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But how would Jamal have caught up with her here?
He headed toward the store, and she felt herself close to panic. Chris wasn’t wearing his holster. The pistol was in the glove box.
She hit the button, and the compartment opened. There it was.
She could take him out before he entered the store and threatened Chris and dozens of others.
He was half the distance to the door. She wished she had a phone to call Chris. Warn him.
Her eyes pooled with tears. What the hell should she do?
Almost without thinking, she slammed the button for the horn on the steering wheel. The sound blared across the lot, and the man startled, turning in the direction of the noise.
It’s not Jamal.
Not even close, really.
She released the horn and slammed the glove box closed, then yanked open the door and leaned out just in time to vomit in the grass strip that bordered the parking lot.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Something had shaken Diana to the core. Chris could tell the moment he climbed into the vehicle. “I can’t help you if you refuse to talk to me.”
“You are helping me. And I’m fine. Just a little panic attack while you were in the store.”
Chris didn’t believe that for a moment, but was hard pressed to come up with any other reason for her to have been rattled so deeply while sitting alone in a car without a phone.
“You don’t…have a phone, do you, babe?”
“No, babe. You watched me destroy it.”
“You don’t like being called ‘babe.’”
“I don’t mind being called ‘babe’ at all. What I don’t like is the question that came with it.”
He placed a finger under her chin and gently tilted her head so she couldn’t avoid his gaze. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to upset you. Babe.”
A tear spilled down her cheek as she held his gaze. Finally, she said, “I’m just scared.”
He wasn’t sure he believed it was that simple, but still, it was hard to argue. She had plenty of reasons to be afraid. “We’re going to figure this out.” He brushed his lips over hers, then released her and grabbed the bag he’d placed in the back seat and set it in her lap. “I got a few burners in addition to the tablet you wanted. We’ll leave one of the burners in a park for Boyd to pick up and deliver to Freya.”
“You really think he’ll do it?”
He put the 4Runner in Reverse and backed out of the parking space. “By all accounts, he’s on the level. Gardner was just a contract. Raptor doesn’t turn down clients like Gardner without good reason, and this was the first time Gardner hired them.”
It had been a complicated game of “Telephone” for Chris to get that information, but he was thankful Xavier and Luke had been willing to play.
He pulled onto the main road and headed back toward the interstate. “Set up the tablet. Check your email.” He was surprised he needed to give her the nudge, but she’d been so rattled when he got back to the car, it was as if she’d forgotten about the reason he’d gone into the electronics store to begin with.
She was a far cry from the calm woman he’d first met in a canyon, but then she’d known she had a tiny bit of control in the situation given that she was the valuable asset everyone wanted alive.
Now she had no control, and he’d bet some players in this round of the game wanted her dead.
Diana opened the sleek new tablet’s box. It came only partially charged, so she plugged it into the SUV’s power port as she created a log-in with a fake username.
Next, she plugged in and configured the virtual private network on the portable prepaid 5G hotspot Chris had purchased.
“Okay, it’s set up.”
