Smokescreen. Jodie Bailey
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the warmth of him to penetrate her jacket. “You okay?”
She glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead he scanned the tree line, the side of the building, trying to keep an eye out for any possible incursions. Knowing he wasn’t watching her eased the remaining tension in her shoulders. “I’m okay.” But she’d be better if she were alone. What she wouldn’t give for five minutes all by herself to knit her thoughts together.
“So that still happens?” There was no emotion in his words, no condemnation.
Her spine stiffened. Yes, that still happened, though not in a very long time. It was a failing she’d never been able to hide from him, as much as she’d tried. In spite of weak knees threatening to dump her to the ground, she pushed herself away from the truck, taking a second to steady her legs. “I said I’m fine.” And she would be, eventually, if he’d quit focusing on her. “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” She yanked open the truck door, even though the interior of the vehicle shrank into a claustrophobic nightmare.
This would take all of her willpower. Honestly, men with guns high-speed chasing them through the night was way less scary than standing here while Ethan realized she was still only half of her former self.
“I think we’re fairly safe here.” He didn’t move, didn’t pull out his keys and act as though it was imperative they hit the road again. “You know you can’t handle this on your own, right?”
Her hand froze on the cool metal of the door. He was in no position to give her advice, not when he had no idea what her life was like thanks to his running away. “When did you become a therapist? Did you learn that when you were in Intelligence training?” Ashley winced at her words. That was the one thing she really shouldn’t have brought up in front of him. Maybe he hadn’t heard.
“Very few days go by that I don’t think about how what I have came to me at the expense of your dreams.”
“And you left like a coward without telling me why.” Without giving him a chance to respond, Ashley hefted herself into the truck and slammed the door shut. If Ethan hadn’t taken her spot, someone else would have, but she couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stand to be reminded her life was working on plan F: fear and failure.
It was a long time before he climbed in the other side and slid the key into the ignition, though he didn’t turn the engine over. “Ash, I—”
“The conversation’s over. The past is done.” If only. “Sean needs us. Let’s just get those thumb drives from the post office, find the decryption code and pass it all on to whoever needs them to shut your case and bring Sean home. Then you can go back to your intelligence gathering and I can go back to my computers.”
Ethan’s fingers dropped from the ignition. “You know it’s not going to be easy.”
Oh, but she wanted it to be.
“Ash, you can’t go home until these guys are caught. It’s not safe for you until—”
“I know.” But that didn’t mean she wanted to think about it. Ethan and Sean had ripped her from her safe, controlled existence. A few miles away her apartment lay in shambles and she couldn’t go home anytime soon...if ever. In her swirling life, she needed a safe place or she was in danger of losing every inch of the ground she’d recovered since the day she’d been shot. “Just give me a few minutes where I can pretend none of this is happening.”
“What good’s that going to do you?”
“None.” Ashley ran a hand along her thigh and gripped the front of the seat, the leather soft beneath her fingers. “Where do we have to take the drives for you to have them analyzed? And where’s the cipher key?”
Beside her, Ethan froze. It was as if time had stopped and held him in suspended animation.
“The cipher key? The decryption code? Ethan, if Sean didn’t give you a key, the program’s useless. We set up the program using a symmetric key algorithm. The data’s encrypted in files, but the encryption requires a key, some kind of code to lock and unlock the data. Sean’s too smart to mail it with the drives themselves. Did he give you any clue where it is? Where he hid it?”
Ethan was quiet so long Ashley ventured a look. He was staring at her, expression unreadable except for his eyes. The brown of them was deep, dark...and sad. “I don’t have the cipher.” He started the truck, the vents blasting warm air into Ashley’s face. “You do.”
The heat from the vents battled the cold running through Ashley’s veins. He couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought he was. “No.”
“I have no idea what Sean meant, but you’re it. You’re all we’ve got, because there’s no one else we can trust. He said you’d know everything once you saw the data.”
Physical pain thundered through her chest and shot lightning bolts into her extremities. A sudden rush of panic and she was clawing for the door, the lock... Anything. Any way to be free. She held the key, the one thing between Sean and death, between those men and the information they wanted.
Hands grasped her shoulders, angled her toward Ethan. Firm fingers tipped her chin and gently turned her head. As violently as she tried to fight, the gentle press of those warm fingers didn’t let up.
“Ashley.” Ethan’s voice was low, warm, calm. “Look at me. At me. In my eyes.”
It was the last place she wanted to focus, but her eyes were drawn to his. As soon as her gaze met his, everything in her stilled. It was the last place she should find safety, but her heart knew him and refused to feel anything else.
“You’re okay. You’re safe. No matter what happens, I am right here beside you. I will protect you.” Those last words hammered with emphasis, slow and heavy.
She couldn’t look him in the eye anymore.
Ashley leaned back from his grasp and exhaled, panic floating away with his promises. She had no idea how he’d done it, but she hoped he didn’t have to again. The way her pulse pounded now had absolutely nothing to do with fear.
This was probably worse.
As much as she knew close proximity to Ethan was dangerous to her heart and as much as she wanted to walk away to protect herself, she couldn’t. Sean’s life—her life—depended on their teaming up.
And, boy, when they were all safe, was Sean going to hear from her about this entire setup, from painting a bull’s-eye on her back to making her work with Ethan Kincaid again.
For now, there was work to do. Authority to assert. “You have to take me to my car.”
Ethan’s head came up, eyebrows high in confusion. “Your car? At the airport?” He shook his head. “No way. For all we know, there are people staking it out.”
Control. What she needed right now was control, and she was about to take it. She needed to be in charge if she wanted to survive this. She needed to fool herself into believing something was in her power. “Doubtful. They saw you come in all John Wayne and take me out of there like your truck was on fire. They’re long gone from the airport, focused on my apartment or somewhere else.” She pulled her seat belt across and latched it with a definite click. “We’re going to the airport.”
“There is no way I’m—”
“The keys to the post-office box are in it. The box is up north, in Black River. I go up every couple of weeks to check on my grandparents’ cabin and to get his mail.” That was something she should have seen before. The fact Sean had rented a postbox an hour away instead of a more convenient location in Syracuse. He was trying to protect her even while he used her. Maybe she should be grateful, and she would be, after she tore him apart for doing this to her in the first place. “We have to get those keys or we can’t get into the box. There’s no other way.”
There it was. The twitch in his right temple. It popped up when he couldn’t say what was on his mind. What