Cross Roads, page 12
Lena used her baby voice. “If I show weakness, people won’t think I’m manly enough.”
“Not the reason I don’t accept.”
“A revelation. I’m on tenterhooks.”
His eyes narrowed. “Part of the journey to mastering meditation is conquering the mind’s tendency to focus on everything and nothing. No one can help me with that part.”
“First off, no one ever masters meditation. It’s like most forms of art. They take a lifetime to perfect, yet there will always be imperfection.”
“And?”
So much disgruntlement in that one word.
“Not everyone can or should take the journey alone.”
Lena let the following silence settle around her as she leaned into each curve of the dark, winding road. She tried not to read too much into her own words. Tried not to think about all the lonely years behind her or the ones stretching out before her.
“I apologize if I brought up a difficult topic earlier,” he said. “My curiosity chip is always running.”
“Probably why you’re such a good white hat.”
He gave her a half smile. “Someone’s been googling.”
“You’re not the only one who can background check.”
He studied her for a long, pulse-quickening moment. Lena kept her attention on the road. Her body loose.
“Your background is curiously blank prior to age fifteen.”
Years of redirecting conversations away from her personal life kicked in. “I moved around a lot after my parents’ deaths.”
“Did you live in caves?”
“What?”
“Wear deer skins? Communicate by drawing stick figures in the dirt?”
Realizing where he was going, she attempted to throw him off-balance. “As a matter of fact, we did. Pro tip: green leaves make better toilet paper than brown ones.”
He angled his body toward her. Leaned in.
Her muscles coiled.
“Because that’s what it would take to keep me from finding you.” He paused. “That, or witness protection program.”
23
If Rohan hadn’t been watching, he would have missed the catch in Lena’s breath.
“When did you enter WITSEC?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“For a computer geek, you have an active imagination.”
“Gaming, remember? There’s more to the story than shooting shit up.” He considered her a moment. “How did your parents die?”
“Car accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
She squinted her eyes as if looking into a murky crystal ball for fragments of her past. The car drifted to the right, and Rohan reached over and fingered the steering wheel, adding pressure until the vehicle glided into the safety zone again.
The adjustment snapped her back to the present. “I don’t like talking about that time of my life.”
“Why not?”
“None of your damn business.”
“While we’re working together, everything about you is my business.”
“You’re a delusional, virus-trafficking, egomaniac if you think I’m going to let you nose around into every corner of my life—”
The dashboard blacked out, and the Verge’s engine powered down.
Darkness engulfed them.
For a heart-freezing moment, Rohan couldn’t see anything. Not even the pavement.
“What happened?” Lena asked, panicked.
“Did you touch anything?”
“No.” The bones in Lena’s hand stood out as she gripped the wheel tighter and tried pumping the brake.
Thank God they’d just entered a straight stretch, but it wouldn’t last long. No mountain road ever did.
Rohan blinked several times to engage his night vision. Thankful for the three-quarter moon riding the skies tonight. Shadows pulled away from each other, and he could now distinguish the road from the mountainside to their left and the cliff to their right.
“Rohan, the brake isn’t working.”
“There’s no power.”
“No power?” she all but screamed. “Shit!”
The road curved to the right, while gravity pulled at them, speeding up their momentum. She practically lay on the steering wheel to keep them on the road.
“Put all of your weight on the brake pedal,” he ordered, and reached over to help her steer the car.
“I’m trying, but it feels like I’m pushing against a rock.”
“Don’t let up.”
The road switched to the left and their tires crunched against gravel as the vehicle veered toward a four-thousand-foot drop-off.
“Rohan!”
His arms strained to help keep them on the asphalt. When the road straightened again and the car slowed, he saw their best opportunity to survive this.
“To the left of the steering wheel is a control panel,” he said, keeping his voice calm but precise. “Do you see it?”
Her gaze flicked down for a millisecond. “Yes.”
“That’s where you’ll find the parking brake lever. Feel for it.”
“Got it.”
“When I tell you, hook your fingers beneath the lever and draw it toward you.” He pointed to the right side of the road. “We’re headed for that pull off.” He wrapped his fingers around the door’s grab handle and braced himself.
