Aftershocks (17 page)

“You worried about your parents?”

“A little.” They were pretty innocent, considering. Not child-like, but someone she’d want to protect. “I should call them.”

“When did you last talk to them?”

“The day I came down here.”

“How’d they sound?”

“Normal. I don’t think anyone had contacted them. They were relieved it was off TV and didn’t have anything more to say about it.”

“Did you tell them about your broken engagement?”

“I didn’t tell them I was engaged in the first place.”

“Oh, really?” He said it like that was a telling statement, and she bristled.

“Yes, really. I didn’t have a chance. I got engaged and went to a conference the next day. When I got back, the FBI was in my office. I didn’t want to mar something so happy when something so distracting was going on.” Kell’s mother hadn’t wasted any time putting the announcement in the paper, but by the time Zoe realized she was doing it, it was already out. Luckily, her own mother stuck to the crime section of the Boston papers and hadn’t seen it.

Grant nodded, but she saw something in his expression that she didn’t like.

“What?”

“Nothing. Heads up.” The cowboy and beachy guy were heading back toward them.

“Getting choppy.” The cowboy dropped to the bench next to Zoe and crossed his ankles way out in front of him. As he folded his arms and tilted his hat down over his face, his friend settled next to Grant.

“So,” said Beachy, “If you’re not taking the tour, where ya headin’?”

Zoe leaned forward to smile at him. “You know how honeymooners are. We just go where the wind takes us.”

Beachy’s smile dropped a millimeter. “Sure, sure. Sorry to bother you guys.”

“Not at all.” She smiled wider. “What about you two? Intimate vacation?”

She’d have sworn Beachy barely restrained himself from grimacing. But he managed. “Sure thing.”

She turned to the cowboy and started to ask where they were from, but a snore drifted out from under the hat, barely heard over the rumble of the boat’s engines. Barely, but still heard, which made her suspect he wasn’t really sleeping.

She hoped Grant was planning behind that granite face, because she wasn’t sure if they’d decided to string their followers along or ditch them. And her parents…she pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked for a signal. She actually had one, which surprised her, but the engine was too noisy to call her parents now, even if they didn’t have eavesdroppers.

Half an hour passed. The exhaust and noise started to give her a headache. She stood and moved to the bow, staying to the left of the bridge window. The fresher breeze there helped. She closed her eyes and let her mind phase out. Even floating in that state of non-awareness, she knew when someone approached, and she knew that someone was Grant.

It was enough to make her question everything about her life.

He came up close behind her, half trapping her with one hand on the rail. “So what do you want to do?” he said an inch from her ear. His scent, salty and hot, surrounded her. Images flashed into her mind that had nothing to do with the totems.

She had to turn her head so he’d be able to hear her response. “You mean about letting them follow us?”

His two-day beard growth scratched against her cheek as he nodded.

“Let’s pretend we haven’t guessed for a little while. They probably won’t step up their game then. And I can check on my parents. Make sure they’re okay.” She wasn’t sure what she’d tell them, but somehow she’d get them to safety. Just to simplify the equation, in case Pat got frustrated that Olivia was protected.

“The plane we’re taking to Miami is owned by a friend of mine,” Grant said. “Do you want me to change that, get something public so they can stick with us?”

She shook her head. “We don’t have to make it too easy. We’ll just mention Miami where they can hear us.”

He nodded again, his breath feathering her hair, and she forced herself not to move away and cast doubt on their honeymooner story. Yeah, like that was hard. Her body was certainly happy where it was, with her shoulder pressed against Grant’s chest and his leg brushing hers whenever the boat bounced into the trough of a wave.

It was the best and worst kind of torture she could imagine. Relief warred with disappointment, both coated with self-disgust, when their destination loomed ahead. They watched the captain expertly dock the boat, then headed back to the gate to disembark. Cowboy and Beachy joined them, making room for the captain to toss the tie-off ropes to a couple of guys on the dock.

“I’m hungry, honey,” Zoe told Grant. “Is there a place to eat on this island?”

“No, I’ve got a surprise for you in Miami,” he told her. “A sweet little place. You’ll love it.”

She beamed at him, hoping it looked real. “I hope it won’t take long to get there.”

“Nah. Short flight. Private plane.” He waggled his eyebrows. “So we can get going right away.”

“Excellent.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the “couple” sharing a look. It had worked.

They didn’t see the duo after that, not in Miami or on the plane. When Grant caught her looking over her shoulder for the eighth time since they’d disembarked in Atlanta, he assured her it was okay that they hadn’t.

“They don’t want to make us suspicious, and running into them here would do that.”

“I suppose.” But she couldn’t stop looking. Not just for Cowboy and Beachy, but for anyone who looked like they were too casual, or watching them too carefully, or following them, or even, hell, speaking too animatedly—or not animatedly enough—into their cell phones.

“I’m turning paranoid,” she complained. They were at their gate, surrounded by people, and she couldn’t look in every direction at once. She moved to a seat that was angled around a center table, putting her forty-five degrees to Grant. It let her look out the window without moving her away from where he could see the whole concourse. “When is our next flight again?” She was having trouble holding on to details.

“We board in half an hour.”

She sat for a few minutes, not looking around, not looking at Grant, but also not able to stop her knee from bouncing and her mind from racing in a hundred different directions. What if they’d lost their followers completely? She’d used her credit card to buy their plane tickets to give them something to trace, but maybe that was a step too far. What if they got someone to Utah first? Not that there was going to be anything in that train car for them to find. But if not, that meant they were wasting time and money, themselves.

God. She shot to her feet. “I’m going to call my parents.” She pulled out her phone and started to move away.

