“Maybe she won’t recover.”
“Quinn.” She jerked her head around.
“I’m supposed to be rooting for a woman who called out a gunman on us, tried to poison you and now knows your identity?” He lifted his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I don’t have much sympathy for her. I don’t want her blabbing to anyone in the CIA about you before we’re ready, and we won’t be ready until someone talks to Buddy Song or Chan decodes David’s emails.”
“It’s too late.” Rikki pressed her hands against her stomach. In the shock of Belinda’s shooting and getting info about David out of her, Rikki hadn’t dwelled on the fact that Belinda had known who she was from the get-go. Now the truth of it punched her in the gut.
“She already told someone, and it’s the reason why she tried to kill me.”
“Back up. Who’d she tell? Did that person order her to poison you?”
“She told David.”
Quinn uttered an expletive. “And David ordered your death a second time? I can’t wait to get my hands on him.”
“I’m not sure it went down like that.” Rikki dug her fingers in her hair. “Belinda told David I was alive, and apparently, he was a little too happy about it for Belinda’s liking. She always thought David and I were lovers, and his reaction to her news seemed to confirm that for her.”
Quinn’s jaw tightened. “David lied to her, told her you came onto him. She told us as much.”
“Probably.” Rikki rolled her shoulders, but the stress just clawed its way up her neck. “His reaction to my being alive wasn’t what she’d hoped for, so she decided to take me out—it sounds like to spite him.”
He swung the car into a parking space at their motel and threw it into Park. “She thinks her own husband ordered this hit on her today because she tried to kill you? Does David really think you’re going to forgive him for setting you up as a traitor?”
“I don’t know what David thinks. It sounds like he’s gone completely off the deep end, but it gave me a little leverage with her to give up some intel on David.”
“Buddy Song’s name is hardly intel. If David knows you’re still alive, it won’t be long before the CIA knows.”
“He’s not exactly going to call them from the dead, is he?”
“He’ll use other methods to get the news out. You know he will.” He stroked her arm from shoulder to wrist. “Do you want to take what we have now and go to the Agency? Do you want to turn yourself in?”
“Take what we have?” She snapped off her seat belt. “We have nothing. No proof. I don’t even have that picture of David with the tattoo he never had before his supposed death.”
Quinn lifted his hips from the seat of the car and dug into his voluminous pocket. He pulled out a cell phone and held it in front of her face. “I have this.”
“Belinda’s?” Her heart skipped in her chest and she pounced on the phone, snatching it from Quinn’s hand.
“She was holding it when I approached her. When the bullet hit her, she dropped it and I scooped it up.”
Rikki pressed the phone to her chest. “Quick thinking.”
“Let’s regroup and get your life back.”
When they returned to the motel room, Rikki huddled in a chair by the window and tapped Belinda’s phone to wake it up. “Ugh, it’s password-protected.”
“You know how to get around that, right? Isn’t that CIA 101?”
“There are a couple of ways I can get in, although every time the manufacturers hear about another trick to bypass security codes, they change things up.” Rikki tapped through several key sequences and let out a pent-up breath when Belinda’s home screen popped up. “I’m in. This looks like her real phone and not the temp she used to call you.”
“And which she probably used to contact her husband.” Quinn circled his finger in the air. “She’ll have her personal stuff on this one, though.”
Rikki swept her finger through Belinda’s photos. “Lots of pics of Savannah and her house. She must’ve done some remodeling lately.”
“That’s not gonna help.”
“Wait.” With a shaking finger, Rikki tapped an image of a shirtless man. “It’s here. The picture of David with that tattoo that he never had before he died.”
“All right!” Quinn pumped his fist in the air. “Now, who can verify that the tattoo is a new acquisition besides you?”
“Anyone who did PT with David. If they changed in the locker room with him or even if he wore a tank top during PT, his chest would’ve been on display, and I’m telling you he never had that giant phoenix tattoo.”
“You’re going to send that to Ariel.” Quinn leveled a finger at the phone. “What’s your answer if someone tries to claim he got it in Korea?”
“Not enough time—and look at it.” She jabbed her finger at the serious face in the picture, the face she used to trust. “It’s not a brand-new tattoo. We weren’t in Korea long enough for something like that to heal up. Hell, we weren’t in Korea long enough before we were captured for him to even get a tattoo like that. Don’t those tattoo artists take several days to create a work of art like that?”
“It could take more than one sitting. It looks like we might have Dawson dead to rights on this.” Quinn rubbed his chin and gazed over her right shoulder.
“What? I don’t like that look.”
His gaze snapped back to her face. “Dawson knows you’re alive.”
“Y-yes?” She squared Belinda’s phone on the table and clasped her hands between her knees.
“He might try to get word to the CIA—anonymously, of course.”
“Why would the Agency believe a man who faked his own death in North Korea and set up his partner to take the fall as a traitor?”
“What if he already beat us to the punch? What if the CIA already got a tip that Rikki Taylor is alive and well and skulking around Savannah, and is taking action?” Quinn paced to the window and back to the TV, his long stride eating up the space in a few steps.
