Of course he noticed. “Something wrong with the highway?” he asked.
How exactly was I supposed to answer that? That I wanted to spend more time with him, so I thought I’d take the slower route?
My slight laugh couldn’t be described as anything but awkward. “Yeah. I don’t like driving on fast roads. They make me nervous.”
He seemed to relax a little. “Sure. I understand.”
He pulled out his phone and typed something. Great. Maybe he didn’t want to talk to me at all and this had all been a stupid mistake on my part. That seemed to keep happening when it came to him.
“That art store you were at.” He glanced at me. “Would that be Brickman’s?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Have you heard of it?” Why would he have heard of it? It was a small chain store that sold basic supplies.
“No, but I see it here on my phone. My signal seems to be going in and out.”
“Oh yeah.” I laughed that stupid nervous laugh again. “We’re kind of entering a dead zone for about twenty square miles. No cell phone coverage at all.”
“Right.” He relaxed a little bit more, which was good since I was getting more nervous and stupid with each minute. “Got to love Wyoming mountains.”
“Yes, exactly.” He did understand. He did—
I let out a scream as he grabbed the steering wheel, jerking us off the road. I slammed on the brakes. “What are you doing?”
“Turn off the engine, Wavy.”
Oh God. The calmer he got, the more dangerous he was. I saw that now. I turned off the engine and immediately found my head pinned against the window—his hand on my neck, long fingers spread out across my skull. I let out a whimper at the feel of the cold glass against my face.
“What were you doing in Reddington City?”
“I told you. Art supplies.”
“Okay. Let me rephrase. What were you doing near me in Reddington City? Brickman’s Art Supply is on the opposite side of town.”
Oh God. I didn’t want to tell him. “It was just a coincidence. Really.”
His hand pushed me more firmly against the window. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to know that if he decided to smash my face through it, it wouldn’t require much effort on his part. “In my line of work, I don’t believe in coincidences. So, you’re going to have to be more specific. What were you doing near the Hemingway building?”
Maybe if I stuck to my original line, he might believe me. “I was there by accident. I got turned around.”
More pressure against the window. “Are you working for them?”
“What?” He was firing off questions too fast to understand. “Who?”
“Mosaic, Wavy. I have to admit you had me fooled with the whole tray and all the friendly talking this morning at the diner. But there’s no way I can believe that you just happened to be near the Hemingway building today.”
God, I was going to have to tell him the truth. I’d almost rather be branded a part of a terrorist organization than tell him the truth. But more pressure against my head and neck told me I didn’t have any choice. “I was talking to my brother Finn. I asked him where you were staying, and he mentioned that you were going into Reddington City.”
“And Finn spilled my plans to you?”
I tried to shake my head but couldn’t move. “No, all I could get out of him was Reddington City. But then I snooped on his phone and saw the address. I decided to take a chance.”
“What?”
I knew it sounded preposterous. “I decided to come out here to get my art supplies early and thought maybe if I found you, I could pretend like it was happenstance and see if you wanted to go to dinner.”
The pressure against my head eased the slightest bit. “Dinner.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt more like an idiot in my entire life. “Look, I live in a small town. I’ve lived there my entire life. I know every single person. So I meet this guy who’s pretty interesting and isn’t threatened when I nearly knock him unconscious. So yeah, dinner.”
He released me.
I turned as he shook his head. “I’m sorry. It’s that you’re… never quite what I expect.”
“Well, that’s a first because I feel like my life has become stagnant and I never—”
The windshield shattered in front of us, and I screamed.
5
Wavy
Ian grunted before he grabbed my head once more, pushing me down this time. Then he reached past me and yanked the handle for my door.
“Shit. They found us. We’ve got to go right now. Get out, stay low. Head for the trees.”
Another shot rang out. The headrest of my seat exploded where my head had been a second ago. If Ian hadn’t pushed me down, I’d be dead right now.
“Go!” he yelled, and I crawled out the door, struggling not to panic. Someone was shooting at us.
Ian crawled out right behind me. “Low and fast. Trees. Now.”
He grabbed my hand, and we both ran. Despite my terror, I realized that Ian was keeping himself between me and the direction the bullets were coming from. He jerked me to the left and then the right as we dove for the trees, trying not to make ourselves easy targets.
As soon as we hit the tree line, we straightened, and he pushed me in front of him. “We have to keep running. They’re going to come after us.”
I didn’t argue with him. I had pieces of the headrest all over my clothes, and it should’ve been my brains. Another shot rang out a few seconds later, confirming they were still in pursuit. Worse? They were gaining on us.
Damn it, I spent too much time in my studio and not enough time doing cardio. I was slowing him down. “You need to go without me. They’re going to catch us.” I had to stop for a second to get enough air to continue.
“I’m not leaving you.” But he was looking around for an Option B since running wasn’t going to work. “I don’t have any weapons, so I can’t eliminate them from a distance. I can probably take each of them one-on-one in close combat, but it will be risky.”
“What’s the primary objective here?” I’d been around my brother, the Special Forces soldier, and the Linear guys long enough to know the lingo.
“Getting you out. Survival, always survival.”
“I can’t outrun these guys but I’ve been hanging out in these woods my entire life, so I can out hide them, if you’ll trust me.”
I didn’t pose the statement lightly because I knew he wouldn’t take it lightly. Somebody like Ian DeRose did not trust people easily.
But he just said, “Lead the way.”
Okay. I needed to treat this as the most important game of capture the flag ever. And the key was letting the bad guys get in front of us while thinking that we were still ahead of them. And then finding somewhere to hide. Most of the trees weren’t big enough to provide cover. I started back the way we’d come.
Ian probably didn’t like the fact that we were doubling back toward danger, but he didn’t slow down or resist. He stayed with me. More importantly, the bad guys wouldn’t think we’d head back in their direction.