“That’s not a pull off. That’s a sliver of dirt.”
“Now!”
She yanked on the brake lever, and the Verge came to a jarring halt.
A thank-you-Jesus silence fell around them.
“Turn on the hazards,” he said over the blood pounding in his ears.
She did as instructed. “Has this ever happened before?”
With the danger behind them, he had time to think, analyze. Conclusion reached. He would fucking murder whoever had disabled his vehicle and put Lena in danger. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
“What’s the plan? Stand here and wait for someone to come by?”
He checked his phone. “No service.” He shoved the device into his front pocket. “Grab your bag,” he said, doing the same.
“Why?”
He motioned downhill. “Hope you wore a comfortable pair of shoes.”
“We’re walking?”
“Unless you know how to fly.”
* * *
As it happened, Lena’s ankle-boots weren’t ideal for downhill hiking.
“How far is the next town?” she asked, repositioning her large shoulder bag across her body.
“I’m guessing about five miles.”
“You don’t know?”
“Do I look like a GPS?”
“I would have thought someone like you would have memorized the route.”
“Someone like me?”
“Techy. Prepared. Anal. Don’t you get off on data?”
“Interesting data, maybe.”
“The distance to the next town is pretty damn interesting about now, isn’t it?”
“Eight.”
She blinked. “Eight miles?”
“On the pain in the ass scale. You land on eight.”
“Sounds like I have room for improvement.”
“Damn straight.”
“I’m still two points off the mark of being a full pain in the ass.”
He threw her an annoyed look, but she didn’t miss the slight curve at the corner of his mouth.
They fell into silence for several minutes.
“Tell me about this Bobby Balor,” she said over the rhythmic slap of their soles against pavement.
“What do you want to know?”
“How’d he learn about the painting?”
“All we could get from him was that a friend overheard Palmer talking about hiring you to make a copy of Walking Woman. Balor learned it was worth over a million dollars and decided to make quick work of his debts.”
“Friend? Sounds unlikely. There are several degrees of separation between Balor and Palmer.”
“Agreed.”
“He sold the painting to this Atlanta art dealer?”
“So he said.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“He’s a criminal. Everything he says is suspect.”
Lena’s chest tightened. “What if his little sister has cancer and the funds from the sale would help pay her medical bills?”
“He doesn’t have a sister, let alone a sick one.”
“But what if he did? Would he still be a criminal in your eyes?”
“Are you feeling sorry for this guy?”
“I’m just pointing out that not every situation is black and white. As you should know.”
“Why is that?”
She held her breath as she veered around a pulverized roadkill that was now little more than tufts of fur. “Based on what I’ve seen around the Friary, BARS will do whatever takes to recover an asset and return it to its owner.” Helicopter, drone, outdoor range, mysterious building Johona hadn’t wanted to talk about.
“You’d be right.”
“But what if the owner you’re so dedicated to serving had stolen the asset in the first place?”
A pained expression crossed his face.
“It’s already happened?” When he didn’t confirm, she pushed on. “What separates what you do from someone who’s desperate to survive?”
“Is that why you copy other artists’ work instead of filling that blank canvas with your own original?”
The question slammed into her. Tore at her insides like a ravenous wolf.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. It was as if a vacuum had sucked out every molecule of oxygen streaming through her blood.
How had he figured out her greatest fear? Or was it a regret? Somehow, somewhere, she had lost herself in the beauty created by others.
It took her a solid minute to realize that Rohan hadn’t figured out anything. His goal had been to throw her off-balance, and he’d succeeded. Because she’d allowed her insecurities to overwhelm her.
Again.
Lena eyed the extreme drop off on her right, wondering if she could maneuver herself around to his left side without raising his alarm bells.
“If you want to end me,” he said, guessing the direction of her thoughts, “I’d prefer a less painful mode of death than toppling down the side of a mountain.”
“Let’s stick to business conversation from here on out. Deal?”
“Anything to keep your finger off the trigger.”
“Back to Bobby Balor. If he’s already sold the painting to this dealer in Atlanta, wouldn’t that mean Bobby had a buyer lined up ahead of time?”
