LITMIR.BIZ

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see, I like to think of it more as quick-witted. After all, you’re here right where I wanted you. When I showed up on your doorstep, you weren’t going to give me the time of day. Just admit it. ‘Go home,’ you said. Now you’re stuck in a car with me while I interrogate you to my heart’s content. I’d say my motto is working out just fine.” She blew at the steaming cup and turned to her window, mumbling, “Just don’t tell my mother.”

      Wade eyed the back of her silky hair. It was knotted a bit from sleeping on it all night. He wished he had a comb for her. A cough escaped his throat at his outlandish thought. Promise lifted her head to assess his well-being. To assure her he was fine, Wade jumped back into the conversation. “Your mom doesn’t see things your way, I take it. I think I like her.”

      “You would.” Lacey swung to face him again. Her hair fell in a huge chocolaty curl over her shoulder.

      Again with the hair, he thought. He was so used to grooming Promise on a daily basis, he must be going soft.

      Lacey put out her free hand. “Speaking of which, may I use your phone? My parents are going to be expecting me for Christmas dinner tonight, and I don’t see that happening now.”

      Wade’s attention drifted from her outstretched hand to her expectant face as her words registered. When they did, he barked out a laugh. “See what I mean? Your motto’s not working for you. You thought you’d be home for Christmas dinner after driving up the East Coast one day and back down the next? That made sense to you?”

      She pursed her lips in irritation. “Just give me the phone.”

      “Can’t. Chucked it.”

      Her hand dropped. “What do you mean you chucked it?”

      “It’s called Planning Ahead 101. Let me enlighten you. These aren’t your street gangs doing drive-bys. For us to move forward safely, we must think strategically not only with our strategies, but theirs. That means lose anything they can even remotely trace us with. So sayonara, phone.”

      Lacey put her coffee in the cup holder and sagged against the hand-stitched leather seat with a sound of defeat. Promise, sensing turmoil around her, immediately stirred and pushed to a sitting position. Wade reached out to touch her so she would feel that he was fine, but before he did, Promise brought her paws to Lacey’s lap and rested there with imploring eyes.

      Wade felt his mouth drop. Promise had never tried to comfort anyone besides him. Wade wasn’t jealous; he was just surprised. He watched to see if it would work, and sure enough, a few absent strokes from Lacey and Promise had succeeded with her mission—to calm her down.

      And Lacey didn’t even realize it.

      That part Wade was jealous of. He wished Promise always succeeded with him like that, but there were times...

      “Fine.” Lacey broke into Wade’s dispiriting thoughts. “I get it. Phone’s gone. It’s for our own protection. I’ll find a pay phone or something.”

      “Your parents’ phone most likely has a trace. You can’t call anyone.”

      Lacey’s face crumpled in an instant. “You’re serious. This is bad.”

      “Your brother is dead. You tell me.”

      Lacey glanced out the window to the late-morning sun rising up from Virginia’s eastern seaboard. “I can’t tell you anything because you won’t tell me anything. How can I plan ahead when all I have is a key?”

      “All right, Questions. What do you want to know?”

      “First, I want to know who these people chasing me are.”

      “I don’t have that answer because I, myself, don’t know.”

      “Then, how do you know they can track us?”

      “Because they found your brother when it was his business not to be found. Your brother was a research analyst in the United States Army’s counterintelligence department. Do you know what that entails? Let me enlighten you. Gathering intelligence under the radar.”

      “So you think he died because of something he knew.”

      “I know he died because of something he knew.”

      “Did it have something to do with the army?”

      “No. It had something to do with me. I meant it when I said I killed him. I may not have caused the explosion, but I set the fuse when I asked him for help.” Wade gripped the steering wheel and took the next turn for a parking area. He shut the car down and kept his eyes in the rearview mirror. After thirty seconds, a black Lincoln slowly drove by. He kept the info to himself. No need to cause Lacey to make more panicked decisions. She may think she made her choices calm and collected, or quick-witted, as she touted, but her past choices weren’t life-and-death as they were now.

      “Where are we?” she asked.

      “Train station. There’s a locker inside that the key belongs to. Jeff and I used it as a dead drop.”

      “What’s that?”

      “When two people want to pass information to one another without being seen together, they can establish a place to leave the intel.”

      “Intel? Why does this all sound like some sort of spy mission? Wait. Was Jeff a spy?” The idea looked as if it was about to make her head implode. Wade knew the feeling.

      “Not Jeff. He was just helping me get information on the side.” Wade swallowed hard. Once he told Lacey all he knew, she would be in so much danger. But as of last night, she was a target anyway. Whether she knew it or not, she was a dead woman by just being near him. “Your brother wasn’t the spy, Lacey. The spy was my mother. And apparently, she’s still killing people from her grave. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re most likely next.”

      * * *

      Wade’s mother was a spy? For whom? Lacey puzzled over this while they hustled toward the train station. She had never known anyone who was a spy, or even knew someone who knew someone. She supposed they were out there, but that world was so far out of her reality, it seemed as if it belonged to Hollywood. Except the bullets that came her way last night weren’t blanks, and for someone to use real bullets on her, they obviously didn’t want some secret to get out. She wished she could tell them she didn’t know anything, their secrets were safe. But she supposed now she did know something and that made her a liability to someone.

      Liability. Just as Wade had referred to her. She didn’t want to let on, but his term for her hit hard. How many times had she heard her mother say Lacey would be the death of her?

      Lacey swallowed hard and put it out of her mind for Wade’s ogre of a mother instead. “So all this cloak-and-dagger stuff has to do with your mom?”

      “Not here,” Wade said with his hand at her lower back, pushing her toward the entrance. “We’ll talk later.”

      Concern saturated his voice. She glanced back to see him searching the road to his left. “Are the shooters here? Did they find us? It was probably your driving. You should let me drive next time.”

      “There won’t be a next time if we don’t keep moving.”

      Lacey ducked deeper behind the collar of Clay’s suit coat as she picked up her step.

      Promise barreled along with her, matching her stride, protecting her like a guard. Wade hadn’t even had to tell her to do so, the dog was so smart.

      They reached the entrance door, but at someone’s yell to “Stop right there!” they halted in their tracks.

      Lacey shot a look to her left, expecting to see one of the musclemen, but instead, she made contact with Wade’s muscled back in her face. He completely stepped in front of her, pushing her behind his wide frame as if she needed his protection. She may be small, but she could hold her own.

      Lacey shifted

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