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Bastard.
“I would’ve gotten away just fine,” I said. “The bad guys were down for the count.”
“And likely waking up pissed off right about now.” Theo straightened. “Tell me, what were you going to do once out on the open ocean with a blow-up raft?”
I clamped down on my lower lip to stop the sneer. Theo caught it anyway, and said, “I’m honestly curious. You’ve thought in quite a lot of detail thus far.”
I sighed, figuring telling him wouldn’t bust anything else up that hadn’t already been busted. “I’d hired a sailboat, gave the captain the coordinates on where to wait for me, and was going to get to land from there.”
“That’s putting a lot of hope in a stranger.”
“Welcome to the modern world,” I said, “Where women get into strange cars alone under the protection of an app, rent rooms owned by unknowns in foreign countries, and hire boats in the middle of the night from a website.”
Theo cocked his head.
“It would’ve been there. The sailboat, I mean,” I said. “There was good money in it for the captain.”
“Tell me, what was this vessel called?”
“Heaven Sent.”
Theo smiled.
“Goddamnit.” I threw myself back against the pillows.
He spread his hands. “Welcome to theHeaven Sent.”
“Is there no moment in this night where you decidednotto screw me over?” I asked the ceiling.
“I call it protecting.”
“Why, though?” I turned to look at him. “You had so many chances before. I gave you—”
“I’m aware.”
“And this was the tipping point for you? Right at the second I was gettinggood, predicting all the right moves, remaining one step ahead,nowis the time you decide to throw everything I’ve done, all I’ve crafted, into this damned ocean we’re floating across?”
“You needed to be stopped.”
“Took your fucking time,” I mumbled. Then, like a child, I crossed my arms and stared at the wall.
“And leaving Kai behind in Los Angeles was a part of your strategy, not a mistake,” Theo surmised.
“I couldn’t let him be here, in case it turned—” I stopped myself. Glared at Kai. “I couldn’t have any FBI intervention. I—”I was too close to the end game.
“Yet here you are,” Kai said, breaking his silence. His lips flatlined as he hit me with a stare. “I intervened.”
“Just not in the way you thought,” Theo said.
“No,” I agreed, and ended it at that. I was not about to admit to these men that they’d been one step ahead of me during the entire showcase of this night, even when I thought I’d been so genius-tricky when I discovered Neri had hired a helicopter to fly to his yacht the very night I was to be “commissioned” to him.
“Please don’t think of it as a betrayal,” Kai said near my side. “I only agreed to Theo’s plans to protect you.”
“When did Sax contact you?” I asked without looking at him.
When he didn’t answer, and Theo didn’t elaborate, I persisted. “I’m going to find out anyway, whether it be because I ask incessant questions or crawl out of that circle window and hold my breath underwater until you give in, so you might as well tell me.”
“A few months back,” Kai admitted.
