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Ridiculous, considering she’d spent a good chunk of her adult life based out of Anchorage, but there it was. Freezing rain she could handle. She’d always thought she’d make an excellent getaway car driver, particularly if the bank robbers struck Camelot in the middle of a March ice storm. Put her in the passenger seat in heavy snowfall, though, and she lost her Bond Girl cool.
Sean didn’t answer her question. He’d reverted to rock again, and she hadn’t figured out how to soften him up.
Not that she’d had an opportunity. They hadn’t been alone together all day. After breakfast, he kept busy doing whatever-the-hell, and she’d been interviewing anyone and everyone she could pin down.
Sean had asked her to keep talking to Judah and also to try to speak with as many of the staff as possible. The idea was to try to determine whether any of them held a grudge that might make them likely stalkers.
She’d tried to take the whole thing seriously, even though it seemed much more likely that the messages were coming from outside Judah’s payroll than from somebody on it. But she continually got sidetracked by people’s interestingness, realizing too late that she’d begun chatting with Judah about his mad origami skills instead of the potential threat to his life, and that basically she sucked at being a hard-ass.
Resolved to do better, she’d found herself keeping Ginny company in the bar while the girl knocked back shots of Jägermeister. All it had taken was a question about how she’d met Judah, and the former Pella High cheerleader had begun spilling the long, sad story of her unrequited love for her boss. Ginny had written an essay about her “hometown hero” for the high school newspaper and won an opportunity to interview Judah in Chicago. He’d taken to her, groomed her, and put her on his staff after graduation. She’d assumed it meant something.
Rather than tell her it didn’t, Katie had ordered them both a round. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
Now, though, she had to admit she had no idea what she was doing. What coaching she’d managed to coax out of Caleb over the past year had covered everyday security agenting—assessing the protection needs of a business, acting as bodyguard for someone with a public profile, that sort of thing. He’d never taught her how to deal with a situation like this. Probably because there had never been a situation like this.
It would have been nice to talk it over with Sean, but Sean hadn’t been available. Over the course of the day, she’d exchanged texts and a few emails with him, but he’d put off meeting one-on-one, saying they could compare notes later on.
It was later on. It was, in fact, midnight, and they should have been sleeping, but Sean’s haste meant they had six or seven hours to kill together—maybe longer, if the snow really slowed them down. Katie didn’t want all that time in the car with Sean. The weather made her restless, her feeling of incompetence was getting heavy, and the awkwardness between her and her chauffeur sat between them, a bulky, unwelcome stranger she’d like to push out the passenger door and leave to freeze to death by the side of the road.
“The snow’s pretty bad. We could check back in and hole up for the night,” she suggested. “Try again tomorrow.”
Sean’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look over at her.
“No, huh?”
Silence from the peanut gallery. But had the steering wheel been alive, it would be gasping its last.
“Didn’t you live in California for most of your adulthood? I’m concerned about your snow-driving credentials. I’m thinking probably I should drive.”
“I’m d-driving.”
“But the roads are—”
“N-not as b-b-bad as they look.”
Stuttering a lot tonight. She’d heard him slip a few times earlier today, too, when he was talking to other people. He’d said the stutter was getting worse, but it seemed he still spoke almost flawlessly to everyone but her.
They hugged Lake Erie for several miles before Sean cut east to I-90 and they stopped at a booth to pick up a toll card. As they merged onto the highway, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and handed it to her. “C-can you g-get the m-money out for the toll ffor later?”
“Sure.”
Bathed in the glow of the on-ramp floodlights, she figured out what it would cost them when they eventually got off the tollway and found a ten to cover it. He carried a chunk of hundred-dollar bills worthy of a heist movie. “Sure you have enough cash?” she asked, before remembering Bond Girls were supposed to be blasé ab
out money.
“I l-like cash. It’s sssimple.”
“That it is.” She poked around in his wallet. Caleb said she was supposed to gather information from her environment. Plus, she enjoyed going through guys’ wallets. They were so often capsule versions of the men who carried them.
Sean’s was next to empty. He carried cash, a couple of credit cards, his driver’s license, and a handful of identical business cards. No photos, no gift cards or frequent-coffee-drinker cards or grocery-store-discount key fobs, no emergency condom.
In the headlights of a passing car, she read his driver’s license. Sean Jason Owens. Height: six foot one. Weight: 185. Address in San Jose, California.
No Ohio license. No Ohio anything. He hadn’t been kidding last night about leaving, or just brushing her off. He really didn’t live in Camelot.
At least, not in his head.
“You’re supposed to have an Ohio license by now,” she told him. “If you don’t, they fine you when they pull you over for speeding. Happened to me after I moved home from Alaska.”