They came around a bend, and Rohan put out a hand to stay her, pointing ahead of them. Four silhouettes of various sizes stood in the middle of the road.
Spooked, they shot forward, bounding down the road, their white tails catching the moonlight as they waved side to side in order to confuse and distract. The deer continued for a while before dashing off to the left, into the forested mountainside.
Delighted to see wildlife that didn’t eat people for a late-night snack, Lena grinned at Rohan. He stared at her mouth as if he’d never seen her smile before.
Maybe he hadn’t.
His scrutiny made her look away. “Did Balor strike you as someone intelligent enough to pull off a heist on his own and have a buyer in his back pocket?”
“Not even close. Burglarizing your loft while you were there proves he’s an idiot.”
“But I wasn’t supposed to be there, remember? You came to my loft because I was late for our meeting.”
Rohan stopped. “Who knew about the meeting?”
“You, Lynette, and the rest of your crew, I presume.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“Who would I tell?”
“Social media?”
Only a guy would ask a single woman who lived alone if she posted her schedule online. “Really?”
He cursed under his breath.
“What?”
“I’m one hundred percent certain the meeting didn’t leak out of BARS.”
“And if I didn’t tell anyone . . .”
His eyes met hers through the gloom. “You’ve got a bug problem.”
24
Forty-five minutes later, Lena still couldn’t bring herself to believe someone had planted a listening device in her loft or had somehow tapped her phone. First, a stalker. Then ghosts from her past haunting her. Now, this.
Why her? She didn’t live in a James Bond world. She painted, she ate, she slept. Queue up boring music. Repeat.
But as absurd as it sounded, she couldn’t come up with a more plausible reason for how Bobby Balor knew she was supposed to be at Triple B the morning of the burglary.
With every downward step, her toes crammed into the V-shaped toe well of her boots. God only knew what subcutaneous damage she was doing to her nails.
Besides the possibility of losing her toenails, the sliding motion hurt like hell.
To take her mind off the pain, she refocused on the bug business. An idea started to form. One too ridiculous to consider, but too credible to discount.
Where had she been the moment she’d received Lynette’s call?
Halting, she lifted her phone to check her call log.
“Problem?” Rohan asked.
“Checking to see when your mom first reached out to me.”
“You need this information while we’re standing on a dark mountain road?”
Ignoring his sardonic comment, she scrolled through her short list of incoming calls, while trusting him to keep an eye—and ear—out for traffic. Once she found Lynette’s name, she tapped the information icon.
12:22 p.m.
Lunch time.
After a bout of physical therapy for acute shoulder pain, Lena had forced herself into the habit of taking a walk midday to stretch out her muscles and give herself a mental break. She used the time to run errands, grab something to eat, or browse the library’s shelves.
Lena pushed through her memories, searching for that day, that conversation, that time.
12:22
12:22
12:22
A blurry image of her sitting on a barstool, waiting for Grady, Triple B’s smooth-headed bartender, to deliver her to-go order surfaced. A phone call. Lynette Blackwell. A conversation. Switch to speaker phone. Check calendar. A date and time agreed upon.
All while sitting amid a busy lunch crowd.
“Dammit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I set up the meeting with Lynette while waiting for my lunch order at Triple B.”
Rohan motioned for them to continue walking. “Someone who knew you, or knew of you, with a nefarious mindset, overheard your conversation, set up a heist and a buyer in . . . how many days?”
She glanced down at her phone. “Two.”
“Stretches my belief of what’s possible.” He switched his duffel bag to the other hand. “However, if Balor was already watching you, waiting for an opportunity to snatch a painting, I suppose he could’ve pulled it off.”
Watching you.
Lena’s steps slowed as she recalled the tingling sensation at the base of her neck when she walked home from the art store.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Rohan asked, stopping again.
The art store incident happened after the burglary. Why would Balor stalk her once he had the painting? Had he been gearing up to hit her loft again?
She rubbed at the pressure building in her temple. It had been years since she’d felt this unnerving helplessness. She didn’t like it.
Not one whit.