“Don’t go far.” Grant continued to recline in his seat, still sporting the beach bum look. He’d changed into relaxed-fit jeans worn to holes in places and a loose, short-sleeved button-down shirt over a t-shirt. The baseball hat was turned backwards, the brim scrunched down over his wavy hair. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. In short, he looked delicious. If Zoe had just spotted him as she walked down the concourse, she’d have tripped over someone’s suitcase because she’d be unable to look away from him.

Just like that woman there. Well, she didn’t trip over a suitcase so much as walk into a TSA agent. He didn’t look very happy.

Zoe sighed and leaned against a pillar while she speed-dialed her parents’ house. The phone only rang once before her mother answered. She was never very far from it.

“Zoe?”

She grimaced. Yay for caller ID. “Yeah, Mom, it’s me. How are you?”

“Oh, darling, it’s so good to hear your voice. We haven’t talked to you in days.”

She didn’t point out that they usually went a couple of weeks between calls. “I know. I’m—I’ve been busy.” She’d almost said she was traveling, but caught herself. She wanted the bad guys to know where she was, but it wouldn’t benefit her parents. It would open up questions and make them vulnerable if someone decided they had information. “Work’s been crazy,” she added. “How are you?”

Again, her mother avoided the question. “Sadie Milner asked about you on Monday. No, wait. It had to be Sunday, because your father skipped church. Yes, I saw her on the steps there, not the grocery store. I ran into Barbara in the grocery store. She asked about you, too.”

Zoe let her mother ramble on and tried to determine if something was wrong or if she was projecting. It was hard to tell. Her mother had a nervous demeanor in the best of times, which they hadn’t had in sixteen years. It had gotten worse as she progressed into her sixties.

“And how’s Dad?” she asked when her mother took a breath.

“A touch of a cold, actually, dear, and you know, at his age, that can get serious.” Her father had just turned seventy. “He’s taking his vitamin C and echinacea like a good boy, though, and Sally at the pharmacy said zinc and…oh, what was it…?”

“Garlic?”

“Right! Garlic can help, too. More as a preventive, she said, but maybe it could shorten how long he has his symptoms this time. So, you know.”

Okay. Time to dig a little. “So, who else have you talked to, Mom? Anyone calling that doesn’t normally? I hope you’re not getting strange phone calls. Like pranksters.”

“Are you?” Her voice quavered. “How dare they! You should get an unlisted number. I swear, the nerve of—”

“No, no, Mom, I’m not getting prank calls.” That was the truth, though having a new, unlisted number helped. She hoped Kell wasn’t getting any, though. Crap. She hadn’t thought of that. “I was just hoping you weren’t. You know, they didn’t really give my name on the national news, just locally, back in Ohio.” The small town they’d moved to in Kentucky was far enough away from their old town that her parents didn’t get those local broadcasts.

“Oh, good.” She heaved a sigh. “Well, we did have some calls in the beginning, you know, some well-wishers, and some people who pretended to be.”

“I know, you told me that last week.” She couldn’t keep the impatience out of her voice. “I mean, is anyone bothering you
now
.”

“Oh, no, dear, no one has called in a while. Except, you know, friends.” Suddenly, her tone turned cagey. It was a tone Zoe hadn’t heard in a while. “You know, what makes it all easier is having your father here. You can get through anything with the right man at your side.”

Zoe gritted her teeth. “Remember Kell, Mom? You don’t need to worry about me.”

Her mother was silent for a few seconds. “You haven’t talked about Kellen in a few weeks. I thought maybe something had happened.”

She swallowed back hysterical laughter. “So you were hinting? Doing a little subtle digging?”

“I am your mother. It’s what we do.” Zoe could hear the smile in her voice and relaxed.

“Okay. No, nothing’s happened.” She managed to get the lie out without her voice going all tight and squeaky. Everything seemed to be normal at her mother’s end. If someone had approached her, she wouldn’t be able to hide it. Not even behind subtle digging. Zoe chatted with her until Grant signaled that it was time to board, and rang off feeling much better about that end of things.

For now, anyway.

Chapter Eight

The four-hour flight passed uneventfully. Grant slept. Zoe tried to, but had trouble turning off her awareness of him. It wasn’t throat-drying need or muscle-inspired lust, only a sensation down the right side of her body that he was close. A tuning in when he shifted or made a noise in his sleep. Just enough to keep her brain from drifting away.

So when they landed and got off the plane at the Salt Lake City terminal, she was slightly on edge and in need of a few moments to herself.

“Hey! Some of us don’t have camel humps,” she called after Grant when he headed straight for the main entrance. He turned, frowning at her.

“I have to go the bathroom?” She waved a hand in that direction. He nodded, and she grumbled all the way into the stall. “Thanks ever so much for your gracious permission.”

She was glad he couldn’t hear her griping. She wouldn’t have gotten even this far without him, and it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t turn off this awareness.

It wasn’t hers, either. She straightened and stared at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t her fault. Chemistry was natural. Uncontrollable. The side of her mouth quirked up in her reflection. For once, not being able to control something made her feel better.

So all she had to do was ignore it. Pretend it didn’t exist.

When she came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, Grant was leaning against the wall, his expression lazy under the brim of his cap, but his eyes sharp. Her pulse picked up speed at the sight of him. She ignored it.

“See anyone?” she asked.

He shook his head, pushed off the wall, and started walking. “Do you want to get a hotel room first, rest a bit?”

“You mean hotel
rooms
, don’t you?” She emphasized the S, then kicked herself. She sucked at pretending.

“Whatever. Do you? You didn’t sleep much on the plane.”

“How do you know? You did.”

He just slanted a look at her.