“You don’t like to fly?” he asked.
“Honestly, you are ten seconds away from getting punched.” Maybe that would make him understand how big and risky this move was. Whatever he hoped to accomplish couldn’t be worth her wrath. Lucky for him, she was more curious than anything else at the moment. Though his frustrated frown was pretty cute. “And that sad face won’t help you, so tell me why I’m really here.”
“Like I said, I wanted you out of your apartment and safe until I could figure out who broke in and why. So, I used a pressure point to knock you out.”
“Normal people would ask before taking me out of my house.” Then again, most people wouldn’t knock her out. At some point she needed to find out what he did because that struck her as a skill that could come in handy now and then.
He glanced out the window into the dark night with the blinking lights below. “As you’ve told me several times, with that one notable exception, I’m not all that normal.”
The tone. The lack of eye contact. The combination made her wonder if the throwaway comment, made to sound half-joking, really bothered him. “I think you may be abusing that insight.”
“I don’t know what that means.” He turned back to face her with a renewed intensity in his eyes. “But the point was to get you out of there, scour the place, check nearby security cameras. And, honestly, to keep you from being subjected to more police questions. In my experience, after the police are called to one house several times for breakin charges they start to question the victim and what he or she is doing in the house that’s causing all the trouble.”
“That all sounds sort of reasonable, which has me concerned about my own sanity.” She leaned her head back and sank deeper into the seat cushion. “Also makes me think there’s a part you’re not saying.”
“I knew you’d fight me on leaving the house and I wanted you out.”
That sounded exactly like something he would do. “So, this is about your bossiness.”
“I don’t think—”
“Levi Wren.” She needed him to at least admit he’d overstepped.
“Fine. Yes. I generally just handle things rather than ask for permission, and that’s what I did here. Clearly that wasn’t the best choice.” He spoiled the pseudo-apology by grumbling under his breath. Then he peeked up at her and treated her to a heated half smile. “I like when you say my name, by the way. No one has said it, including me, in a very long time.”
“Don’t try to adorable your way out of this.” Man, he was right on the edge of making her forgive him without more begging. “Can we land?”
“Do you have your pilot’s license?”
She bit back a laugh. “I’m going to assume that was your version of a joke.” She cleared her throat. “Will you have the plane land if I ask you to?”
“Of course.” He shot her one of those what-are-you-thinking frowns. “You’re not a prisoner.”
From the look on his face she thought he probably believed that. “We’ll debate that and your boundary issues later.”
“Must we?”
As if she would let him off the hook that easily. From her limited time with Wren she understood that he worked better with clarity. If she gave him a fuzzy edge or wavered in her words, he’d find a loophole. He was not going to be that lucky this time.
But first they needed to get on the ground, which led to her other question. The one she hadn’t answered before the night took its weird turn. “Is anything missing from my apartment?”
“From your filing system, we think some parts of the Tiffany files. But you’ll need to confirm that.”
“The breakin is about my renewed investigation.” Her heart tumbled and a heavy sadness moved over her. The not knowing weighed on her every day. The thought Tiffany could be out there, pleading for help and praying it would come, fueling her mind on empty hope, chipped away at Emery’s confidence. Shaped how she led her life.
He nodded. “Clearly.”
The honest answer delivered a slap, but she welcomed it. Wren was a mass of imperfections, but every word he said appeared to stem from the truth.
Adrenaline pumped through her. “Which means the person who took her is nearby. Tiffany could be alive.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He leaned forward with his elbows balanced on his knees. “It means someone is watching and concerned. That’s the only conclusion we can jump to at this point.”
She understood him now. Sometimes he threw out the convoluted sentences as a way to get her to focus on something other than the topic. Other times, he cut right to his reasoning and kept her expectations low. He’d performed the two tricks over and over. It only took a heavy dose of plane air for her to work it through. “Are you afraid I’ll get my hopes up or are you really thinking this might not be the attacker?”
“Both, possibly.”
The gobbledygook option. “Thank you for that definitive answer.”