Rohan tucked her hair behind her ear, startling her. “Headache?”
“It’s a lot to think about.”
“I’ll help you figure out what’s going on. We’ll eliminate the possibilities, one by one.”
His reassurance loosened the tight knot of uncertainty in her stomach. “I want to speak with Bobby Balor.”
“When we get back. Right now, let’s keep our focus on Killian Byrne. Get the painting from him and/or squeeze whatever intelligence we can out of him.”
She nodded her acknowledgment.
Searching for a new topic of discussion, she asked, “How do you like working for the family business?”
He raised a brow. “Didn’t we agree to avoid personal questions?”
“I asked about your family business.”
His brow hitched higher.
“Consider it a gray area.”
He shook his head, but amusement curled at the corner of his eyes.
“Most of the time, I like it. Can’t beat the commute and I can set my own hours.” He looked up the road as if searching for his feelings on the matter. “I care about BARS’s success much more than I would some other corporation, and leadership respects my opinion.” He sent her an aggrieved look. “Most of the time.”
“Why do you suppose they didn’t follow your recommendation regarding me?”
“I imagine they thought my judgment was compromised.”
“Was it?”
“No.” His voice lowered. “Maybe.”
Despite the warning bells ringing up and down her spine, Lena asked, “You’re not sure?”
“I’m sure you’re hiding something and I’m sure it’s going to come back to take a chunk out of BARS’s collective ass.”
Lena stiffened, feeling the truth in his words.
“But what I’m not sure about.” He cut the distance between them. “What I can’t seem to stop wondering about,” his attention dipped to her mouth, “is if your lips taste as good as they look.”
Out of instinct, Lena sucked in her bottom lip, eliciting a growl from Rohan.
By the time she released her lip, he was mere inches away. His broad chest filled her vision and his scent wrapped around her.
“Tell me this is a bad idea,” he whispered, dropping his bag.
“This is a bad idea.”
“Tell me to step away.”
She opened her mouth, but no words of command emerged.
His hand slid around the side of her neck, tilting her head back even farther. “Tell me, Lena.”
“I want to,” she whispered, “but I can’t.”
It was all the permission he needed.
“Not the reason I don’t accept.”
“A revelation. I’m on tenterhooks.”
His eyes narrowed. “Part of the journey to mastering meditation is conquering the mind’s tendency to focus on everything and nothing. No one can help me with that part.”
“First off, no one ever masters meditation. It’s like most forms of art. They take a lifetime to perfect, yet there will always be imperfection.”
“And?”
So much disgruntlement in that one word.
“Not everyone can or should take the journey alone.”
Lena let the following silence settle around her as she leaned into each curve of the dark, winding road. She tried not to read too much into her own words. Tried not to think about all the lonely years behind her or the ones stretching out before her.
“I apologize if I brought up a difficult topic earlier,” he said. “My curiosity chip is always running.”
“Probably why you’re such a good white hat.”
He gave her a half smile. “Someone’s been googling.”
“You’re not the only one who can background check.”
He studied her for a long, pulse-quickening moment. Lena kept her attention on the road. Her body loose.
“Your background is curiously blank prior to age fifteen.”
Years of redirecting conversations away from her personal life kicked in. “I moved around a lot after my parents’ deaths.”
“Did you live in caves?”
“What?”
“Wear deer skins? Communicate by drawing stick figures in the dirt?”
Realizing where he was going, she attempted to throw him off-balance. “As a matter of fact, we did. Pro tip: green leaves make better toilet paper than brown ones.”
He angled his body toward her. Leaned in.
Her muscles coiled.
“Because that’s what it would take to keep me from finding you.” He paused. “That, or witness protection program.”
23
If Rohan hadn’t been watching, he would have missed the catch in Lena’s breath.
“When did you enter WITSEC?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“For a computer geek, you have an active imagination.”
“Gaming, remember? There’s more to the story than shooting shit up.” He considered her a moment. “How did your parents die?”
“Car accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
She squinted her eyes as if looking into a murky crystal ball for fragments of her past. The car drifted to the right, and Rohan reached over and fingered the steering wheel, adding pressure until the vehicle glided into the safety zone again.
