Encrypted (16 page)

Hello
?
This was not how the fantasy was supposed to play out
.

“You know,
I’ve
turned to the dark side
.
I’ve embraced the criminal life
.
I don’t need to explain why I’m flaunting regulations and protocol.” S
he was going to stop, but she was
on a roll even Quirk would be proud of
.
“Maybe
you
should step up to the plate and say why you haven’t reported our communications to your superiors.” Coming down the mountain even more righteously,
she asked,
“Why
have
you continued to engage in illegal correspondence with a wanted felon
?
And don’t give me that bu
ll
answer about how you are trying to get me to see the evil of my ways.”

Ronnie wasn’t sure
that
she was really done, but she was definitely out of breath
.
That had been quite the rant
.
She even felt a little light-headed
.
What exactly could he say to all of that
?
What did she want him to say
?
She waited for his response
,
and then waited some more
.

* * *

Zach’s legs quit
pedaling
.
Damn, he wanted to be mad at her
.
He would have loved to just kick sand right back at the unrepentant felon, but Ronnie had a point
.
What in the hell
was
he
doing
?
Did he really want her to come in from the cold
?
Wasn’t it pretty apparent after the first month of this off-the-books relationship that she would never give herself up
?
Then what was he
doing,
still talking to her
?
What had he gotten himself into
?
How could he respond to her questions when he couldn’t even answer them himself?

As the moments dragged on, the only thing filling this most uncomfortable silence was the music
.
Thank
G
od it was still playing
,
or he might actually have to respond to her unanswerable questions.

“Please tell me that isn’t Van Halen playing,” she teased.

Zach couldn’t help but chuckle
.
Classic Ronnie
.
She could ride a five
-
minute anger tidal wave, then hop off and playfully splash you with water
.
He took the opposite approach. H
e liked to chew his cud
.
Hash something over and over again
.
That was something else she had taught him
.
Let it go.

“Van Halen?” Zach replied. “Yeah
.
Yeah, it is.”

While she launched into another rant, Ronnie’s voice was more playful
.
“Okay, I spend hours downloading music and risk incarceration to bring you cutting
-
edge boot-legs, and you’re listening to Van Halen
?
Sammy Hagar’s
Van Halen?”

“Yep, and proud of it,” he confirmed, grinning.

“I didn’t even load that song into memory, and I certainly didn’t put it into your playlists.”

Zach’s face relaxed into a true smile
.
This
was why he was still talking to her
,
and he had to admit
that
it had nothing to do with convincing her to come clean
.
“I know you are the
über
-hacker, but I know my way around a mouse.”

“And you choose to display that talent by adding Hagar to the mix?”

He played right along
.
“Yep, and proud of it.”

The sound of her laughter filled his ears
.
Would it sound as sweet in person
?
“You
really
need to get out more
.
And, hey, are you still going to your cousin’s bachelor party in Ciudad
Juarez
?”

Another classic Ronnie move
.
Conversation jump
.
Sometimes he needed a diagram to remind him
of
the fifteen different threads they were following
.
He’d given up trying to keep their conversations linear
.
Where Ronnie led, you just followed
.
Even if you didn’t necessarily want to.

“Yep, and
not
proud of it.”

“
I thought you didn’t want to schle
p all the way across the border?
”
Ronnie asked.

Zach sighed
.
Not the subject
that
he wanted to spend their precious minutes on, but he knew
that
she was
like
a dog
with
a
bone, so he answ
ered, “I don’t, but I missed Skip’s
last one
,
so
—
”

“Last one?” Ronnie interrupted
.
“He’s been married before?”

“Oh
,
he’s been married five times and has seven kids.” Then
,
pausing for the perfect comic moment
—
something else he had also learned from Ronnie
—
Zach finished with, “All with different mothers.”

“And you think our relationship dynamic is weird?” Ronnie joked.

“Maybe there’s hope for us yet,” Zach quickly added, regretted it,
and
then didn’t
.

Had he really just spoken such a truth so casually
?
When he started to
speak
, the words had been a joke
.
A play on words
.
T
he sentiment was anything but a laughing matter
.
Was there any hope,
any
hope at all
,
for them
?
And why wasn’t she saying anything
?
Why was there silence again
?
God, was one of them going to have the guts to actually speak what had been unspoken for months
?
Did
he
have the guts to
?

“You know, Ronnie,” Zach started awkwardly
,
“I was thinking…”

What
was
he thinking
,
though
?
H
e had decided to go to his cousin’s party
for another reason
.
And it had nothing to do with familial obligation, but could he bring himself to tell her?

He started again
.
“Maybe
.
Maybe we…
Or
you could…” Oh
,
Jesus
,
this wasn’t going well
.
Another do-over
.
Stick to the facts
,
and maybe, just maybe he could get a sentence out
.
“You know
,
the
bachelor
party is outside the U
.
S
.
,
and I was thinking
that
maybe we could
—
”

“Za
ch, who
are
you talking to?” A
voice came from across the room.

No, it couldn’t be
.
It was
Julia
.
In the room
.
With Ronnie on the line
.

Oh crap, crap, crap!

As his former
fiancée
walked
toward
him, Zach
fumbled with the iPod, disconnecting the line
.
Ronnie did not need to hear this.

* * *

What in the hell was going on
?
Zach might have thought he turned off the transceiver, but he was horribly mistaken
.
She could
hear
each and every painful word.

His words came through crystal clear
.
“Julia
?
What
?
How
?
Where?”

“I still have keys,
Zachary
.”

Shit
.
Julia sounded as freaking beautiful as her picture
.
His ex-fiancé
e
had given up a modeling career to work with the homeless
.
Bitch.

“But why?” he asked.

“You made it pretty clear
that
you wanted me to come by tonight to pick up my mail?”

Damn
!
W
hy in the hell hadn’t she installed video surveillance in Zach’s basement? She needed to see his face
.
She
needed to see
his reaction
.
Really, she just needed to be there.

“And back to my question,” Julia said. “
Who
were you talking to
?
And when did you convert the basement into a gym
?
I’ve only been gone a few weeks.”

“A few
week
s
?” Ronnie squ
ea
ked
.
What the hell?

“Let’s not do this again, okay?” Zach mumbled.

“Who were you talking to
,
Zach
?
Or would you rather I tell Grant that you’ve been secluding yourself in the basement
,
talking to no one in particular?”

Ronnie could tell that hit a nerve with Zach
.
His words came out far tighter
.
“
Julia, that threat is beneath you…Come
on.”

Each of his ex-
fiancée’s
words
were
punctuated
with determination
.
“
Who
were you talking to?”

Ronnie strained to hear
.
Was that silence
,
or was Zach whispering
?
Had they moved outside the iPod’s range?

Finally
,
a sigh
.
“Myself,” Zach
said
.
“I was…
Working
on…”

How was he going to get out of this one
?
Zach couldn’t exactly tell the truth
,
here or
ever
,
about them.

“I was working on…
s
elf-affirmations.”

“Self-affirmations?” Ronnie
’s
words echoed Julia’s
.

“Self-aff
irmations?” Julia demanded
.

“Yeah, the ones my therapist gave me.”

Even through the tinny connection, Ronnie could hear Julia’s anger.

“Therapist
?
You, all-knowing, emotionally so well equipped that he refused for a year to go see someone even after I begged him, is now going to a
therapist
?”

Ronnie could hear that Zach’s back was up
.
“Yeah, the one you recommended
.
Dr. Webster.”

“Dr. Webster?”
Julia
sure
could
sound bitter when she wanted to
.
“Really
?
Zach
,
just admit you aren’t
—
”