Rikki’s eyes wandered to the window of their dumpy motel and fixed on a road sign across the street. “You mean like right now?”
“We need to get out of this town and back to New Orleans.” Quinn stopped in midturn. “Does Dawson know much about me? Where I live?”
“I never told him anything. He knew we were...together in Dubai, and he probably knew your name and knew that you were a SEAL from asking around, but I doubt if he got any personal info on you, and I certainly didn’t tell him anything like that.”
“Navy’s not going to give him any details about me, but then he’s CIA. He can get those details his own way.”
Rikki shook her head. “I don’t think he would’ve done that, and he can’t do it now.”
“Let’s head back tonight.” He grabbed the remote from the bed. “You up for an all-night drive?”
“To get out of Savannah? Hell, yeah.”
Quinn clicked on the TV. “We don’t even know if Belinda made it or not.”
“I’m sure she did. From the blood pooling, it looked like she got hit in the back. Although she was losing a lot of blood, she was conscious and the EMTs got right to work on her.”
Quinn flipped through the channels until he settled on some local news. “We may have missed the story. It must’ve been the lead.”
“The hospital won’t tell us anything.” Rikki pushed herself up from the chair and stood in front of the TV with her arms crossed. Even though Belinda Dawson had tried to poison her, Rikki couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She must really love David to keep his secrets, secrets that could get her charged with espionage, and then to believe the man you loved, the man you’d protected, was obsessed with someone else must be torture.
Rikki had watched her mother bounce from man to man, putting her faith in love time after time only to have her heart broken. No man w
as worth that kind of pain.
Rikki’s gaze slid to Quinn, perched on the foot of the bed, hunched forward. He was different from any man her mom had followed around the world. Sincere. Loyal. Family-oriented.
And he didn’t know he had one.
His head jerked to the side. “What?”
“Just thinking about Belinda.” Rikki gathered her hair into a ponytail. “When do we get out of here?”
“As soon as you can throw your stuff together. We can eat on the road.”
“Have you heard anything more from Chan about David’s emails?”
“Not yet. Did you send that picture of Dawson to your phone?”
As she reached for Belinda’s phone on the table, Quinn said, “Wait. Better yet. Send that picture to my phone, and I’ll send it along to Ariel. My phone is untraceable and won’t come up on anyone’s radar. We don’t want that photo leaking out. Dawson’s not going to know we have it, and we don’t want to clue him in.”
Rikki cupped Belinda’s phone in her palm. “David knows I’m alive, but does he realize that I know he’s alive?”
“I’m assuming Belinda told him, right?” He grabbed his phone and aimed it at her. “Send it.”
“She didn’t really say one way or the other. I guess if she told him about my seeing the picture, he’d know that I figured it out.” She tapped the phone to text the picture to Quinn’s number. “Why?”
“Just wondering if Dawson would try to contact you.”
Heat prickled across her skin, and she dropped the phone. It clattered on the table. “Why would he?”
Quinn lifted one shoulder. “To make some kind of overture.”
“Overture?” Rikki’s eye twitched and she rubbed it. “What kind of overture could he make with me now after setting me up as a traitor to the CIA and arranging to have me killed? How do you start that conversation?”
He joined her at the table and rubbed her back. “I hope you don’t have to find out.”
“Let’s get out of here.” She held up Belinda’s phone. “I’m taking this with me. Who knows what else I can discover on here?”
Quinn dragged his bag from the closet floor. “Any texts?”
“Just a couple with some girl talk.” Rikki pocketed Belinda’s phone. “I wonder what all of Belinda’s good, good friends would think about her if they knew she ran around poisoning drinks and covering for her traitor husband.”
“They’re going to find out soon enough once we get this investigation in official hands. That woman’s going to get hers for trying to kill you.”
Rikki pressed her lips together as she started packing. Having Quinn on her side gave her a warm glow in her belly.
Quinn had given her something else in her belly eighteen months ago, and she planned to tell him all about that little miracle when they got back to New Orleans.
* * *
AS THEY HEADED out of Savannah, Rikki dug Belinda’s phone from her pocket. “I’m going to look through this while it’s still working. Once Belinda realizes her phone is missing, she’ll have it deactivated.”
“We don’t even know if she’s dead or alive. The most recent report I saw on my phone was that someone had been critically injured in that shooting, nothing about a fatality.”
“I think if she’d died it would’ve made the news. Nothing about a suspect?”
“He’s not going to be caught, and if she survives, Belinda’s not going to implicate anyone.”
Rikki rolled back the seat and wedged her bare feet against the glove compartment. “Do you mind?”
“You can put your feet anywhere.” Quinn reached forward and caressed her ankle.
She curled her toes and almost purred. Instead, she thumbed through Belinda’s pictures. “No more suspicious photos. Either that’s the only one David sent her, or she deleted the rest.”
“We lucked out with that one.”
“Yep.” She squinted at the text messages as she scrolled through each set. “No new messages, either. It’s creepy that there’s a text here to one of her friends about drinks the other night. Funny she doesn’t mention the poison.”