The adjustment snapped her back to the present. “I don’t like talking about that time of my life.”
“Why not?”
“None of your damn business.”
“While we’re working together, everything about you is my business.”
“You’re a delusional, virus-trafficking, egomaniac if you think I’m going to let you nose around into every corner of my life—”
The dashboard blacked out, and the Verge’s engine powered down.
Darkness engulfed them.
For a heart-freezing moment, Rohan couldn’t see anything. Not even the pavement.
“What happened?” Lena asked, panicked.
“Did you touch anything?”
“No.” The bones in Lena’s hand stood out as she gripped the wheel tighter and tried pumping the brake.
Thank God they’d just entered a straight stretch, but it wouldn’t last long. No mountain road ever did.
Rohan blinked several times to engage his night vision. Thankful for the three-quarter moon riding the skies tonight. Shadows pulled away from each other, and he could now distinguish the road from the mountainside to their left and the cliff to their right.
“Rohan, the brake isn’t working.”
“There’s no power.”
“No power?” she all but screamed. “Shit!”
The road curved to the right, while gravity pulled at them, speeding up their momentum. She practically lay on the steering wheel to keep them on the road.
“Put all of your weight on the brake pedal,” he ordered, and reached over to help her steer the car.
“I’m trying, but it feels like I’m pushing against a rock.”
“Don’t let up.”
The road switched to the left and their tires crunched against gravel as the vehicle veered toward a four-thousand-foot drop-off.
“Rohan!”
His arms strained to help keep them on the asphalt. When the road straightened again and the car slowed, he saw their best opportunity to survive this.
“To the left of the steering wheel is a control panel,” he said, keeping his voice calm but precise. “Do you see it?”
Her gaze flicked down for a millisecond. “Yes.”
“That’s where you’ll find the parking brake lever. Feel for it.”
“Got it.”
“When I tell you, hook your fingers beneath the lever and draw it toward you.” He pointed to the right side of the road. “We’re headed for that pull off.” He wrapped his fingers around the door’s grab handle and braced himself.
“That’s not a pull off. That’s a sliver of dirt.”
“Now!”
She yanked on the brake lever, and the Verge came to a jarring halt.
A thank-you-Jesus silence fell around them.
“Turn on the hazards,” he said over the blood pounding in his ears.
She did as instructed. “Has this ever happened before?”
With the danger behind them, he had time to think, analyze. Conclusion reached. He would fucking murder whoever had disabled his vehicle and put Lena in danger. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
“What’s the plan? Stand here and wait for someone to come by?”
He checked his phone. “No service.” He shoved the device into his front pocket. “Grab your bag,” he said, doing the same.
“Why?”
He motioned downhill. “Hope you wore a comfortable pair of shoes.”
“We’re walking?”
“Unless you know how to fly.”
* * *
As it happened, Lena’s ankle-boots weren’t ideal for downhill hiking.
“How far is the next town?” she asked, repositioning her large shoulder bag across her body.
“I’m guessing about five miles.”
“You don’t know?”
“Do I look like a GPS?”
“I would have thought someone like you would have memorized the route.”
“Someone like me?”
“Techy. Prepared. Anal. Don’t you get off on data?”
“Interesting data, maybe.”
“The distance to the next town is pretty damn interesting about now, isn’t it?”
“Eight.”
She blinked. “Eight miles?”
“On the pain in the ass scale. You land on eight.”
“Sounds like I have room for improvement.”
“Damn straight.”
“I’m still two points off the mark of being a full pain in the ass.”
He threw her an annoyed look, but she didn’t miss the slight curve at the corner of his mouth.
They fell into silence for several minutes.
“Tell me about this Bobby Balor,” she said over the rhythmic slap of their soles against pavement.
“What do you want to know?”
“How’d he learn about the painting?”
“All we could get from him was that a friend overheard Palmer talking about hiring you to make a copy of Walking Woman. Balor learned it was worth over a million dollars and decided to make quick work of his debts.”
“Friend? Sounds unlikely. There are several degrees of separation between Balor and Palmer.”
“Agreed.”
