him a look just shy of apprehensive, but nodded. They went to the garage at the far end of the palace grounds where her rented Peugeot was parked. Since it was her car, Faran was content to let her drive. Sort of. Lexie was an excellent driver, but she’d never met an accelerator she didn’t like.
Soon she was tearing down the service road that wound behind the myriad stables, garages, work sheds and other utilitarian buildings that kept the Palace of Marcari functioning. At the bottom of a sloping hill, she turned right onto the scenic coastal highway.
“So tell me what wasn’t safe to say on the street,” Faran ventured.
Lexie ran through the interview blow-by-blow. “Valois is suspicious. He pulled a lot off the computer about both of us. I think that’s why he kept leaving the room. He wanted to check on the progress of his computer minions.”
“Minions?” Faran echoed.
Lexie frowned. The expression looked dangerous with all that red hair. “Men like Valois have minions. He hinted about your associates in the jewelry business. What was that about?”
“That file was supposed to be buried deep.” The Company had pulled him out of a bad life and given him choices. Part of that had been wiping the official slate clean. Faran looked out the window. “I was a kid. It was stupid kid stuff.”
“Something illegal?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“You could call it that.” Some were still doing time for their last score, but Lexie didn’t need to know the details. “I was on my own. Some people had uses for a small kid with exceptional agility. I could get around obstacles they couldn’t.”
“You were a cat burglar.”
“I don’t like cats.”
But the label was accurate. He’d received an education in thievery, especially precious stones. It had been a crack team, going after the best pieces. With Amelie’s ring missing, no wonder Valois was interested.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Lexie asked.
Because you already had one foot out the door. “I’m not proud of it. There’s never a good time to start a discussion about your juvenile arrest record.”
She shifted gears to take a hairpin curve. “Before we moved in together would have been good.”
But by then he was too far gone in love to risk losing her. “I didn’t plan to screw everything up.”
“We never do,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for all the ways I hurt you.”
The soft words surprised him so much he forgot everything else. “You are?”
She didn’t answer, but the blood rushed to her cheeks. He looked away, knowing that if he pushed her to say more the moment would be ruined. In the brief silence, his gaze drifted to the passenger-side mirror.
The back of Faran’s neck tingled in warning. “Don’t look now, but someone is doing an amateurish job of tailing us.”
Lexie looked anyway. There was a dark gray sedan behind her—which was not by itself a suspicious fact, but when she changed lanes, it changed with her.
“Told you,” Faran said. “I’d give him five and a half out of ten.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Even before she’d known he was a real spy, he’d liked to give a play-by-play review of the covert ops on TV. “What do I do?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you know who it is?”
“No.”
“Think you can lose him?”
Irritated and apprehensive, Lexie looked behind her again. The sedan was still there. “Maybe.”
“Go for it.”
Conversation died. Full of curves and switchbacks, the scenic road had been used in more than one sports-car commercial and Lexie needed all her concentration. The first chance she got, she made a left turn off the highway, picking up a smaller road that wound through the hills. The sedan didn’t change course.
“Wait a minute,” she said, oddly disappointed. “Did we completely misread the situation?”
“I dunno,” Faran said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Disgruntled and feeling as if she was missing some punch line, she let the road take her along a twisting loop that wandered back toward the city. It wouldn’t take long to reach the suburbs—Marcari’s capital was small. No place was more than ten minutes to the countryside and bad roads.
Lexie looked for another turnoff to take her back to the highway, but there was nothing in sight—not that one could see very far in front or behind with so many twists and turns.
“I don’t like this,” Faran said. “It’s like driving blind.”
“I’ll get back to the highway as soon as there’s a turnoff.”
But there were just lanes here and there leading to farms or the wealthy estates that were hidden along Marcari’s coastline. She drove along the hilly, bumpy terrain, sometimes surrounded by clumps of scruffy pine and other times overlooking the blue sea and whitewashed houses below. Another day, she wouldn’t have minded getting semilost, but right then she wasn’t in the mood.
Apart from everything else, Faran’s presence in the passenger seat was reminding her of too many road trips that had ended up at little wayside inns. There had been magical evenings—sometimes with long walks or music festivals or just a local dinner and bed. They had all started out in a car going nowhere in particular with the whole world ahead of them.
Those scattered images of their past made the space between them far too small. Faran had a formidable presence, but Lexie was especially aware of his square, practical hands resting on his knees. Those hands had often told her so much more than his words. They were capable of incredible tenderness, but right now their nervous fidgets said he was every bit as uneasy as she was.
“Lexie!” Faran shouted, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Behind you!”
She glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see a car speeding into view around a steep curve. Instantly, she swerved to avoid it, but the road was too narrow. The car clipped her back bumper, jolting her against her shoulder belt. The Peugeot lurched forward, the front tire sliding off the road and slewing into a sapling. Wood snapped as Lexie cranked the steering wheel hard, forcing the vehicle back onto the road before it skidded completely out of control. She felt the bump as the car regained the solid surface, and only then saw the gray sedan speed past. Furious, she leaned on the horn. Faran swore.
The sedan disappeared around the bend, going far too fast for the sharp curves. Lexie fell back against the seat with a gasp, almost deafened by the thunder of her own pulse. She lowered the windows a few inches, allowing the cool breeze to chill her sweat-soaked skin.
“Good driving,” Faran said. His voice sounded almost normal,
