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Zoe shivered at the thought. “The hell I will.”
Spence reached for her hand and clasped it in both of his. It was an oddly comforting touch, although her body recognized Spence’s skin and shivered.
“No, Davies isn’t getting hold of you.” He swept one finger up and down her right ring finger. “I got a message from Mel. That GPS-tracking ring should be delivered here today. I’ll have you put it on immediately and keep it on until Davies is caught.”
Spence called Woods, then took the charm down to the lobby. When he returned, he sat on the edge of her desk. “Woods was already in the lobby when I got down there,” he said. “Told me she was close by when I called. When I pressed her, she told me she felt bad that the Seattle PD didn’t have the resources to have cops drive past your condo and this building. So she makes it a point to drive past both of them several times a day. Watching for Davies.”
“Wow,” Zoe said, touched. “That’s a very thoughtful thing to do.”
“Yeah, it is. Maybe when this is over, you should take her out for dinner. Go to Madeline’s and let Julia fawn over her.”
“That’s a great idea,” she managed to say in spite of the lump in her throat. He hadn’t said ‘we’ should take her to Madeline’s, because there wouldn’t be a ‘we’. He couldn’t go to dinner with them. He’d be back in Montana or on another job that could be anywhere in the country.
‘Yeah.” He stood up from her desk and slid into the chair in front of the table and began working again. As if he hadn’t just reminded her that he’d be gone as soon as Ethan was caught.
Zoe stared at her desk for a long moment, trying to rebuild the wall she normally kept around her heart. But it was in tiny pieces, and she’d never find all of them. Never be able to rebuild it.
She shuffled through the papers until she was able to rein herself in. Then she picked up the top sheet and studied it, not seeing any of the words, desperate to get her mind off Spence and her dilemma.
* * *
The FedEx package from Mel arrived just before they had planned to leave. Thank God. Spence wanted Zoe locked down in every possible way, and the GPS ring would give him some peace of mind.
Although the asshole could still hurt Zoe.
He’d talk to her. Tell her not to struggle if Davies got hold of her. Tell her to play along with him unless he tried to hurt her or rape her. With that ring on her finger, Spence wouldn’t be far behind her.
He opened the package and pulled out a small, square box. Opened it and found a silver ring, flat on one side. There was also a charger shaped like the ring and a charging cord inside the package.
He stared at the ring for a long moment, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, then turned to Zoe. “The ring Mel fitted with a GPS system arrived,” he said. “Let’s get it on you. The only time I want you to take it off is when it needs to be charged, and I want you to do that in your office, when I’m with you.”
“Okay,” she said, swiveling her chair and standing up to come over and look at it. The band was about a quarter of an inch wide. Shiny. It looked nothing like a GPS tracker.
“Gimme your right hand,” he said, reaching for her.
She held it out, and he slid the ring onto her ring finger, pushing to get it over her knuckle. Once it was in place, he smoothed his thumb over her knuckle, hoping he hadn’t hurt her.
Staring at the ring made him jittery. Tense. He’d just slipped a ring onto her finger, something he’d never imagined he would do with a woman.
It wasn’t an engagement or wedding ring, but it felt oddly intimate. Like he was making a promise to Zoe.
He was. He was promising to keep her safe. To find her if Davies managed to snatch her at that conference. That was all. Nothing more than that.
Zoe was turning the ring with her thumb, moving it around on her finger as she stared at it. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing as him. That putting that ring on her finger felt way too intimate. Too personal. Too much like a pledge to her.
Finally she looked up at him. “Feels strange on my finger. I don’t usually wear rings.”
He saw the same tension in her expression he’d felt when he looked at it on her hand. As if it meant something else altogether.
“I think you’ll get used to it pretty quickly,” he said, eager to scrub his brain of the subject of rings and their symbolism. He scrabbled in the box for the charger and the cord, put them together and set them on her desk. “Take it off and charge it,” he said. “We’ll wait to leave until it’s fully charged.”
She ran her thumb over it again, sliding it across the surface, then tugged it off. Set it on the charger, then plugged it into a USB port on her power strip. She touched it once more, then looked up at him. “What kind of range does it have?”
Knowing Mel, it would be a huge range. It would probably reach all the way to Montana. And what the hell did that mean? Was he going to stare at the app all day, being a fool about Zoe?
There was a good chance of that.
“Plenty wide enough,” he finally said. “Your sister knows what she’s doing.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Mel also created an app for it, to go on a phone. She sent it to both me and Nico. I’ve already installed it, and Nico probably has, too.”