“He sold the painting to this Atlanta art dealer?”
“So he said.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“He’s a criminal. Everything he says is suspect.”
Lena’s chest tightened. “What if his little sister has cancer and the funds from the sale would help pay her medical bills?”
“He doesn’t have a sister, let alone a sick one.”
“But what if he did? Would he still be a criminal in your eyes?”
“Are you feeling sorry for this guy?”
“I’m just pointing out that not every situation is black and white. As you should know.”
“Why is that?”
She held her breath as she veered around a pulverized roadkill that was now little more than tufts of fur. “Based on what I’ve seen around the Friary, BARS will do whatever takes to recover an asset and return it to its owner.” Helicopter, drone, outdoor range, mysterious building Johona hadn’t wanted to talk about.
“You’d be right.”
“But what if the owner you’re so dedicated to serving had stolen the asset in the first place?”
A pained expression crossed his face.
“It’s already happened?” When he didn’t confirm, she pushed on. “What separates what you do from someone who’s desperate to survive?”
“Is that why you copy other artists’ work instead of filling that blank canvas with your own original?”
The question slammed into her. Tore at her insides like a ravenous wolf.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. It was as if a vacuum had sucked out every molecule of oxygen streaming through her blood.
How had he figured out her greatest fear? Or was it a regret? Somehow, somewhere, she had lost herself in the beauty created by others.
It took her a solid minute to realize that Rohan hadn’t figured out anything. His goal had been to throw her off-balance, and he’d succeeded. Because she’d allowed her insecurities to overwhelm her.
Again.
Lena eyed the extreme drop off on her right, wondering if she could maneuver herself around to his left side without raising his alarm bells.
“If you want to end me,” he said, guessing the direction of her thoughts, “I’d prefer a less painful mode of death than toppling down the side of a mountain.”
“Let’s stick to business conversation from here on out. Deal?”
“Anything to keep your finger off the trigger.”
“Back to Bobby Balor. If he’s already sold the painting to this dealer in Atlanta, wouldn’t that mean Bobby had a buyer lined up ahead of time?”
They came around a bend, and Rohan put out a hand to stay her, pointing ahead of them. Four silhouettes of various sizes stood in the middle of the road.
Spooked, they shot forward, bounding down the road, their white tails catching the moonlight as they waved side to side in order to confuse and distract. The deer continued for a while before dashing off to the left, into the forested mountainside.
Delighted to see wildlife that didn’t eat people for a late-night snack, Lena grinned at Rohan. He stared at her mouth as if he’d never seen her smile before.
Maybe he hadn’t.
His scrutiny made her look away. “Did Balor strike you as someone intelligent enough to pull off a heist on his own and have a buyer in his back pocket?”
“Not even close. Burglarizing your loft while you were there proves he’s an idiot.”
“But I wasn’t supposed to be there, remember? You came to my loft because I was late for our meeting.”
Rohan stopped. “Who knew about the meeting?”
“You, Lynette, and the rest of your crew, I presume.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“Who would I tell?”
“Social media?”
Only a guy would ask a single woman who lived alone if she posted her schedule online. “Really?”
He cursed under his breath.
“What?”
“I’m one hundred percent certain the meeting didn’t leak out of BARS.”
“And if I didn’t tell anyone . . .”
His eyes met hers through the gloom. “You’ve got a bug problem.”
24
Forty-five minutes later, Lena still couldn’t bring herself to believe someone had planted a listening device in her loft or had somehow tapped her phone. First, a stalker. Then ghosts from her past haunting her. Now, this.
Why her? She didn’t live in a James Bond world. She painted, she ate, she slept. Queue up boring music. Repeat.
But as absurd as it sounded, she couldn’t come up with a more plausible reason for how Bobby Balor knew she was supposed to be at Triple B the morning of the burglary.
With every downward step, her toes crammed into the V-shaped toe well of her boots. God only knew what subcutaneous damage she was doing to her nails.
Besides the possibility of losing her toenails, the sliding motion hurt like hell.
To take her mind off the pain, she refocused on the bug business. An idea started to form. One too ridiculous to consider, but too credible to discount.
