They stared.
“No.” But she didn’t have his memory. Rhys knew exactly who they were looking at. “What’s going on?”
“Text me those pictures.” He pushed off the couch. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay here tonight.”
“Rhys?” Jules jumped up, and Abigail followed. “What’s going on?”
As he said quick goodbyes to her parents, she caught up with him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.”
He was always sure. “Rhys…” She grabbed his arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I need to talk to Viv.”
“Then call Viv from my dad’s office.”
Urgency burned in his dark eyes. “I’ll talk to her while I’m driving.”
“Driving where?”
Tension flexed in his jaw. “Downtown. To talk to investigators.” He glanced over her head as if staring down demons, as if he had so many things to say but didn’t know how to say them.
“What? Why?”
Rhys backed her to the wall. “Everything’s going to be fine. I need to pull on a string. That’s it. When I come back, I’ll have answers.”
She believed him, not because she needed to but because fifteen years of being around him had taught her to. “Do you promise?”
“I swear to you, baby.” He pressed his mouth to hers. His tongue slipped along the seam of her lips, quick and hungry, but he groaned as he inched back. Rhys the Bodyguard had quickly emerged, and the man was back to business. “I’ll get Wes over here as soon as I can. Don’t go anywhere.”
Her trepidation resurfaced. “Why did one of Scarlett’s pictures set you off?”
“That’s the question I’m going to get an answer to.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rhys rushed out of the older Lowrys’ swank neighborhood. It lacked the gates and the guardhouses that tracked vehicles in and out like Jules’s neighborhood did, but it made leaving quickly significantly easier. He wove through traffic. No matter what time of day it was, too many people crowded the streets, driving like they had nothing to do but clog the roads.
The ringing phone played on the Expedition’s speakers. Why the hell didn’t Wes pick up on the first ring?
Finally, he answered.
“I need you to get back to Diane and Peyton’s.” Rhys maneuvered around cars and considered crossing into oncoming traffic to break ahead of this cluster. The idea gave him pause. When had he become that guy? He liked rules and order, and racing ahead through oncoming traffic didn’t fit his personal narrative. Nothing he’d done recently had.
Wes grumbled. “I’m all the way across town. It’s going to take me an hour to get there.”
His stranglehold on the steering wheel made his hands ache. “Just get there.”
“Where the hell are you?” Wes asked, catching the whiff of a big problem in Rhys’s tone.
“Meeting with a friend.” Wes had been Rhys’s second phone call. The first had been to Ronaldo Menendez, a man Rhys had worked with more than fifteen years ago on the Jordan Everett assignment. They’d remained in contact, helping each other spitball ideas whenever fresh eyes were needed. Over the years, Menendez had kept tabs via Rhys on Jules, even as he’d risen in the ranks of the FBI. Rhys could also be totally upfront with Menendez. He’d fallen for his principal and didn’t have a clue what was obscuring his perception.
“Who?”
“Menendez.”
Wes let that sink in. “Do we need to send a patrol car over? Anyone from the security company they contract with—”
