Saved by a Dangerous Man (6 page)

“You make us sound like the mafia,” I said.
 

Henry’s laugh was a bark that cut through the noise. He had finished the Mai Tai, and I watched as he pulled out his phone. Now that I was paying attention, I realized that I’d never seen this crappy burner before.
 

“Looks like you need another drink,” I said. I had no idea how I would get his phone away, but getting him drunk would certainly help.

“Order us another round,” he said. “A Manhattan for me.” He stood, the phone in his hand in a way that suggested he planned to use it soon.
 

Panicked, I grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

“Gotta make a call, my sweet.” He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, but his shoulders were already pointed toward the exit.

“Leaving me alone in the bar?” I asked coquettishly. I needed to get that program on his phone before he made this call.

“Only a few minutes.” He went off, clearly distracted.

Damn
. Worst femme fatale ever.
 

And what horrible timing. Surely he was talking to his source—the FBI leak. They probably knew by now that Corbin wasn’t in Tampa. The meeting was supposed to be in just an hour.
 

I waved over the bartender and ordered another round, specifying that I wanted a Mai Tai as weak as humanly possible. I abandoned the Manhattan on a table that hadn’t been bussed yet and slipped out the bar.

Henry stood, facing away, over near some flowering bushes. After the air conditioning and cool drinks, the outside air was warm and lazy, thick like syrup. I felt my pores open, my hair beginning to frizz.
 

I crept up silently behind him. Being quiet wasn’t easy in strappy sandals that barely stayed on my feet, and when a humid wind rushed past my legs, I had to press the bottom of my dress against my thighs to keep from doing a Marilyn Monroe.

“No, I’ll take my chances,” Henry snapped. “Are you sure?” He was silent. Then “Goddamn mother fucker!” exploded out of his mouth.

I straightened, startled.

“Why should I pay you if your information wasn’t good?” The ugliness in his voice surprised me because Henry had always seemed tightly controlled. “I flew all the way out here for nothing. You should be paying me!”

More silence.

“Fuck!” He dropped his arm, squeezing the phone rhythmically in his fist.
 

Knowing that he would turn at any second, I reached out and tapped his shoulder.

He whirled, catching my wrist in a viselike grip. I didn’t have to fake my shock, and I only barely managed not to knee him in the nuts.

“What are you doing out here?” he snarled.

“I… I…”
 

Henry’s face softened, and he released me. “Sorry if I scared you,” he murmured. “What did you need?”

“I don’t like sitting alone in bars.” I fingered one of my curls and batted my lashes, feeling like an idiot, but Henry seemed to be lapping it up. “Some guy came up to me.”

Henry slipped an arm around my shoulder. There was an acrid edge to his scent that made me want to move away.
 

“I heard you yelling,” I ventured as we returned inside. “Something wrong?”

His eyes went steely. “We made this trip for nothing.”

“What? Why?”
Now
was the time to push him, but guilt thumped in my stomach. Henry was just doing his job, and I knew how it felt to show up to catch a bond jumper and find out that I’d wasted time and gas money.

“My bounty isn’t going to show.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. But Lagos will turn up sooner or later, and then you’ll get him,” I said as I sat. Fresh drinks awaited us.

“Audrey?”

“Yeah?”

“I never told you who I was tracking,” Henry said. “I made a point of it.”

I turned and found myself on the receiving end of a suspicious glare.
 

“You said it was the biggest bounty,” I said before taking a nervous sip. The bartender, bless his soul, had mixed me a fruit cocktail. “Is it Apuentes? Or Smithfield?” Good thing I had the list memorized from staring at it so much.

Henry sat heavily on his stool and reached for his Manhattan. “No. You guessed right. It’s Lagos. Slippery fucking bastard.”

“What happened?”

Henry shook his head, his mouth a tight slash across his face.
 

I wanted to dig for information, but now wasn’t the time. Get him drunk first. “Well, we’ll still have fun.” I drained the fake Mai Tai and asked the bartender for another.
 

