She handed her phone to me. “Do you need me to ask him anything specific, or?—”
“I’ll take it from here. You can wait for me in the car.”
When she walked away, her ex called after her. I stepped into his sightline and stared him down, which silenced him again. Good boy. That might keep me from hurting him.
“I have her phone,” I told Pasco.
“Hold her phone on top of yours, like—” When I scowled, he cleared his throat. “Never mind. Okay, yes, I see it. That ex is a sneaky asshole. And he didn’t go cheap. You’d never find the bug with a regular sweep. Luckily, you have me. And now the phone is clean and pure as the driven snow.”
“So, there’s no chance he’ll find us again?” I asked.
“As long as you don’t let him follow you out of there, he’s no longer your problem.”
“Did your SIGINT sweep give you a read on his Audi’s onboard tracking system?”
“It did,” Pasco said. “And I already disabled the distress signal.”
“Perfect. Can you reactivate it in two hours?”
“Consider it done,” he confirmed, “if you’re sure you don’t want his ass to be stuck there overnight.”
“It’s tempting, but that would be overkill. I just want some time to get Cara and me far away from him. Thanks Pasco.”
“You’re welcome. Call if you need anything else. Oh, and Nick?”
I didn’t like the tone of his voice, but I responded anyway. “What?”
“If this Cara person is really just a friend, maybe you could introduce us when you get here? She looks closer to my age anyway, and...”
I stared hard at my phone screen because even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he was still watching me. “Listen Pasco, because you and I are friends, I’m going to forget you ever said either of those last two sentences.”
“There it is. The truth. Well, you and yourfriendhave fun on the rest of your drive, and be sure to do all the things I would?—”
I disconnected the call to cut him off. I stalked back to the driver’s side of the Audi to deal with my real annoyance. Spotting his phone on the passenger’s seat, I walked to that door, pulled it open, and scooped up the device.
“What the hell, man? I use that for my work.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. I wedged out the SIM card, dropped it onto the macadam, and ground it under my heel. “Hope everything’s backed up on the cloud.” I tossed the phone deep into the high grass. Then I lifted his key fob out of the cupholder beside him and pocketed it.
“Now you’re stealing my shit? I should have your ass arrested.”
I shrugged. “You could try. I’ll even give you my federal badge number if you’d like.”
His face fell. “She’s dating a fucking cop?”
“Something like that.” I crossed back to his side of the vehicle. “When roadside service arrives in a couple of hours from now, maybe they’ll help you look for your phone. In the meantime, let me give you three things to think about. One, I’m currently carrying multiple weapons and I’m extremely proficient at using each and every one of them. Two, your days of tracking, stalking, and otherwise harassing Cara are over. There’s lots of nasty, criminal stuff involved in the shit you’re doing. I don’t think you want my friends looking into it.”
I sawed at the zip-tie, not quite cutting through it. He tugged, but remained bound. It would give way soon, but we’d be long gone by then. I’d already spotted the water bottles in his back seat, so I wasn’t worried that the dumbass would dehydrate. I nodded, pleased that my work here was almost finished.
“That was only two things.” He grinned. “Guess you cops aren’t great at counting.”
“Maybe not.” I leaned against the side of his car. “But we are great at talking. And I didn’t forget that I have one more thing to tell you.” I leaned down so we were at eye level. “She’s over you.”
“You sure about that? Because she sure is anxious to respond to my booty calls.”
Shit. I should have deduced that from the way she talked about their breakup. But if she was finally over him like she’d said, I’d bet money they hadn’t been together recently.
“It’s been a while, though, hasn’t it?” I asked. I knew from the expression on his face that I’d hit pay dirt. Good for her for getting this asshole out of her system once and for all. But he wasn’t the type to take her actions at face value, so I would have to embellish to get him to back off. “Don’t you find it interesting that as soon as she climbed into my bed, she stopped wanting to get into yours?”
