and Strike had a lot to talk about. After closing the front door, she locked it. Facing the room, she held a hand out to him, he came back to her to take it.

“Strike…” she breathed out, relieved that she could finally use his name.

“You want to talk,” he said, leading her over to the couch. “Can’t decide if this is going to end well for me.”

“I don’t know,” she said, curling her fingers around Opal who rested in her lap. “I do need to ask you to do something that you’re not going to like.”

Her plan had come together in pieces between her bouts of slumber and consciousness on their trip here. “What?” he asked. “If it includes leaving Redd alive…”

“He’s connected to Bella,” she said, still trying to put the pieces together. “I don’t know how, but… he used her name, and I knew you were too careful to have made a slip like that.”

“Fuck,” he growled. “I knew he wasn’t to be trusted. He and Gallagher only connected a couple of months before Redd got in touch with you. I didn’t know why he insinuated himself into Gallagher’s life like that or how he gained the guy’s trust so fast.”

“Benjamin was a trusting person,” she said. “But I was thinking…”

“Thinking what?”

“How did you hear about the Point? How did you know to ask the question?”

“Bella made a reference to it once,” he said. “She was trying to turn me on and win me back with news she’d heard. Except she didn’t know much about it and I was used to her being full of shit. I figured I’d keep an ear out, and if I got the chance I’d pursue it. But I wasn’t going to throw in with her again, no way.”

“That’s what you meant about getting there first and about being uninterested in Gallagher.”

“I think after I rejected her, she took Benjamin to try and show me she was capable and maybe in hope that I’d go help her torture the guy into giving up the truth,” he said.

Twisting to face him, she pulled her knees up under her. “But you didn’t?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t that interested. Don’t think anything could’ve got me interested enough to go back to Bella.”

But she had. He’d returned to Bella after Rora came into his life. Sliding a hand over his, she curled her fingers around his. “You offered yourself to her to save me,” she said, watching their hands stroke each other. “In that room, you told her to let me and Benjamin go, that she could have you.”

“You haven’t figured out I was in love with you by then?”

She’d suspected it, but hadn’t let herself believe it. “We hadn’t even had sex then… when did you fall in love with me?”

“You got my interest the first time you almost slammed Opal on my hands,” he said, making her smile. He curled a finger under her chin to draw her gaze up to his. “I fell in love with you the first time you threatened me… You didn’t care about anything, not even your own safety, you had a goal and nothing was going to stop you. Nothing. Not even me.”

“I almost gave up,” she said. “Then you ambushed me in that alley and pointed a gun at my head.” They stared into each other for a minute. “You thought you could fight it. That if we didn’t get physical, you could move on and forget me.”

He nodded. “It was my way of being chivalrous, didn’t figure this was any life for you.”

It was one that belonged to her now, but there was something between them that didn’t. Letting go of his hand, she opened Opal, and slid the machine onto his lap. Rora took his hand again and it was his turn to hesitate when she started to lower his hand to the keys.

Making eye contact, she smiled, and though he appeared dubious, he let her rest his hand down on the keyboard. “I forgive you, Strike,” she whispered, laying her hand over his. “You can have both of us.”

It took him a second to absorb her words. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure,” she said, thinking her life reaped the biggest rewards when she took the biggest risks.

“You’re not worried that… ‘it’ will come between us again?”

“It doesn’t belong to me anymore,” she said and grinned at his confusion. “I told you Junker didn’t have it.”

“Right, but you didn’t tell me where it was,” he said. Lowering her attention to the computer on his lap, she peeked up at him, mischief in her eyes. “You… Ro, what did you do?”

“I told you the USB was too unsecure,” she said. “Opal and I were talking on the road and I figured that there wasn’t anyone capable of keeping it safer than she was.”

“You put the Point on Opal?” he asked, almost in disbelief, but she could tell there was a part of him that was humbled, and another that was impressed.

“She didn’t mind… I didn’t think for a second that it would be Junker, but I did think we might find ourselves at a crossroads eventually with someone threatening us for it. I figured Opal was the most secure place, you wouldn’t let anyone hack her and no one but us can touch her, so… I asked her to look after it.”

“I’ll destroy it,” he said, but she laid a hand over his knuckles to halt him.

She shook her head, digging her teeth into her lip before lifting her eyes to his. “No,” Rora said. “I want you to look at it… when you’re ready.”

He grew wary. “Why?”

Her lips lifted a fraction. “Because I want to lead you into temptation,” she said. “I want you to look at it, play with it… refine it if you want… Play with your shiny new toy… but don’t use it.”

For a few seconds, he just looked at her. “How do you know I won’t—”

“I don’t,” she said. “But I never will unless I take a chance. I am giving it to you, absolving myself of all responsibility and my only condition is that you never use it, or let it be used, in the real world.”

Opening a hand on Opal, he stroked his fingers across the keys. “I can do whatever I want with the Point? It belongs to me now?”

She was biting her lip again but nodded and kept her smile. “I once told you that I didn’t want you to change, that I would never judge you, and I don’t plan to. But if I don’t change, if I don’t make myself trust someone, trust you, we can never work as any kind of us. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m trusting you. Whatever you decide to do… it’s on you.”

“You’re trusting me?”

“I’m trusting you,” she said, and looped her arm through his. “Though maybe if you’d made it clearer to me in the first place that you were just curious, I might have been more understanding.”

Rora couldn’t guarantee that. But now that they were mending fences, she got a sense that if they came out the other side of this ordeal, they might actually be stronger and closer than they had been before.