Bax said, “The van was spotted on I-45 going south, was the last update I got. People are scouring surveillance video at every exit on down that highway, but it’s a slow process.”
“Yeah,” Finn said, having received the same information when he’d called in to his sources last night. On one of the monitors he watched Riley walk into the back entrance of the visitors’ center, then watched the guard who’d been assigned to escort her, who was walking behind her and had held the door open for her, check out her ass as she passed him. His body tensed slightly in reflexive reaction: he didn’t like what he was seeing, which was another bad sign about the state of his involvement with Riley.
“If they’re not going to kill Emma, if they’re really intending to trade her for the money, they won’t have taken her too far,” Bax offered. “The problem is, there’s so much activity typically going on in an urban area that it takes a long time to single out anything that might be significant.”
“Yeah,” Finn said again. His people were also checking NSA satellite footage of the area, but following a white van on a dark night amidst a sea of other vehicles in pictures taken miles above the earth was apparently proving problematic. He hoped they were having better luck tracking down the source of those emails Riley had pointed out to him, but so far he hadn’t heard anything to indicate it.
“Here she comes.” Bax nodded at the monitor, which showed Riley walking out of the visitors’ center into the parking lot. As Finn watched, his hands closed around the arms of his chair preparatory to levering himself upright. Time to get himself to Auntie Sue’s.
“Okay. Get somebody analyzing the footage we just captured. A couple of the things George said—‘I made a deal with the devil and I tried to fix this’ are what jumped out at me—might be worth pursuing. Check visitor logs, email logs, phone logs, everything that came to or went out from George at that prison.” Finn watched Riley get into the car. He had a problem—Eagle and the powers that be wanted him to find the money. If Riley wasn’t the ticket to finding the money, then they would expect him to abandon her and pursue other leads until that money was found. He had the same problem regarding Emma—his mandate wasn’t to recover the teen.
Finn discovered that he wasn’t on board with abandoning either of them.
Shit.
“You’d better get a move on. She’s coming through the gate.”
“Yeah.” Finn stood up—well, as much as he could, considering that he was quite a bit taller than the van was high. “Head back for Houston. I’ll give you a call—”
He broke off, his eyes on the monitor. Having made it through the gate, the gray Acura had been rolling merrily along, until it braked beside one of the news crews she was supposed to drive right past.
“She stopped,” Bax said unnecessarily, his tone as dumbfounded as Finn felt. “What’s she doing?”
Good question. Finn, for one, didn’t know.
He watched as Riley got out of the car. The news crews spotted her, practically dropped their cameras in shock, and rushed her en masse.
“Any way to zoom in on that?” he asked, because this particular camera they were watching her on was capturing her from across the street. The sound wasn’t there, either. From the angle of that vantage point, he guessed the camera might be concealed in the front of the van. His chest was heavy with foreboding.
“Oh. Sure.” Bax jumped up, banged his head on the roof, said “ouch,” and rubbed the injury even as he did something with a computer mouse that brought Riley front and center on that monitor—and upped the volume to where they could hear her.
“—visiting your ex-father-in-law, George Cowan?” the reporter asked. She was a young blonde, smiling brightly while holding the microphone in Riley’s face. “Can you give us any details about what happened?”
“I only know that he was stabbed yesterday,” Riley said. She looked into the camera, and Finn was struck once again by how pretty she was. He was also struck by something in the determined set of her jawline. He remembered the last time she had talked to the media, and his sense of foreboding morphed into flat-out alarm. “I spoke to him, and he’s recovering. In fact, I had a question to ask him, and he was able to tell me everything I needed to know.”
“My God, does she mean what I think she means?” Bax gasped, while Finn stared stonily at the monitor. “Did George tell her where the money is?”
“You heard what I heard,” Finn responded.
“Can you share with us what you asked him?” the reporter said to Riley.
Riley shook her head. “No, I can’t. It’s personal.” Then she looked directly into the camera again. “But I got the answer I wanted, and I’ll share it with the people it concerns.” While Finn felt his blood run cold, she glanced at the reporter, and smiled. “Thanks for your concern.”
Then she waved, and walked away from the camera, ignoring the questions that were called after her.
The reporter said into the camera, “That was an exclusive with Riley—”
Finn missed the rest of it. Heart thumping like it hadn’t in years, he was already striding for the rear of the van and jumping out onto the pavement.
Glancing toward the prison, he could see the Acura coming.
— CHAPTER —
TWENTY-NINE
Riley’s pulse pounded. Her stomach was in a knot. Her mind, however, was crystal clear. By telling the media, and through them the world, that she had asked George a question and he had told her everything she needed to know, she hoped to get the word to Emma’s kidnappers that she knew where the money was and she was willing to trade.
She was going to pretend to Finn and everybody else in officialdom that George had told her where it was. And she wasn’t going to tell Finn and everybody else in officialdom where that was until Emma was free and safe.
She was prepared to give the location of the money to whoever gave her Emma.
Finn, Bax, the FBI, the CIA, and every other agency and government group involved were there for the money. Once someone got it, they might very well pull the plug and all go away.