Where had she been the moment she’d received Lynette’s call?
Halting, she lifted her phone to check her call log.
“Problem?” Rohan asked.
“Checking to see when your mom first reached out to me.”
“You need this information while we’re standing on a dark mountain road?”
Ignoring his sardonic comment, she scrolled through her short list of incoming calls, while trusting him to keep an eye—and ear—out for traffic. Once she found Lynette’s name, she tapped the information icon.
12:22 p.m.
Lunch time.
After a bout of physical therapy for acute shoulder pain, Lena had forced herself into the habit of taking a walk midday to stretch out her muscles and give herself a mental break. She used the time to run errands, grab something to eat, or browse the library’s shelves.
Lena pushed through her memories, searching for that day, that conversation, that time.
12:22
12:22
12:22
A blurry image of her sitting on a barstool, waiting for Grady, Triple B’s smooth-headed bartender, to deliver her to-go order surfaced. A phone call. Lynette Blackwell. A conversation. Switch to speaker phone. Check calendar. A date and time agreed upon.
All while sitting amid a busy lunch crowd.
“Dammit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I set up the meeting with Lynette while waiting for my lunch order at Triple B.”
Rohan motioned for them to continue walking. “Someone who knew you, or knew of you, with a nefarious mindset, overheard your conversation, set up a heist and a buyer in . . . how many days?”
She glanced down at her phone. “Two.”
“Stretches my belief of what’s possible.” He switched his duffel bag to the other hand. “However, if Balor was already watching you, waiting for an opportunity to snatch a painting, I suppose he could’ve pulled it off.”
Watching you.
Lena’s steps slowed as she recalled the tingling sensation at the base of her neck when she walked home from the art store.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Rohan asked, stopping again.
The art store incident happened after the burglary. Why would Balor stalk her once he had the painting? Had he been gearing up to hit her loft again?
She rubbed at the pressure building in her temple. It had been years since she’d felt this unnerving helplessness. She didn’t like it.
Not one whit.
Rohan tucked her hair behind her ear, startling her. “Headache?”
“It’s a lot to think about.”
“I’ll help you figure out what’s going on. We’ll eliminate the possibilities, one by one.”
His reassurance loosened the tight knot of uncertainty in her stomach. “I want to speak with Bobby Balor.”
“When we get back. Right now, let’s keep our focus on Killian Byrne. Get the painting from him and/or squeeze whatever intelligence we can out of him.”
She nodded her acknowledgment.
Searching for a new topic of discussion, she asked, “How do you like working for the family business?”
He raised a brow. “Didn’t we agree to avoid personal questions?”
“I asked about your family business.”
His brow hitched higher.
“Consider it a gray area.”
He shook his head, but amusement curled at the corner of his eyes.
“Most of the time, I like it. Can’t beat the commute and I can set my own hours.” He looked up the road as if searching for his feelings on the matter. “I care about BARS’s success much more than I would some other corporation, and leadership respects my opinion.” He sent her an aggrieved look. “Most of the time.”
“Why do you suppose they didn’t follow your recommendation regarding me?”
“I imagine they thought my judgment was compromised.”
“Was it?”
“No.” His voice lowered. “Maybe.”
Despite the warning bells ringing up and down her spine, Lena asked, “You’re not sure?”
“I’m sure you’re hiding something and I’m sure it’s going to come back to take a chunk out of BARS’s collective ass.”
Lena stiffened, feeling the truth in his words.
“But what I’m not sure about.” He cut the distance between them. “What I can’t seem to stop wondering about,” his attention dipped to her mouth, “is if your lips taste as good as they look.”
Out of instinct, Lena sucked in her bottom lip, eliciting a growl from Rohan.
By the time she released her lip, he was mere inches away. His broad chest filled her vision and his scent wrapped around her.
“Tell me this is a bad idea,” he whispered, dropping his bag.
“This is a bad idea.”
“Tell me to step away.”
She opened her mouth, but no words of command emerged.
His hand slid around the side of her neck, tilting her head back even farther. “Tell me, Lena.”
“I want to,” she whispered, “but I can’t.”
It was all the permission he needed.
