Page 49 of Hot Pursuit
Her eyebrows scrunched. What was he trying to do? They’d found a balance, a careful one. Why was he trying to ruin it? “So…?”
“So today, I don’t have the time or the luxury of following them.” Nate’s tone was almost comically even, so completely different from the gravity of the words he offered.
Jo turned to him, shifting her weight on the bench. “What does that mean?”
“It means”—Nate met and held her gaze, probing—“did he tell you who was following us yesterday?”
Jo looked to the ground and studied the cracks in the pavement by their feet. Lying made her uncomfortable when it was with someone who mattered. The fact that her skin currently crawled was more telling than any other reaction she’d ever had in Nate’s presence. Because it meant she cared, a lot more than she wanted to. “He didn’t know.”
Nate snorted. “Sure he didn’t.”
“I trust him.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Oh, you trust him?” Nate murmured, voice heavy with disbelief. “You don’t think he’s ever lied to you?”
“Not about anything important.”
“Where do you think he and your father were last week?” Nate asked, innocent enough.
But still, her chest pulled tight. “Florida. Meeting with some…friends.”
“Wrong,” Nate countered. “They were in Cuba.”
Cuba?
Why Cuba?
Why not be honest?
She shook her head, dispelling the questions.
“So what?” Jo turned on him, practically spitting the words. Who was this Nate? And what happened to the sweet, gentle, kind man from yesterday? The one who looked at her as though he understood all the messy pain inside her heart? This Nate was mean and a bit of a jerk, and she was about one question away from ditching her plan altogether and calling it a day. “I hardly think that makes a big difference.”
“Okay, how’s this one for you?” Nate answered, voice fueled with challenge. “Why did Ryder drop out of college? Maybe that one’s a little more important.”
“He…” Jo trailed off, trying to read where this was going, to anticipate the surprise Nate was trying to pull. But what could Nate possibly know that she didn’t? Why would Thad have lied about this? To her? “His dad died the summer before his senior year, and he went back to school, and I thought he was doing great, but he came home one day and said he couldn’t do it anymore. That the things he used to think were important, didn’t matter. He didn’t want to be so far away from me, from my father. He didn’t want to be so alone. And I understood, in a way, how losing someone like that could make his priorities shift.”
Nate pressed his lips together and nodded, considering her answer.
Jo stared at him through the corner of her eye.
He kept his gaze straight ahead, lifting his coffee cup, quietly murmuring, “Your dad said he was going to retire that summer, didn’t he? Said it wasn’t the same without his partner around?”
How the hell do you know that?Jo shrugged, sidestepping the question. Any verbal answer she gave could be used against her father, against her.
“And you never questioned what happened? To change your dad’s mind? To change Ryder’s? Two big shifts, at the exact same time, right before they started working together?”
“Nope,” Jo stated, letting the P really pop. Yet in the back of her mind, the wheels spun.No, I never questioned it. Because my dad told me he was going to retire all the time, and he never did.Part of her still didn’t believe it now, despite the promises that this job would be his last, their last, the end. Why would she have dared to hope back then?I was just so happy to have Thad home, so lonely without him, so jealous he was in school when I’d already dropped out to help my father, I didn’t question it. I didn’t question anything, ever. It was easier to go with the flow, to pretend.She’d half convinced herself they were vigilante art crusaders rather than criminals, but what alternative did she have? They were her family. They were the only two people she had left in the world.
“So, Ryder never told you who visited him at campus the day before he packed his things and left?”
What the fuck?!
No!
Jo shrugged again, but her throat was tight, and her stomach was in knots. She tried to keep a straight face, tried to keep Nate from noticing the terrified buzz growing thunderous beneath her skin.
“He never mentioned any conversation, any threat, that maybe prompted a shift in priorities?”