An hour later, Henry had downed four stiff drinks. The more he drank, the more he relaxed. Except he didn’t want to chat. Soon he just ignored my questions, a sloppy leer on his face. His hands, though, they had plenty to say, and I had to keep swatting him away from my knees.

I hoped that Corbin’s photo-stalker didn’t catch any of that.

“You are so beautiful,” Henry slurred, blinking at me through red-rimmed eyes. He kept looking at my lips, and I knew he was going to try to kiss me.

Time to put my plan in action. “I need to make a phone call. Promised my mom I’d let her know when I got in, and we’re having so much fun that I completely forgot.” The words poured out in a rush. I really was a terrible liar. “Could be a bit.”

He didn’t take the hint.

“I guess I have to go upstairs and retrieve my phone.”

Nada.

I stood, leaned on the stool and tried again. “Or you think the hotel will let me call from the lobby?”

“You leaving me?”

I licked my lips and smiled. “I forgot my cell phone.”

“Here.” Henry handed his over, his sticky fingers tangling with mine.

A thrill of excitement buzzed through me. This was so easy. Maybe I’d missed my calling—shoulda been a spy. “Thanks.” I turned to leave, clutching my bag.

“Where you going? Call her from here.”

“It’s so loud…”

“I’ll come out with you. Massage your shoulders.” He jabbed his fingers into my elbow, possibly as a demonstration of his skill. I edged away. He hooked an arm around my waist. “Had enough of this bar anyway. Gimme a sec.”
 

I wiggled out of his grasp and sat down again, unable to think of a compelling reason to run out the door with Henry’s phone.
 

Ok, so maybe this spy thing wasn’t so easy after all.
 

Henry twisted to signal the bartender. My hands moved without waiting for a command from my brain. I hit the button to bring up the recent calls just as Henry turned back.
 

“Oh, I pushed the wrong button,” I said, handing it over. The two most recent phone numbers were burned in my mind. Memorizing details in a flash was a skill my father had hammered into me and Rob. He’d been paranoid that someone would kidnap us for ransom or revenge, and we were expected to recite the license plate numbers of any car that looked the least bit suspicious.

He’d even gone so far as to have a friend drive by one afternoon, acting shady. Rob and I had found our father’s paranoia infuriating, but now we could both look at lists of numbers and quickly remember them. There was a trick to it: make a story with the numbers. At least that was my strategy.
 

“Fixed it, doll.” He slid the phone up my arm, up my shoulder and neck.

I ducked away. “Since we’re heading to bed, I’ll just call her in a few minutes,” I said. Henry looked at his watch, and I quickly added, “She’s such a night owl. She’ll still be awake.”

He stood too close to me in the elevator, and once inside the suite, Henry migrated toward my bedroom door.
 

“After you finish…” he started.

“Bedtime,” I said.
Maybe not sound so cheery about it, Audrey.

“We don’t have to do anything. Make out. I could hold you—”

For a moment, I weighed my chances of squeezing information out of him against the certainty that he would at the very least kiss me.
 

The thought of his hands roaming higher than my knees made the choice easy. “I’m sure,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Let’s take this slow.”

He didn’t move to leave, so I cracked the door and slipped through, bracing myself, expecting Henry to try to follow.
 

He continued to his room.

So not a total creep after all. I engaged the lock, sighed and kicked off my sandals. Little blisters had sprouted across my toes where the straps had rubbed into my skin.
 

I turned on the television, jacked up the volume to obscure any sounds in case Henry was eavesdropping, and dug Corbin’s phone out of my bag. I texted him the snooped phone numbers as well as a summary of the night’s conversation. After I sent the messages, they stayed in the box for a few seconds, then disappeared.

Frowning, I composed and sent another text that also disappeared.

The phone buzzed with a reply.
Got it. Erased the message. Thank you. Any luck otherwise?

I blinked at the message. I hadn’t realized that was something one could do.
No. He keeps the phone all the time.

