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I twisted my head, looking out the windows, trying to look for cars following. The sun wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours yet, but I didn’t see any headlights. “But Kevin and Raven are with Corey. So who’s following us? More Academy people?”
“You don’t need to know anything about them,” Marc said.
“How am I supposed to know who are the bad guys and who are the good guys if they catch up with us? If you don’t tell me, I’ll guess.”
“Go ahead and guess,” Marc said. He crossed his arms, his eyes challenging.
Despite the sparring between us, this was something of a relief. I was starting to wonder if my previous assumption of him being mad might have been a mistake. I admired a lot about him, even though at times he was chauvinistic. He was a street smart, ex-thug, now working for the good guys. His hair brushed to the front, the glint in his eyes; he looked like a rock star to me. Badass and smug, but despite my pushing him away at times, he was always right there.
A random car rolled out from a side street, turning right a block ahead of us and driving on. “Is that them?” I asked. I wasn’t really guessing. I was just going to point out every car until he said who was who.
“Let’s try to not talk about that so openly,” Axel said. “It doesn’t matter who is on our tail. Our job is to pretend they don’t exist. We shouldn’t be pointing them out. Talk about something else.”
“Like the Academy?” I asked.
“No,” Marc said.
“Sure,” Axel said at the same time.
Marc frowned and shook his head. “Not right now. Not yet.”
“She’s ready for it,” Axel said. “If she’s asking, we should tell her.”
“Why can’t you tell me?” I asked.
Marc shifted in his seat, stretching and fiddling with the box. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “It’s that you don’t trust us. If I tell you certain secrets and you get pissed off at me, there’s nothing to stop you from going to someone like Blake or your brother and telling them everything.”
I was going to say I wouldn’t do that, but the truth was, I’d already told Blake things because I was uncomfortable with them. Trust was hard to earn if someone kept secrets all the time. I folded my arms, sitting back, staring out the window.
Marc returned to the paperwork, flipping through some of the files. “Maybe we should find a way to ask the wife. Maybe she knows about the cell phone service and hasn’t told anyone. She’d know where it was.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell her about it,” I said quietly. “If there was a secret money account with a possibly illegal underground cell phone service, would you tell your wife? It didn’t look like she got control of a bunch of money even though he died. She’s still in the same house. If I got a billion dollars in a Swiss account because my husband died and left me an illegal cell phone service, I’d move at least to Isle of Palms, maybe Kiawah—probably out of the country.”
Marc sighed. He pressed a palm to his face, rubbing. “Okay, I was just thinking maybe we should have a team keep an eye on her. Just in case they turn to her next. She’s got kids and all.”
I wanted to kiss Marc right then for being so sweet, protecting a family he didn’t even know. He was right. This team might target the family, if they hadn’t already. “Can you get more Academy people to watch the house?”
“We could do that,” Axel said.
Marc started sending a text from his phone.
“But now what?” I asked. “Isn’t he a landlord or something? Maybe he keeps this core at one of his properties. Or at least at work.”
Marc nodded, but kept his eyes on his phone. “The most obvious is probably the most likely.”
“So we break in and check out the place?” I asked.
“Maybe. We need to scope it out, first. Go through that trash.”
“Do we have to?”
“Cover our bases,” he said.
I dug through the trash, avoiding clear plastic bags that looked like they were for bathrooms and bedrooms. Two were stuffed with paper. I opened one, and noticed little Jones got a D on his spelling test.
The other must have been from an office. Gum wrappers, old mail. I flipped through the mail, mostly ads, some for high-end credit card applications. Among the en
velopes, there were invitations to parties, some thank you notes. “Should we check out his friends? Wouldn’t one of them might know what he was up to?
Marc lifted his head, read the address on one of the envelopes I held up and nodded. “First, let’s scope out the office. If we don’t get any leads from that, we’ll check out his friends.”
We fell into a silence. I pretended to read documents, but my eyes were hurting trying to read in the car, so I opted for staring out the window and when that didn’t ease the headache, I sat back with my eyes closed. Marc quietly thumbed his way through the documents, learning what he could.
After a few moments, I started passing out. I caught myself and sat up quickly, moving to stay awake.
Marc pulled his attention from a file. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“If you’re sleepy, go to sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep.” I didn’t. I wanted to be awake. Last time I fell asleep, bad things happened.
“Liar,” he said. He dropped the file and shoved the box to the floor. He snagged my elbow, and tugged. A few locks of his brown hair fell forward into his eyes as he looked at me. “Come on, Bambi. Relax a little.”
I didn’t know what he was doing at first, and thought he just wanted me to sit back a certain way. Then he tugged again harder and I nearly face planted into his lap. I caught myself just before my nose knocked into his thigh.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Shush,” he said. He pressed his fingertips over my eyes so they would close. “Sleep.”
“I’m going to get kidnapped by jerks and you want me to sleep?”
“You’re not getting kidnapped,” he said. “Now shut up and get some rest while you can.”
“But...”
“We’re going to check out this office, but it isn’t open. We’re not going to break into it right now. We’ll wait until someone comes and opens up and check out the place. That’s probably a good thing. We’ll lay low and let these guys chasing you catch up with us. We’re executing both plans at once this way.” He dropped his hand onto my head, urging me to relax against his leg. “Sleep and I’ll wake you up if anything interesting happens.”
