“That would hurt considerably more than being hit on the head. I told you, I’m taking you to a hotel.”
“I’m not in the set that can afford hotels.”
“I am. And I’m not going to leave you hanging in the breeze. Not at your place. Not even in a hotel under your own name.”
She squirmed on her seat and managed to look at him. “You’re creeping me out.”
“Good. You should have been creeped out before.”
“I was, but not like this. What are you thinking?”
“You’ve pissed someone off enough to commit felony burglary and battery. That’s very pissed off. You know something, or they think you do. You’re still alive, which can’t make them happy. Two plus two equals four.”
Gingerly, she reached up and touched the staples on the back of her head. “You have a point. Why didn’t you want to say anything in the apartment?”
He glanced her way. “Cops talk. Sometimes idly, and sometimes not.”
He was right, she realized. “So I can’t trust the cops but I can trust you? There’s a disconnect there.”
He reached in his breast pocket and tossed her a flip-phone. She barely managed to catch it, considering the world was still trying to bob on invisible waves.
“Call information. Get the number for the Austin field office of the FBI. Ask about me. Check my creds. Get my description.”
She looked at the phone. Part of her said she didn’t need to do that if he was so willing to let her; part of her suspicious reporter’s mind suggested that he might be expecting that reaction.
So she flipped open his phone, got the number and made the call. A recording answered her.
“Cool,” she said. “A recording can’t identify you.”
“Keep listening. Toward the end we finally admit that you can reach an agent right now.”
“I should hope so. The country could collapse while you guys sleep.”
“We never sleep.”
“Yeah, right.” She pressed eight when the menu promised it would put her directly in touch with an agent. After a couple of rings, a silky woman’s voice answered.
“Agent Dickson. May I help you?”
“Uh, yes. I’m with a guy claiming to be Special Agent Jerrod Westlake. Is he for real?”
The woman chuckled. “We often wonder that ourselves. Yes, he’s a real agent. Do you want his description?”
“Please.”
“Tall, green-eyed, dark and handsome. Well, not really handsome. He looks more like somebody carved his face out of wood. Nice smile, though, when you can get it out of him.”
Erin almost laughed. “That sounds like him.”
“Put him on the phone for a sec, would you?”
“Sure.” Erin passed the phone back to Jerrod.
“Westlake,” he said. “Oh, hi, Georgie. Yeah, with what she’s been through today, I don’t blame her for being suspicious. We’re going to ground overnight. I’ll get in touch tomorrow. Yeah. You got it.”
He flipped the phone closed and tucked it back in the inside pocket of his suit.
“She sounds nice,” Erin remarked.
“As long as you don’t get on the wrong side of her.”
Relieved, Erin let go of the tension. It would come back, she knew, but for now she could allow herself to feel safe. “Isn’t your office number programmed on your phone?”
“Of course. But would you have trusted it?”
“Good point.” He was outthinking her paranoia. Interesting guy. Then, slowly, she let her eyelids droop closed. It was a relief to go to sleep.
Jerrod almost woke her, remembering the doctor’s warnings about sleep, but the hotel was only another twenty minutes away, if that. He figured he could give her that much time safely.
Spunky woman, he thought, wheeling through thinning traffic. Striking. Black hair and bright blue eyes. Arresting. A fair-skinned Irish beauty, with a compact but tempting figure.
But her loveliness wasn’t what had struck him most. It was her attitude that had captivated him. Sassy, sardonic, sarcastic—and very, very sharp. Even with a concussion, all of that showed through. She didn’t like being told “No,” and she didn’t care if people knew that.
But she was also a mystery. Jerrod Westlake was no fool, and he knew she was keeping something to herself, something that had put her at greater risk than testifying at that ridiculous fraud trial. He could sense it in the almost slippery way she edged around some things, in the way she chose her words. She didn’t believe her apartment had been ransacked because she’d testified, nor did she believe she had been fired because of it.
Nor did he. She was on to something much bigger, and he wanted to know what it was.
But first he had to make her as safe as he could.
The thunderstorm had followed him from Austin. Or maybe this was a new one building. Either way, lightning jumped across the sky, cloud to cloud, a beautiful thing. He waited for the thunder, but if it reached him, it was deadened by the car. Another fork of lightning wrapped the clouds like a spiderweb. Still no rain. It wouldn’t be long.
He had chosen to go south, the least likely direction for anyone to look for him because it took him farther from Austin. He was pretty sure they didn’t have a tail, but he took some side streets to make sure before returning to the highway, and finally picking a hotel. Embassy Suites. Two rooms, which would give her a bedroom and him a front room with a sofa bed if he wanted it. Only one door.
He parked, rather than pulling up under the porte cochere. He would not allow them to be separated, even in public.
Coming around to her side of the car, he woke her gently by calling her name quietly. When her blue eyes flashed open, he saw the momentary confusion. Then he saw the return of awareness. It was almost as if something inside her closed the shutters.
“We’re at the hotel,” he told her. “I’ll get our bags, then we’ll go in.”
She wasn’t ready to talk yet, or even nod. He did catch her wince as she moved her head.
“When we get inside, take one of those pain pills.”
“I just might succumb,” she admitted.
He pulled their bags—hers newly packed, his always there in case of emergency—out of the trunk, then helped her out of the car.
“You don’t seem as wobbly.”
“No,” she agreed. “I think I’m off the carousel.”
“That’s good news.”
Inside the lobby, he checked them in, using his own credit card. He didn’t want Erin’s name on anything, at least until he found out what was going on. Check-in was easy and fast, and ten minutes later they were in their suite.
Erin collapsed in an armchair near the door, but despite her apparent physical weakness, those blue eyes of hers suggested she was regaining her full mental faculties, and along with them, a rising curiosity. Reporters weren’t much different from FBI agents. Questions were always turning in the backs of their minds. It was just a matter of who broke the ice and asked first.
“There’s a bedroom back here,” he said, throwing the door open and carrying her suitcase to one of two double beds. “And a bath. It’s all yours. I’ll stay in