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“Either someone knew your father placed a tracker in your glasses and hacked the signal, or they were the ones who provided him with the tracker in the first place,” Sydney said. “Your father just didn’t know their ulterior motives.” She quickly began disassembling my glasses, breaking them apart. “That should narrow our suspect list as to who’d send a militia after us.”
Dallas came up alongside me and Carter removed his little doggie helmet. I took a knee alongside his faithful companion who was apparently becoming mine as well.
“You find the tracker?” Carter asked when Sydney appeared to have zeroed in on something in my glasses.
“Yeah, and I know who holds the patent on this tech.” She looked up at us, eyes thinning. “My father’s defense company.”
38
CARTER
IN THE AIR – ONE HOUR LATER
“They dropped a bomb on the building. We barely made it away, and we don’t even know who ‘they’ are, but?—”
“Diana . . .” I’d been watching her pacing the plane, stuck in the what-ifs in her mind, for too long. Realizing she was two seconds away from breaking down, I took hold of her arms and pinned her in place before she went flying against a wall during unexpected turbulence. Or maybe I was just looking for any reason to hold her. “It wasn’t technically a bomb.” Not that I needed to explain the details of the stealth bird that’d flown overhead, silently slipping away after annihilating the old CIA site we’d recently occupied.
“Semantics,” she muttered, eyes wide and pinned on me.
“They weren’t trying to kill us. They could’ve blown up the vehicles, but they didn’t. They opted not to take the chance since you were in one. You saved us. Bright side.”
“Did you just make a joke?”
“Maybe.” Probably not.
“Someone was ensuring no one survived to be interrogated by us, that’s all. Destroy as much evidence as possible as to who was sent after us,” I reminded her.
I’d explained it all earlier en route to the airport, but the trauma of what we’d gone through probably blocked it out.She’d clearly been too rattled to fully embrace my explanation. Likely still focusing on how we’d narrowly escaped the intruders only to refocus on our escape from the explosion that had rocked the earth under the vehicle we were in. If not for Jack’s excellent driving skills, which his wife had a hand in teaching him, we would’ve most likely collided with a tree on our way out.
I waited until she was looking up at me before reassuring her. I needed her to see the confidence in my eyes when I told her, “We’re all okay. Up in the air and safe.” Given the bastards had hacked the tracker in Diana’s glasses to find us, but waited to strike until we were at the final location, using the dark of night as cover, I assumed they’d avoid a public spot for another attempt at getting Diana. So, the airport was the best call.
“Safe for the time being, you mean.” She was shivering nearly as badly as she had in the shower yesterday. How was that only yesterday? Approximately twenty hours separated us between now and when we’d rescued her from the Serbians. “How long can we fly around in circles, or whatever it is we’re doing up here?”
“Long enough. Don’t worry.” I ran my hands up and down her arms, trying to soothe her the way my mother used to do after my parents fought. I’d always bitten my tongue, never reminding her she’d usually been the cause of that fight in the first place.
The fact Diana and I had that in common from our pasts almost did a number on me. Those times she’d told me about her parents fighting felt like another layer of connection, another unfortunate commonality.
“Why are you here with me? I’m sure you’re probably itching to be with your team in the cabin figuring out who could’ve hacked the tracker and ambushed us.” She pouted, and it took all my remaining restraint not to kiss it away.
“I trust the team to handle things,” I reassured her, and it was true. Sydney and Gray were in communication with both of their parents, as well as Diana’s, trying to solve what in the hell went wrong. And who could’ve known about the tracker. The rest of our crew was busy working on other leads.
Teddy, Easton, and the guys from my former life (aside from Griffin) were on my second jet, charged with running possible scenarios about what Alyona might be up to next, as well as trying to get ahold of her to talk some sense into her.
Everything was covered. Nothing I needed to do right now. Our plans to turn Diana over to Bravo, and for me to slip into the underworld of criminals to uncover who was behind it all, had been derailed because of the ambush. And, to be honest, long before that.
So many unanswered questions, so many unexpected detours, and the only part of the night comforting me was the fact I wasn’t passing Diana off to Bravo. I wasn’t ready to let her go yet.
After staring at her for a bit longer, waiting to see if she’d say more, I gave in and broke the sound barrier between us. “When my team knows something, we’ll both know.”
With their uncanny timing, one of them would surely barge in soon and stop me from doing something I shouldn’t. Something like sucking her trembling lip between mine and making her forget everything she was nervous about. Distract and deflect by way of my tongue was probably more for my benefit. A sorry excuse to feel her against me after being terrified I could’ve lost her. It had only been seventy-two minutes since the building exploded shortly after we’d exfil’ed. Seventy-two minutes to reconcile how close we’d come to that unimaginable finality.
“I think I’ve finally hit my breaking point.” Tears filled her eyes, but they didn’t escape. She was trying so hard to be brave, determined to stay strong. “You could’ve died tonight because of me. Oliver was shot. I—I killed a man.”
“No, you didn’t, I did. You just gave me a head start.” I smiled, hoping to stave off those tears a little longer with some dark humor. “Also, the list of people who want me dead exceeds the number of tattoos on my body tenfold. Trust me, you’re not endangering me.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Well, shit, I thought you once said I was.”