“Yeah, that’s just what you want to tell your old friends. Meeting for drinks, and by the way, don’t mind the dead chick at the table.”
Rikki tapped Belinda’s contacts and swept her finger down the list. One name flew by, and she gasped.
“What?”
“One of her contacts.” Rikki dragged her finger back up the names and stopped on the most important one. “Frederick Von.”
“You’re kidding.” Quinn flexed his fingers on the wheel of the car. “Dawson should’ve trained his wife better in the rules of espionage.”
“Who would know the name of David’s villain in an unpublished work of fiction? Besides, I’m sure he believed Belinda would never come under suspicion, that he’d never come under suspicion.”
“And yet here they are—under suspicion.” Quinn cranked his head to the side. “What are you going to do about it?”
She held the phone between both of her hands as if in prayer. “You think I should call him?”
“I do.”
“If I do, I’m going to play nice.” She tapped her steepled fingers against her chin. “I’m going to pretend I don’t know he set me up.”
Quinn raised his eyebrows as he studied the road in front of him. “Do you think he’s gonna believe that?”
“I’ll make him believe it. Why would I think he set me up? I thought he’d been killed, I was captured by the North Koreans, and I don’t know anything about the CIA trying to take me down as a traitor.”
“Devil’s advocate here.” He tapped his chest. “If you don’t know he set you up, why haven’t you gone straight to the Agency? Why are you floundering around Louisiana and Georgia?”
She held up one finger. “I didn’t say the CIA didn’t think I was a traitor. I just don’t know why they think I’m one.”
“He’s gonna be suspicious as to why you don’t believe it’s him. He faked his death, you were captured, there was no Vlad.”
“I just thought he died and we were both played.”
“Do you think he’ll believe you?”
Rikki dipped her head to hide her warm cheeks behind a veil of hair. “I think I can make David Dawson believe anything if I put my mind to it.”
The silence stretched between them, and Rikki peeked at Quinn’s hard profile.
He cleared his throat. “Then do it.”
She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead despite the air-conditioning blasting her face. With an unsteady finger, she tapped Frederick Von and then put the phone on Speaker, even though she really didn’t want Quinn listening to this conversation.
The phone rang, and Rikki clutched the seat’s armrest. It rang several more times before a pleasant recording told her the phone’s owner didn’t have voice mail set up.
Rikki snorted. “I’d like to hear that voice mail greeting.”
“Try again later. We have no idea where he is or what time zone he’s in.” He hunched forward and rapped a knuckle against the windshield. “Let’s stop for some food and knock out the rest of this trip.”
Four hours later and halfway through the drive, Rikki poked through one of the bags from the fast-food restaurant they’d driven through for dinner. “Do you want the rest of these French fries?”
“Are you hungry again? We can stop. We’re making good time.”
“Not really.” She stuffed one of the fries in her mouth and licked the salt from her fingers. “Just bored.”
“Do you feel like driving?”
“Too tired.”
“Take a nap.”
Belinda’s cell, which Rikki had tucked beneath her right thigh, buzzed to life. She grabbed the phone and felt the blood drain from her face. “
It’s him.”
“Are you ready?” Quinn put on his signal to pull into a rest area.
Rikki licked her lips and nodded. “Hello?”
The man’s voice, David’s voice from the grave, started before the first word left Rikki’s lips.
“Belinda, what the hell are you doing calling me on this phone? I don’t care if you have me listed as Dr. Seuss. You don’t use this phone, especially not now.”
“David, it’s Rikki.”
He sucked in a breath across the miles. “Rikki? My God. It sounds like you. What was the name of the bartender our first night in Athens?”
“Gypsy Rose.”
A noisy rush of air gushed over the line. “Wh-when Belinda told me you were alive, I couldn’t believe it.”
Rikki met Quinn’s gaze and dipped her chin once. David would admit nothing, whether he thought she believed him or not. She could do this.
Squaring her shoulders, she pinned them against the seat back. “I felt the same way when I discovered you were alive.”
“From the picture. You saw the picture. That’s what Belinda said. You knew. You knew me so well, you could tell it was recent.”
Quinn made a sharp movement in the driver’s seat, and Rikki placed a hand on his thigh.
They’d have to both get through this. “It was the tattoo, David.”
“Of course.” He coughed. “What did Belinda tell you?”
“Tell me? She told me nothing, but I saw the picture.”
“Who was the man with you when you came to the house?”
“A paid associate.” She squeezed Quinn’s knee. “He doesn’t know anything about what I’m doing.”
David paused for two beats. “What are you trying to do, Rikki? Why aren’t you with the Agency...or are you?”
“As far as I can tell, the Agency thinks I’m a traitor. That debacle in North Korea pretty much torpedoed both of our careers.” She paused herself. “Why aren’t you with the Agency? Where are you?”
“Deep undercover. The Agency thinks I’m dead, and I want to keep it that way. But what happened to you? I’d heard from my guy in South Korea that you’d been killed.”
David’s voice actually broke, and Rikki had to grip the phone harder to keep from throwing it out the window.
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