Without making sure Emma was safe.
She didn’t trust any of them.
Finn jogged through the center of the parking lot toward her. Riley spotted him as soon as she pulled into the strip mall. His suit today was a paler gray, and his coat and dark blue tie flapped as he ran. He looked completely masculine, slightly disheveled, and sexy as hell. Also, big and tough enough to handle anything. Her instant reaction upon seeing him was that he was her very own port in the storm, and she wanted to park the car and run into his arms. Then she remembered why that wasn’t going to happen, and at the same time got close enough to see his expression. She was instantly alarmed by the look on his face.
Grim didn’t begin to cover it.
She braked beside him, put the car in park. He jerked open her door even as she started to roll down her window.
“Get in the passenger seat,” he barked, reaching around her to unbuckle her seat belt, grabbing her arm to pull her out. She’d stopped in the middle of the parking lot, which, since it was almost noon, was busier than it had been earlier, with maybe two dozen cars and trucks and vans in it now. A woman was walking into Auntie Sue’s, and another woman and a little girl were coming out of Stringtown Souvenirs. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to her or Finn. A quick glance across the four-lane road at the satellite trucks parked down the long driveway in front of the prison gate told her that the news crews were nowhere in sight. She presumed that they were either in or in front of one of the vans.
“What is it?” she asked. Anxiety made her throat tight. Sudden dread gripped her. “Is it Emma?”
“No, it’s not Emma.” He looked grimmer than ever as he hauled her around the hood of the car.
“Oh, God.” Riley felt a flood of relief. “Finn—he told me where the money is.”
“What?” He snapped a frowning look at her.
“I know where the money is. George
told me.”
“What?”
His eyes bored into hers, and for a moment they blazed with some emotion she couldn’t identify. Then they shut down as completely as if a curtain had dropped, and became absolutely unreadable.
“Get in the car.” He opened the passenger door. She got in. A moment later he slid behind the wheel.
“George told you where the money is?” He put the car in gear, and they started to move. “Where is it? What did he say?”
The tension in his face hadn’t eased. If anything, the muscles around his eyes and mouth looked tighter than before.
“What’s happened?” she asked instead of answering, her anxiety skyrocketing again as he drove maybe a dozen yards before swinging into a parking space beside a blue van. “Finn?”
“In a minute.” He slammed the car into park, turned it off, grabbed the keys, and said, “Don’t move.”
* * *
“I’M GOING to need some more firepower,” Finn said to Bax, who jumped out of the van to join him on the pavement as soon as the Acura stopped beside it. Finn’s heart, which had been pounding, was slowing down, as he had trained it to do when he was going into work mode. “You got any weapons?”
“My Glock,” Bax said, showing him by flipping back his jacket, although Finn didn’t take the time to look. Following Finn around toward the back of the van, Bax added, “I think there’s a rifle in the back.”
“Get it. Get all the ammo you have, too.” Finn clicked the button that opened the Acura’s trunk, grabbed his suitcase out, and slammed the lid. Opening the rear door, he threw his suitcase into the backseat, and said to Riley, who had slewed around to look at him, “Stay there,” then turned to accept a rifle and a box of shells from Bax. He put that in the back, too, down on the floorboard, gave Riley a warning growl in case she was entertaining any thoughts about getting out of the car, which, knowing her, she probably was, and said to Bax, “Every damned thug in the universe is gonna be coming after her now. You know those steps we were talking about last night to keep her safe? This is one of them, only instead of ‘safe’ you should think ‘alive.’ I want you to come with me, be an extra gun. Two things we need to have clear before you do: first off, you’re liable to get killed. Second, can I trust you? Because if you come with me and I find out I can’t, I’m going to kill you myself.”
“Y-y-yeah, you can trust me.” Bax’s stuttering made Finn think not. The other man unfastened his buckle, pulled off his belt, and held it up with a flourish. That was not an action Finn was expecting, and he blinked. Then it hit him.
“You’ve been wearing a bug.” It would have been in the buckle. He’d pulled that trick once or twice himself. Didn’t stop him from glaring at Bax.
“I had to. The Bureau wanted ears.” He threw the belt into the van, slammed the door, and held out his hands palms up to Finn in the age-old gesture of surrender. “I blocked you whenever you said anything too sensitive.”
“Rattling the damned coins.” Finn couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. He’d bugged Bax, Bax had bugged him. Quid quo pro, one fucking government operative to another.
“Yeah,” Bax said. “And coughing, and turning on the radio, and—”
Finn’s face must have been a pretty accurate reflection of his feelings, because Bax said, “Sorry,” in a meek voice, and added, “I’m good now. I’m with you. Let’s go.”
“You got people around?”
“Two guys.” Bax sounded abashed. “They brought the van, helped set up the surveillance. Right now they’re up at the McDonald’s, waiting for me to call.”
Finn gave him a hard look. Fucking FBI. “Call them in about twenty minutes and tell them to come collect the van. And I meant what I said about trusting you: I’d better be able to.”
“You can.”
“Then let’s go.”
