he wasn’t family… She stopped the thought. He was the closest thing she’d had to a father since she was ten years old. He trusted her enough to ask for her help. She should trust him enough to believe he wouldn’t endanger her livelihood. Or her life.
She just wished she had her real father to turn to for advice.
Frank watched Elf pace back and forth behind the screen door. Whoever she was talking to wasn’t making her happy. Maybe it was her client.
Who was her client and what kind of hold did he have on her? She clearly hadn’t liked using drugs as a means of control, yet she had taken that risk to accomplish her assignment.
Loyalty and determination were strong motivators. In his field, those traits could mean the difference between success and failure, life and death.
She flipped the phone closed and stowed it in one of her many pants pockets. He expected her to come get him, but instead, she stood with her fists braced on her hips, staring down at the ground.
He could almost feel sorry for her. With her short, spiky hair and current costume, she almost looked waif-like. Of course, waifs didn’t normally pack snub-nosed revolvers.
She began pacing again. Something bothered her, which was only fair considering she’d been bothering him since the first glimpse he’d caught of her.
It wasn’t every day a woman got the better of him.
He’d tasted sweet revenge, brief as it was, back at the rest stop. That satisfaction had come with a price and he’d paid with a constant state of discomfort, aggravated every time his traitorous memory opted to review the image of her hand so close to his. Which seemed to happen with every mile marker they had passed in silence on their long drive to the middle of nowhere.
She’d given no indication of how long they would be staying here. He’d lay odds they wouldn’t leave until her client instructed her to do so.
Her client’s identity would be an extremely helpful detail to know right about now.
Someone had broken his cover. He wanted to know who and why. And he wanted to know how and why this woman was involved.
Elf looked up and met his gaze head-on. He could see her take a deep breath before she headed back to the car with a determined step.
“Okay, Cabrini, here’s the deal.” She pulled the passenger door open, but made no move to release him. “We’re going to be here for a couple days. Maybe longer. While this place is fully equipped, it does lack anything that resembles a jail cell.”
“I can see where that might pose a problem.”
“Especially for you. I don’t have a secure place to keep you, and my options seem pretty limited.”
“Exhausted your supply of knockout drugs, did you?” How much did she dislike holding him against his will?
In the dim light from the car dome fixture, her deep blue irises looked black. He could almost hear the crackle of anger in her eyes.
Quite a bit, it would seem. “No iron bed to handcuff me to?”
A muscle in her jaw pulsed as she ground her teeth.
“No woodshed, root cellar or pool house?” He pushed a little more.
She slapped the roof of the car as she straightened away from the door. “Having fun, aren’t you?”
“Surprisingly, yes.” He winked at her.
She stomped away a few steps, spun around and jammed her fists into her pockets. “Okay. Fine. Now that you’ve enumerated what we don’t have, would you like to make any suggestions about what would work?”
“You could just ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“To cooperate.”
“Of course.” She smacked her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? The clientele I deal with is always cooperative and trustworthy.”
“I thought we established that I’m not your usual kind of target.”
She crossed back to the car, rested her hands on the roof and leaned down to look him in the eyes. “Mistah Cabrini, suh?”
Oh, hell. Southern.
“Would you all be so kind as to behave yourself while we’re all alone out here in the middle of nowhere?” She batted her long, black eyelashes at him.
“Sure.”
“Yeah. Right.” She pushed away from the car again but didn’t move.
That put him eye to belly button with her again. The tiny red crystal beads dangling from the gold ring piercing her navel winked at him, teasing him with intimate images. His fingers itched to slip under her clothes and explore her vanilla-scented skin.
He cleared his throat. “You could try trusting me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“We’ve established there’s no legal grounds for you to hold me.” He shrugged. “Have I done anything to make you distrust me?”
“No. But then, you’ve been restrained most of the time.”
“True enough. How about this? How much do you trust your client?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would he ask you to kidnap someone and take them out of town if he thought that person was dangerous?”
“That may be exactly why he asked me to bring you here. I do this for a living. He knew I’d be safe and that he could trust me.”
“Is that what he just told you?”
Her hand brushed across the pocket holding her phone. “The signal kept breaking up. I couldn’t make out everything he said.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know you’re in the middle of something.”
“That’s a lot of help. Any idea what?”
She studied him through narrowed eyes. “What do you know about arson?”
His heart skipped sideways for a beat. Did she know about his investigation, or was she fishing for information? “Enough to know it’s not a good idea.”
“Blackmail?”
He shook his head. His agency’s client hadn’t mentioned blackmail, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it did crop up somewhere during his investigation. “Same thing. All around bad idea.”
“Who are you, really? What do you do?”
“You’ve been following me for a week. Why don’t you tell me?” He wanted to hear how
