Undercover Accomplice. Carol Ericson
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“Under this one.” He plucked a cover from a rack of toast. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
She’d exchanged her ire for a cold civility. He couldn’t decide which stung more. Over the years, he’d built up some ridiculous significance to their fling—Sue just set him straight.
He poured her a cup of coffee and nudged the cream and sugar toward her where she’d taken up a place across the table from him.
She dumped some cream into her coffee, picked up the cup and leveled a gaze at him over the rim. “Where did you sleep last night?”
His own coffee sloshed over the side of his cup. “The sofa.”
“That small thing?”
“My legs hung over the edge, but I’ve had worse.”
All the questions that must be bubbling in her brain and that one came to the surface first?
“Look, this is what happened.” He slurped a sip of coffee for fortification. “I’d followed you to the bar from your place. I watched the entrance, waiting for you to come out, and I was going to approach you then.”
“Why not sooner?”
“I told you, I’d just arrived in the afternoon, and I didn’t have your address right away. Figured you’d be at work, anyway. By the time I got around to finding your place, you were on the move. I didn’t want to interrupt your evening. I thought about leaving you a note, but…”
“You figured I might not contact you.”
“So, I followed you to the bar and waited.”
“How’d you know I was with Dani? A woman? You mentioned seeing my friend leave with a man.”
He cleared his throat. “I went into the bar.”
“You were watching me inside the bar?” She stabbed at her eggs with a fork. “Creepy.”
His lips twitched. “Sorry. I didn’t stay long. Then I waited outside and saw your friend leave.”
“Just in time to see me staggering out.”
“Scared the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
“It didn’t look…normal, and I knew you weren’t a big drinker, or at least you weren’t in Paris.” There he was, acting like some big expert on Sue Chandler.
“It didn’t feel normal.” She dropped a half-eaten piece of toast onto her plate. “If that guy I was with, Jeffrey, drugged me, what did his friend do to Dani? And why would they want to do anything to either of us?”
“Before we try to answer that second question, why don’t you give Dani a call?” He crumpled his napkin next to his plate and grabbed her phone off the charger. “I found your phone charger in your purse and took the liberty of hooking you up.”
“Thanks. Seems like you thought of everything.”
“Except that change of clothes.” He dropped the phone into her palm.
While Sue called her friend, Hunter shook out his napkin and listened. Everything sounded okay on this end. Maybe he’d been wrong about Sue being in danger.
She ended the call and tapped the edge of the phone against her chin.
“Everything okay?”
“Dani’s already home. Seems Mason was the perfect gentleman. She passed out in his hotel room, and he checked out before she woke up. He left her a note telling her to order anything she wanted from room service and to take her time. And she woke up with all her clothes on…which is more than I can say for myself.”
“Maybe Dani passed out before she had a chance to hurl all over herself.”
“Don’t remind me.” She made a face and stuck out her tongue.
“That’s good, then. Dani is safe at home with her virginity intact.”
Sue covered her lower face with her napkin and raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But she’s all right.”
“She is.”
“You don’t sound relieved.”
“I am relieved, but I’m puzzled.” She swirled her coffee in the cup, staring inside as if looking for answers there. “Why did we both have such strong reactions to a couple bottles of wine? Dani knows how to get her drink on. I’ve never seen her more than a little tipsy, and I haven’t gotten sick on booze since my college years, when we’d get an older classmate in our dorm to buy us a bottle of cheap rum and we’d mix it with diet soda.”
“Now I’m feeling sick.” He dusted toast crumbs from his fingertips into his napkin. “I don’t know why you’re confused. Just because Dani wasn’t assaulted, thank God, doesn’t mean the two of you weren’t drugged.”
“For what purpose? I just told you, Mason didn’t molest Dani, and I passed out in the gutter like a common drunk.”
“And I rescued you.”
“What?” Her eyebrows created a V over her nose. “Rescued me from what?”
“I think I rescued you from Jeffrey.” He held out his hand as Sue began to rise from her chair. “Just wait. Did you think he was going to haul you out of the bar in front of witnesses? Did he suggest walking you out or to your car?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe he planned to make his move then.”
“What move?” Sue hugged herself. “Now you’re scaring me.”
“I’m not sure, Sue. Those two men, Mason and Jeffrey, or whatever their names are, zeroed in on you and Dani. They slipped you some something and Mason was charged with getting Dani away while Jeffrey was supposed to take care of you.”
“‘Take care of’? What the hell are you talking about, Mancini?”
“You were kidnapped once and you escaped. What did your captors want with you? Did you think that was going to end just because you escaped?”
This time she did jump up from her chair, and it tipped backward with a thump.
“That was Istanbul. This is DC.” She twisted her napkin in front of her.
He raised one eyebrow. “You ever hear of travel by airplane? It’s a newfangled invention.”
She fired her napkin at him. “Why are you joking? This is serious. You’re trying to tell me the people who kidnapped me in Turkey are trying to recapture me here?”
“It’s a strong possibility, especially in light of the message Denver sent me.”
She stalked to the end of the room, spun around and stalked back. “You said you arrived in DC just yesterday afternoon?”
“Yeah, why?” His heart thumped against his rib cage. He recognized that look on her face—the flared nostrils, the pursed lips, the wide eyes, as if to take in everything in front of them.
“I felt—” she rubbed her upper arms “—like I was being followed the past few weeks. That wasn’t you?”
“Nope, but it must’ve been someone. Your instincts are sharp.” He rose from the chair and stationed himself by the window.
“They usually are.” She aimed a piercing look at him from her dark eyes and he almost felt the stab in his heart.
He cleared his throat. “Then I think it’s clear what we need to do.”
“It is? And who’s this we?”
“Me