* * *
“WHAT’S HAPPENED?” Riley repeated her question as Finn got behind the wheel, Bax climbed into the backseat, and the Acura pulled out of the parking space, heading for the road. A rifle on the floor of the backseat, Bax in the backseat—she hadn’t even known Bax was in Stringtown, and what was he doing in that van? It scared her. “What’s wrong?”
“You want to know what’s wrong? Let’s see: for starters, what the fuck was that?” Finn shot at her by way of a reply. His usually calm blue-gray eyes weren’t calm anymore, and they weren’t blue-gray. They were the color of steel, and furious. “Do you have any idea of what you just did?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t give me that.” He accelerated smoothly past the prison, and then they were moving down the road back the way they had come, toward Stringtown, going fast but not so fast that they would attract attention. “You just got on live TV and told the whole damned world that you know where George has that money stashed!”
Her brows snapped together. “I wanted to get a message to Emma’s kidnappers. And I didn’t tell the whole damned world anything: it was a veiled reference. Anyway, how do you know that’s what I did?”
“You remember that bastard who almost drowned you in your bathtub? You remember Jeffy-boy ending up getting himself hanged? You remember that Emma’s kidnapped and George got stabbed? To say nothing of those other four associates of George’s who died mysteriously?” Finn didn’t yell, but instead bit the words out savagely. “The people who do those kinds of things? They’re now all after you. Every single one of them. I don’t know how many there are. Dozens, for all I know. Billions of dollars provide a powerful incentive for all of them to want to get their hands on you and get you to tell them what you said you know, which is where the money is. Do they care if they kill you? Hell, no. For a lot of them, it’ll be fun.”
“You were spying on me!”
“You bet your sweet ass I was spying on you!” He threw another of those furious looks at her as he nosed the Acura around the curving on-ramp to the expressway. Riley’s chest tightened as the maelstrom of thoughts swirling through her head coalesced into a single, terrible one: he might have been spying on her while she talked to George, too. Panic fluttered: if so, he would know that George hadn’t told her where the money was.
The solution that presented itself wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do. She could say that George’s words had contained a coded message that only she could understand.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
But what else could she do?
They were heading toward Houston, Riley saw, as they merged into traffic. There wasn’t a lot, and what there was sped along easily.
Over his shoulder, to Bax, Finn said in a more measured tone, “There’s a zippered gun case inside the top compartment in my suitcase. Get it out, and hand me the Sig. Keep the others out where we can get to them.”
“Got it,” Bax said.
“You have no business spying on me,” Riley said. From the backseat came the sound of Bax unzipping the case.
“I have no—” Finn broke off, and Riley got the impression that he was grinding his teeth. “If I hadn’t spied on you, you’d already be dead.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed. “You were spying on me that night I was attacked in my apartment, weren’t you? That’s why you showed up when you did!”
“Uh, Finn?” Bax passed him a silver pistol.
“What are you going to do with that?” Riley asked, her alarm ratcheting up to a whole new level. The truth was, when she’d made her televised announcement that George had told her where the money was, she hadn’t been thinking of anyone but Emma, and getting a message to her kidnappers. The idea that she’d brought a hornet’s nest of assassins down on herself—and Finn, and Bax—made her palms grow damp.
“Shoot the first bastard who tries to grab you. Of course, a Sig only holds a certain number of bullets.” Finn patted his shoulder holster through his jacket. “Good thing I have my Beretta. And the backups. And Bax. Let’s hope we don’t run out of ammo before all the bad guys are dead.” Tucking the pi
stol into the cup holder so that the handle was easily accessible, Finn glanced in the rearview mirror at Bax. “I need to find a pay phone. Think you can get on your phone and find me one? As close to us as possible.”
Riley slewed around to look at Bax, who was pulling out his cell phone. Seeing a black strip of what looked like Kevlar that had been unrolled on the backseat with various guns secured to it by strips of the same cloth, she caught her breath and looked at Finn. “What, do you travel with your own arsenal?”
“You better thank your lucky stars I do.” His voice was grim. He shot another through-the-rearview-mirror look at Bax. “You can go ahead and tell your people to pick that van up now.”
“I’ll text ’em,” Bax said.
“He was in the van.” Riley got it all of a sudden. She glanced back at Bax, saw as she did that they were cruising past a white pickup that was moving at a pretty good clip itself, realized they were speeding, and then forgot about traffic as her gaze focused back on Bax, who had been working his cell phone but looked up as if he felt the weight of her eyes. “You were in that van, weren’t you? What, is it one of those surveillance vans like they use on spy shows on TV?” Bax’s expression, coupled with his and Finn’s mutual silence, told the tale. “It is, isn’t it?” She glared at Finn as her worst fear was confirmed. “You were watching me talk to George, weren’t you?”
“Angel, you’ve been lying to me nonstop from the minute I first laid eyes on you. Why wouldn’t I watch you talk to George?”
“You want to talk about lying?” The anger and hurt she’d been bottling up since doing her due diligence on that text message surged through her veins. “What about all the lies you’ve told me?”
It was all she could do not to throw the fact that she knew he was a CIA agent, for starters, in his face, but an innate caution stopped her.
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