Hidden Away

by Maya Banks

Page 24

 

  “I’ll be on the lookout. Sarah’s sleeping but as soon as I get everything, we’re heading out. Hey, what about Lattimer’s connection to Cross? Figured out that angle yet?”

  Donovan sighed. “No, but more and more I think it has everything to do with Sarah. ”

  Garrett had the exact same feeling. It settled deep into his belly like after eating bad Chinese food.

  “Okay, I’m in. I was right. This is a secure email account. I’ll have to be damn careful to wipe my fingerprints. ”

  “What do they say? Is she emailing Lattimer? I just got through telling her he sent me. I need to know how long I’ve got before that busts wide open. ”

  “I might be able to help you out there,” Donovan murmured. “If you give me an hour or so, I can make it so her emails are rerouted to me. Then I can answer as if I were Lattimer and cover your ass in the process. ”

  “She won’t be emailing anyone for the next hour,” Garrett said. “She’s practically in a coma. What’s been said so far and how many emails have they exchanged? I need all the information I can get if I’m pretending an association with the asshole. ”

  “Not much. At first he was frantic wanting to know where she was. Then the tone changed once he seemed to know her location. She emailed him after she ditched you. Told him she was headed to Mexico and asked him for help. He told her where to go. His emails have been short and to the point. He’s a careful bastard. He only gives her what is absolutely necessary. She isn’t much better. She emailed him once she got there and told him she was fine and not to worry. Interestingly enough, all her emails have been about protecting him. ”

  “What the fuck? What can she possibly do to protect him?” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why she’d want to protect Lattimer, but he already had his answer to that. No matter what, Sarah was loyal and goodhearted to the bone, and Lattimer was her brother. Hell, for all he knew, she didn’t know exactly what a bastard her brother was. He damn sure hadn’t done anything to alleviate the loneliness of her childhood.

  “Think about it, Garrett. If she saw him murder Cross and everything points to that being fact, she could be used to bring him down. It’s certainly what the Cross family is thinking. To a lot of people Sarah represents a surefire way to get to Lattimer, Resnick included. ”

  And himself. Garrett had to include himself in the number of people willing to exploit Sarah to get to her brother. He swallowed and refused to dwell on how much of a bastard it made him feel. He just had to keep reminding himself that the end justified the means.

  “Sarah has to know that. If she can’t be found, she can’t be made to testify against her brother. ”

  Garrett blew out his breath. Yeah, he’d buy that. Sarah would be intensely loyal, but he was also disappointed that she’d be so blind in her loyalty to her brother that she’d ignore the cold-blooded killing of another human being. Maybe his sense of justice was more black-and-white than Sarah’s, but it bugged him that she’d walk way.

  “That makes sense,” Garrett said in a grim voice. “In a sick, twisted way, it makes sense. Thanks for covering my ass with the emails. It’ll buy me some more time. If her emails are redirected and Lattimer is no longer getting them, it could work in my favor because she’ll no longer be telling him she’s okay. He’ll worry. He’ll no longer be content with a casual search while she’s there reassuring him that all is well. He’ll want to find her, and I’ll be waiting. ”

  “I don’t envy you, brother. Sarah isn’t going to be happy when the shit hits the fan. ”

  No, she wouldn’t. But Garrett couldn’t dwell on that right now no matter how much it bothered him. He had a job to do. He had justice to see even if Sarah refused to do so. He had a longtime promise to his fallen teammates to fulfill. His honor wouldn’t allow for anything else, even if he lost some of it in the process.

  The greater good. It was all about the greater good. But somehow shitting on a woman like Sarah for that greater good didn’t leave him with any satisfaction.

  CHAPTER 21

  SARAH came awake to a gentle hand on her shoulder. It became more persistent and her head wobbled as her eyelids fluttered open.

  “Come on, Sarah. Time to wake up. We’ve got a lot to talk about. ”

  “Garrett,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, it’s me. ”

  She rose up on one elbow and shoved her hair out of her face. She stared at him through bleary eyes as she tried to blink away the veil of sleep.

  “So I didn’t dream you. ”

  “Not unless you had a very nice dream about a really good-looking guy. ”

  Though he delivered his teasing with a perfectly straight face, his blue eyes held a devilish glint. She shook her head to rid herself of the cobwebs. Talk. He wanted to talk, which meant he also wanted answers she wasn’t prepared to give. She definitely needed a clear head so she didn’t screw this up.

  “Do I have time for a shower before we have this talk?”

  He made a show of checking his watch. “I’ll give you five minutes and then we meet back here in this room. It’s the safest place to be. ”

  She scowled. “Five minutes? It’s obvious you’re not married and have probably never lived with a woman. You don’t give a woman five minutes to take a shower. ”

  He didn’t look impressed by her response. “Five minutes or I come in after you. They start now. ”

  Good God, he was serious. And he’d actually do it too. She didn’t doubt that for a moment.

  “You now have four minutes and forty-five seconds. ”

  She dove for the end of the bed and ran for the bathroom, his chuckle following as she nearly killed herself getting out of the door.

  “Five minutes,” she grumbled as she turned on the shower. He was probably used to hosing off in three minutes in the military. Well, she wasn’t in the military and furthermore, it took longer than five minutes just to wash her hair.

  Still, his threat rang in her ears, and she wasn’t entirely certain that he wouldn’t come in after her so while she stuck her head under the spray to rinse the shampoo, she scrubbed the other parts of her body.

