She didn’t respond.
“Tell me, Doctor,” Ethan said. “This rescue mission is going to blow up in your face. How far will you go to protect yourself?”
“Go to hell, Major.”
It was strong language for Dr. O’Farrell. “You set up a mission without giving the people who were putting their lives on the line all the facts—”
“I didn’t set up any mission. I don’t have that authority.”
“That’s cover-your-ass language. Who told you I could ID Ham? Who told you he was being held by a guy with a thing for the blond, female marshal?”
He could hear her shallow, rapid breathing on the other end, but she didn’t answer him.
“You don’t like making mistakes,” Ethan went on, feeling only the slightest twinge of guilt at his unrelenting tone. “I’ll bet you used to cry when you got less than a ninety on a test.”
“You won’t be able to collect on that bet.” Her voice was icy, unemotional. “I never got below a ninety.”
No wonder she and Ham ended up working together.
She hung up.
Ethan tossed his phone onto the passenger seat. He could have handled frightened, dedicated, intelligent Mia better—more diplomatically, at least. But he wasn’t in the mood. Ham Carhill had taken off. His mother was worried about him—or maybe that the kidnappers would make another try for the five million. Ethan hadn’t mentioned the ransom call to Mia. He needed time to think.
And Juliet. She spoke her mind and had the bluest eyes and the very tightest butt—but Ethan had the feeling she was flat out of patience with him.
Right now, she was en route to her family in Vermont. Landscapers, cops, traumatized vegan niece. Apples and pumpkins.
Ethan had never been to the Green Mountain State. It’d be pretty this time of year with the foliage. He wondered what airport he’d fly into and whether he could get to Vermont by nightfall.
Fourteen
Wendy held up a knobby, misshapen apple, next in line for her apple crisp in progress. “It’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”
Juliet sipped coffee at the table in the Longstreet family kitchen. She’d arrived in the middle of Sunday lunch. Parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews. They all were there. But after the last of the applesauce cake was gone and the dishes were done, everyone had cleared out, with excuses of homework and soccer games and wood to split.
Except Joshua. He had stayed and now was leaning stiffly against the sink, trying, Juliet knew, to keep his mouth shut—reticence was not a Longstreet family trait.
“The Yoda of apples,” Wendy said, falsely cheerful, and put it aside, giving it a little pat as her smile evaporated. “I’m going to spare it.”
A muscle worked in her father’s jaw. “Wendy, it’s not alive. It’s an apple.”
Ignoring him, she chose another apple from the pile on the counter and took a deep breath before slicing into it with her paring knife.
Joshua glared at Juliet, as if she were to blame because his daughter was having trouble cutting up apples.
And maybe I am, Juliet thought, drinking more of her coffee.
Wendy peeled one of her apple quarters. She had on an oversize dark green sweatshirt that made her look even tinier. She finished peeling the apple quarter and sliced it into her deep-dish pie plate. She wasn’t making her grandmother’s apple crisp. Her recipe involved wildflower honey, expeller-pressed canola oil and steel-cut oats, all of it organic. No butter, no white sugar. Juliet wasn’t sure how it’d turn out, but at least they all could eat something healthy and guilt-free.
“Wendy, I need to talk to you,” she said. “About Juan. The doorman—”
“I know who he is.”
“You talked to him on Thursday when you arrived at my building and then again when you came back to meet me, and on Friday morning when you—”
“I know when I talked to him.”
“I’d like you to tell me everything he said to you.”
Joshua stirred. “Whatever you remember, honey.”
She reached for another apple. “I remember everything he said. I keep thinking about it.” She set the apple on her cutting board and sliced it in half. “He let me practice my Spanish. He was—nice. I don’t care if he’s not who he said he was.”
Tony Cipriani had called Juliet on her way to Vermont with an ID for their John Doe doorman. Juliet kept the information to herself. She didn’t want that knowledge coloring her niece’s memory of any conversations she and “Juan” had had in New York. Juliet had pulled Joshua aside after she’d arrived, giving him the basics, no details. He’d reluctantly agreed with her strategy.