Page 33 of Jonas

There went the flutter in my stomach.

“Sorry. I ramble in my head, too.”

I heard his chuckle, but better, I watched him do it.

“You ramble in your head?”

“You don’t?”

“If you mean, do I have thoughts I don’t speak out loud, yes. If you mean, do I carry on conversations in my head, no.”

Weird.

I thought everyone silently argued with themselves. Not that I was arguing with myself at the moment. I was doing what he said he did, thinking but keeping those thoughts to myself.

“Well, sometimes my thoughts are more like…me mentally babbling about nonsensical things.”

Sweet mother of pearl, I needed to shut up.

“Care to share?”

Heck no!

“Nah, it was nothing that would excite you.”

I glanced back at his hand, then to his forearm and wondered how I’d missed internally musing about…

Thankfully, Jonas’s voice pulled me from my forearm porn thoughts before they got out of control.

“Is that a determining factor whether or not you share?”

No, but my embarrassment level was.

“Do you think we’re off base with the bridge?”

Since I was still staring at Jonas’s profile, I got a front-row seat to his fantastic lips arching up.

“Not the smoothest change of subject,” he rightly noted. “I’ll give you this, but I reserve the right to circle back to the mental rambling.”

I waited for him to answer my question. When no such response came, I asked, “Are you waiting for me to agree to divulge my innermost thoughts?”

“I wasn’t, but now I am.”

I wasn’t touching that comment.

“Then why the pause?”

“I was thinking about how to answer,” he told me. “My gut says yes, the Key Bridge collapse was not an accident—it was a cyber-attack. I also think your theory, that this wasn’t the first bridge they hit, just the biggest causing the most damage, is correct. Which makes me wonder what other parts of the blueprint they have started. We’re working under the concept the attacks will be done in stages, but what if the plan is to hit multiple targets at once?”

“Like the bridges and ports at the same time. The data centers and cyber-attacks. The electrical grid would have to be last, right?”

“Yeah.” He nodded as he checked the mirrors.

His vigilant glances should’ve made me feel better but all they did was serve as a reminder we weren’t simply on an errand, we were in the middle of an assignment that already had us taken hostage.

“When do you think you’ll hear from your team?”

“Hopefully soon. We never finished talking about you going back to work.”