I sent it, and it disappeared along with Corbin’s earlier reply. Now that was just creepy. Ten minutes later, a new text arrived.
Thank you. Got all the info we need. You can forget about the box.
 

I let out a tense breath.
Ok.
 

His response:
Please take first plane tomorrow?

Me:
No. Thanks anyway.

Perhaps if he’d called and asked, I would have let him talk me into it.
 

I watched my latest message disappear. It occurred to me that he could have deleted the sweet messages he sent after our first night together… but had chosen not to. Maybe he knew exactly how many dozens—ok,
hundreds
—of times I’d taken this cell phone out of the drawer in my hallway and re-read his last words to me.
 

My face blushed hot. That would be embarrassing. And unfair. Though it would also explain why he’d so easily assumed, when turning up after a two-month absence, that I’d still be interested. Or maybe he had put a tail on me.
Were you spying on me since November?
I texted.

His response was immediate.
Define spying. Joking! But no. Not really.
 

I wrote back:
We need to have a serious conversation about how you use technology.

He replied:
First we discuss you going alone, unarmed, after murderers during snowstorms.
 

Then he sent:
Then we talk about you going away with men who aren’t me…
 

I sighed.
I want to hear your voice.

He wrote:
You will.

All the messages disappeared. I stared at the phone for a few minutes, hoping he would call. Nothing. I felt strangely abandoned. I wanted him to wish me good night or something.

Oh well. The man had work to do. I wondered if that meant he’d have to kill someone. We
really
needed to find some time to talk about this stuff. Discussing his job was never the first order of business. That needed to change. I nodded. Going forward, it would.

Of course, easier said than done. If Corbin showed up at my door right then, chances were that we’d be on the bed within three minutes.
 

Maybe one minute, since my current dress was a lot less of an impediment than winter wear.

I looked expectantly at the door. “No?” I asked.
 

Apparently not.

Curious, I examined the faux pencil box again. I ran my fingers over the inside, trying to imagine how it worked. I finally decided that it might be an amplifier of some sort. It would allow the satellites to find the phone, overwhelm Henry’s blocker, and download the program.
 

Despite the size, Corbin’s magic pencil box was of negligible weight. Might as well keep it handy. I returned it to my purse.
 

I moved the carry-on bag off my bed and took out my pajamas, then stripped off my dress.
 

The best part of hotels was reliable hot water. Henry’s door was open, but he was passed out on the bed, fully dressed and snoring.
 

Apparently my luck wasn’t all bad.

I showered quickly and slipped into the soft pajamas, turned off the television, and got into bed. The last thing I did was check the phone. One message.
Good night, baby.

I lay there in the dark, smiling like a fool.

The next morning, Henry barely acknowledged me when I walked out of my room. I chalked it up to his disappointment over Corbin slipping through his fingers.
 

At the hotel breakfast buffet, he stared at the television for twenty minutes. Even when commercials came on.
 

“Hungover?” I asked finally.

“No.” And he fell back into a stony silence. It almost made me miss drunk Henry.

In the meantime, if there was a chance that Henry was going to do something interesting, I was going to be there.
 

So we spent the day together, doing touristy things. I’d seen billboards for a wildcat sanctuary, and Henry agreed to go, though he didn’t seem to care one way or another. During the tour, he kept ducking away from our group to make phone calls, and try as I might, I couldn’t get close enough to hear.
 

When I asked about going to Clearwater Beach, Henry seemed completely uninterested.
 

“My gramps is like you,” I said. “No sense of adventure. All he does is sit in his urn…”

Henry laughed, then his face closed down again. “Ok,” he said. “Let’s go to the beach.”
 

The parking lot was full, and Henry insisted on dropping me off while he stayed near the illegally parked car, making phone calls that, from where I stood, didn’t seem to be improving his mood.
 

I rolled up my capris and waded out into the surf, then walked barefoot in the beautiful white sand, my sandals swinging from my fingertips. Henry seemed to have lost his attraction for me overnight. If this was permanent, it was a relief.