  She momentarily got caught up in the absolute bliss of the hot water raining down over her. Instead of energizing her, as she’d hoped a shower would do, it made her want to crawl back into bed and sleep for about a year.

  In disgust, she reached for the knob and turned the hot water completely off. The result was an icy blast that made her yelp as it pricked her body like little ice pellets. At least she wasn’t mooning over how good the bed would feel again.

  As she stepped from the shower, shivering, Garrett pounded on the door.

  “Sarah? Is everything okay in there?”

  “Yes, fine!” she called. The last thing she wanted was for him to make good on his threat. “I’ll be out in just a minute, promise. ”

  She hurriedly dried and then pulled on her underwear and jeans over her still-damp skin. She struggled with her bra, and in her haste, she managed to put the damn thing on inside out. God, but she was a mess. With a laugh, she righted her bra and then yanked on her shirt. She wasn’t even going to bother with her hair. If he was so determined that she make it out in five minutes, then he’d just have to deal with her looking like a drowned rat. More like a horde of rats had taken up residence in her tangled tresses.

  She gave one last wipe to her hair so it wasn’t actually dripping and then gave up and opened the door. Garrett was leaning against the opposite wall and he raised an eyebrow.

  She frowned. “What? You gave me five minutes. This is what happens when you give a woman only five minutes in the bathroom. ”

  “Whoa, I didn’t say a word. ”

  “You didn’t have to. It was that look you gave me like you were staring at Medusa. ”

  He chuckled and kicked off the wall. “I wasn’t looking at your hair. ”

  “Then what the hell were you looking at?”
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  “I’m a man. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. ”

  She glanced downward and saw that her shirt was clinging very damply to her bra, which was also . . . damp, which in turn gave him a pretty darn good glimpse of her breasts and the outline of her nipples.

  “Oh hell. ” She turned and charged back into the bathroom to get another towel. “This is all your fault. ”

  “What were you hollering about?” he asked from the doorway.

  She turned around, armed with a towel that she held strategically over her chest. “I turned the cold water on so I could wake up. You said you wanted to talk. I can’t talk if all I want to do is go back to sleep. ”

  He stepped back into the hallway and gestured for her to precede him back into the bedroom. She plopped onto the bed and switched the towel for a pillow and held it to her chest as she made herself comfortable.

  Garrett loomed—there was no other word for it—over the end of the bed. He was a big man, and in such a small bedroom, he seemed to take up every available inch. He made her nervous.

  “For God’s sake, sit down or something. I can’t think with you hovering like that. ”

  He made a sound of amusement but accommodated her by settling on the end of the bed. But that only brought him closer and made the entire setting feel decidedly intimate.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  He studied her for a moment, his gaze moving over her face in a way that made her think he was peeling her skin back. “Why are you so nervous?”

  That was a stupid question. Something an oblivious man would totally ask. So she ignored him and stared pointedly, waiting for him to begin.

  “I’ve put my cards on the table. It’s time for you to deal yours. ”

  Her eyes widened and then she narrowed them in irritation. “You haven’t done anything of the sort. I know your name and that my brother supposedly sent you—which, by the way, I plan to confirm. ”

  Garrett shook his head and sighed. “You have no sense of self-preservation, Sarah. You and I have to work on that. ”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If I was the bad guy feeding you a line about your brother sending me, you just tipped your hand and put me on notice. If I was threatened by that, it would be awfully damn easy to make you sure you weren’t capable of checking in with Lattimer. ”

  “Why are you telling me this then?”

  “Because I’m the good guy, and I want to teach you not to make mistakes that could get you killed. ”

  He looked indulgent, like he was having to display a large degree of patience with her naïveté. Okay, she got it. She was a complete moron. But in her defense, there weren’t any classes where one learned the art of deception and cloak-and-dagger crap that was the hallmark of overwrought spy thriller movies.

  Much was said about common sense, but common sense was for the generalities of life. No one she knew had experience with murder and hiding from the law.

  “Cut me some slack,” she muttered. “I know I’m an idiot. I get it. I do. ” She rubbed her hand over her forehead and a wave of hopelessness hit her like a tsunami. Who was she kidding? She was never going to survive on her own.

  “You’re not an idiot,” Garrett said in a low voice. “You’ve had your very normal life upended. You’ve made some bad choices, and you haven’t been as careful as you should, but that’s where I come in. I’m going to do my damndest to make sure nothing happens to you. ”

  “If you only knew,” she murmured. Then she let out a dry laugh. “Bad decisions. If I could only go back. ”

  “You can’t think that way. You play with the cards your dealt and you move on. ”

  “You strike me as someone who lives with no regrets,” she said, intensely jealous of how grounded and confident he always appeared.

  He seemed surprised by her observation and he laughed, but the sound wasn’t one of amusement.

  “My attitude is born of necessity. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made decisions I regretted. I know what it’s like to live with regret. I live with it every day. But if I let it take over, I’d never get out of bed in the morning. ”

  The frank, raw note in his voice shook her. For a moment she got a glimpse of the man beyond the self-assured, steady exterior. For some reason it reassured her and put them on more of an equal footing.

  He stared back at her, neither of them speaking. She was unwilling to break the brief moment of connection—true connection—and she savored that he’d shared something beyond casual conversation. He hadn’t said much but it had been what he said. She wasn’t the only person to make mistakes—though hers seemed so much larger and the consequences so much more far-reaching, but how was she to know the true depth of his mistakes?

  “What happened in Boston, Sarah?”