Uh-uh. And after this was over, she would go back to her life and he to his. That would be the end of it. He just wasn’t sure if he’d be able to glue the pieces of his life back together again once she was gone.
Far less cheerful than he had been moments before, he lifted his hand off her thigh and focused all of his concentration on the road. Headlights hit his rearview mirror with the blinding force of laser beams. Where the fuck had this car come from? They were on a two-lane road out in the middle of the ocean with no on- or off-ramps. Unless the driver had been going at least twenty above the speed limit—and who would risk that in this rain?—then that car had been following them from the get-go. A chill of awareness shot through Jude’s blood, and he fumbled in the center console for his phone.
Libby lifted her head, rubbed at the back of her neck, and squinted out the windshield. “Wow, it’s really raining now.” Yawning, she looked over at him. “What are you doing?”
“Find my phone. It’s in there somewhere.”
She twisted in her seat and dug through the compartment with maddening care.
“Faster.”
“What’s your hurry?”
He forced himself to keep his gaze on the road ahead of him. “I need to check my messages.”
“Ugh. Impatient, much? Hang on.” More digging around. “Here. Found it.” She swiped at the screen with her thumb. “You have a missed call from someone with the initials W.S.”
“Wilde Security. My brothers.” Another glance in the rearview showed the car had backed off a bit, but was still riding too damn close. “Get into the voice mail.” He told her his access code and waited, palm held out for the phone. She never handed it over.
“Oh my God. Jude, listen.” Her hand shook as she lowered the phone from her ear and pressed the speaker button. Greer’s voice came on the line, booming in the small car.
“…and Cam’s source claims K-Bar hasn’t been seen in a couple days. We have to assume he’s found you, and he’s headed your way. Call me as soon as you get this, and we’ll come up with an exfil plan to get you two the hell out of there. Take every precaution and don’t let Libby out of your sight.”
“Oh my God,” Libby said again. “Are you going to call him?”
Jude lifted his eyes to the rearview. Car was still on their ass, too close for comfort on a nearly empty road in a torrential downpour. He shook his head. “No. If we move you, he’ll just find you again. The safest place for you is Seth’s house. We just have to lose him before we get there.”
“What?”
He tilted his head toward the car. “Behind us. Pretty sure he was tailing us with his headlights off until the rain got too heavy to see the road without them. Hang on. We gotta get to civilization before him. It’s our only shot.”
As he floored the gas, Libby folded her arms around herself. “This can’t be happening.”
“It may be nothing,” he reminded her. “I may just be a paranoid bastard, and if that’s the case, we can laugh about it later. I have trouble believing K-Bar got around all of my brothers’ security measures and found you, but I’m not taking any more chances.”
…
After abandoning the car with a valet at a busy hotel, she and Jude nipped through the lobby, took a side exit, and made a mad dash through parking lots and private yards until they reached a street teeming with tourists who weren’t the least bit daunted by the now-light drizzle of rain. Music floated from the bars lining the street—everything from the mellow tones of an acoustic solo artist to bands blasting covers of popular songs. Chickens pecked along the sidewalk, as undaunted by the crowd as the crowd was by the rain. Jude pulled her past a colorfully dressed busker sitting on the street corner strumming a guitar and playing a tambourine with his foot. Both the man and the old hound sitting patiently at his side wore sunglasses and pirate hats.
Key West. This place was something else.
They slipped into a cozy shop, and Jude hustled her past shelves stuffed with seashell trinkets, snow globes, and cheap jewelry. He grabbed things off the racks as he went, then yanked her into a curtained dressing room. Spinning her toward him, he hiked her shirt over her head before she realized what he was doing.
“Jude, what the hell? We’re being followed! We don’t have time to screw around in a dressing room.”