“Change me, anyway. Make me into someone they could handle instead of someone they could trust.”
She stared at him. “I trust you.”
He cocked his head. “Then why did you follow me last night?”
Oh. That.Her mouth opened.
He smiled.
“Fine. Okay. I wasworried.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“We’repartners.”
He narrowed his eyes, as if assessing her words.
“What? Aren’t we? Isn’t that whattogethermeans?”
“When I was on the SEAL teams, we each had a job to do. I did mine, the guys did theirs, and we worked together. Which meant trusting each other when?—”
“It goes both ways, Easton.”
He blinked at the use of his given name.
“I’m just saying that... if I toldyouto stay back, you wouldn’t do it.”
He drew in a breath and his mouth tightened.
“And yes. Fine. Of course I care about you.” She swallowed. “Probably more than is healthy. But... I don’t see a way out for us here.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means?—”
Skeet’s phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at the screen, and his entire posture shifted. “Coco,” he said, thumb hovering over the answer button. “This could be important.”
And it probably saved her, because she didn’t quite want to say the end of that sentence.
It means it’s over as soon as you leave.
“Take it,” she said. Looked away.
Shoot,a part of her wanted to throw the phone into the sea. Her heart and her brain needed to start working together too.
Skeet answered, putting it on speaker. “What’ve you got?”
“Hope you two enjoyed your little vacation,” Coco said, “because it’s officially over.”
Wait. But they hadn’t seen the meeting, or the participants—this wasn’t over?—
Skeet leaned back. “What happened?”
“We found Volkov’s Bangkok operation. Warehouse district, near the port. But that’s not the scary part.”
“What’s the scary part?” Skeet asked, his voice shifting into mission mode.
“They’re not shipping the toxin anywhere. They’re making it airborne.”