Paul Canton and a sandy-haired, heavyset man crouch low to avoid the swooping, crying bats. My heart races and my hands cover my belly in an instinctive attempt to hide the child that might be nested there.

My eyes dart around the office, desperately searching for another escape route, but there aren’t any. And despite my natural inclination to fight, there’s no point. I’m outnumbered. It’s better to conserve my energy.

The sandy haired man grabs Ronan, and Paul wraps a large hand around my upper arm, levering me to my feet and forcing me to march toward the door. The bats continue flapping around the room, a few barely missing hitting me as they search for an escape route.

The crowd at the door backs out of the way just enough for our captors to force us through. They shut the door before any of the bats escape.

Bruno draws a Glock from his pocket and points the deadly hole in the barrel right at my chest. Lynette does the same, aiming her gun at Ronan. Bruno’s gun doesn’t bother me as much as hers. I want to place myself between Ronan and the gun.

As much as I want to protect him, that doesn’t stop me from being irritated that he’s put both of us in this position. I shoot him an angry glare. “I said we needed a better plan than ‘follow the crate’, but you couldn’t be bothered to listen.”

“Money?” Ronan asks, sounding as if he faces angry exotic animal smugglers and their guns every single day of the week. “Who the hell pays for bats? And where the hell did you find monster bats?”

“The bats are black flying foxes and spectacled flying fox bats. They’re native to Australia. These are juveniles, just old enough for their mothers to leave while they go hunting, making them easy to catch,” Lynette explains. “They’re endangered but since many people find them a nuisance, taking some for our own purposes isn’t difficult. And as for who pays for bats, there are a lot of people in this world that will. I have five different buyers lined up, and a few more will come out of the woodwork and make a generous offer once word gets out that they’re here in the States.”

“Smuggling animals was your idea, Lynette?” I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me that a woman would be the mastermind in such a plan.

Lynette shakes her head. “Not entirely, no.” She nods at Bruno, who is still leering at me. “Bruno was already involved in the trade, though on a much smaller scale.”

“I matched buyers up with large cats and other exotics that had already been smuggled here. Pretty good money,” Bruno tells us, “but nothing compared to what we’re making now. Lynette is the one who came up with the idea of purchasing an airline and actually smuggling the animals into the country. She financed the operation. I put together a crew.” His gaze bores into Ronan. “It took us a little while to get things rolling, but for the past few years, we’ve been making a very tidy profit, and no one has been none the wiser until you started poking your nose into things.”

Ronan crosses his arms over his chest and studies Bruno. “You didn’t randomly stumble upon us in this hangar. How’d you know we were here?”

“The two of you are idiots,” Lynette pipes up. “I have cameras in my office. I knew you saw my computer files and that you thought I was embezzling. I’m not, by the way. I just do some creative money shuffling from time to time to help hide what our side business brings in.”

“The fact that you’re also Ronan James Smith, of Texas’s famous Smith family, and working for a tiny, floundering airline also told us something,” Bruno adds.

I struggle to wrap my mind around this latest bit of information. I’ve heard of James Smith. It’s impossible to live in this part of the state and not have heard about him. He has quite a reputation as a playboy and slacker. According to the media, the only thing he is interested in is women, fast cars, and spending his daddy’s money. I don’t remember hearing one word of him being a pilot.

My hand moves to my lower belly, covering the place where I might be carrying a child-Ronan’s child. All this time, I’ve thought Ronan was a stand-up guy, gradually accepting that not only was he a guy I could trust, but even love, yet he’s been lying to me the entire time. And if he lied to me about his identity, what else was he lying about?

If we somehow make it through this situation, how am I supposed to trust him again?

“We’ve been planning this shipment of flying fox bats for weeks.” Lynette’s words draw my attention away from Ronan’s betrayal and back to the current predicament. “Once we realized that the two of you suspected me of embezzling and that you thought Northwest’s problems ran deeper, we realized that the shipment provided us with the means to smoke you out.”

Bruno chuckles. “It was pathetically easy. I can’t believe how easily you took the bait. As soon as we saw the pair of you take off on your little scooter to follow Paul and the bats, we knew what we had to do.”

Beside me, Ronan tenses.

“What do you mean, you knew what you have to do?” he asks.