Honeymoon To Die For (40 page)

“Then who could it have been?”  Bianca knew she didn’t want that answer, but that drive inside her to find the truth demanded she be willing to consider all information.

“Murdock is convinced that the Slye Temp team kidnapped you so they could get to Ryder with information, money, maybe a weapon. That’s why Murdock is going apeshit right now.”

Bianca recalled the money Ryder produced when they bought two buggies full of things at Walmart. She’d taken the list to get food, clothes, and other basic things while he said he was going in search of materials to set up a security perimeter around the cabin. She’d looked through Ryder’s buggy for a weapon even though he’d have needed a background check for one, but all he had was several rolls of wire and other hardware.

Where had the money come from? She’d assumed wealthy people kept cash around and Ryder had gotten his hands on some of it. The FBI had given him the twenty-five dollars all prisoners received. Bianca
had
figured that Slye gave Ryder the hundred-dollar bill that he’d pulled out of his shoe when they needed a cab, but Ryder’s bank accounts had been frozen by the government so the cash he was carrying around could have come from Slye.

Bianca had a thousand dollars the agency had given her, but when she’d offered her credit card or cash, Ryder had said he had money from his father.

His father or Sabrina Slye? Bianca asked Nanci, “Is that the only reason Murdock thinks that?”

“No. He had someone keeping tabs on Sabrina’s people, because Murdock doesn’t trust them not to help Ryder in some way. He said Sabrina and five of her people couldn’t be found during the time you were kidnapped. He asked Sabrina later and she told him she had a business to run and was not subject to his scrutiny. If he wanted her help, say so. Otherwise, not to waste her time.”

Had Ryder’s team kidnapped her? The breakfast Bianca had eaten threatened to come up. If that was the case and Ryder had kept that from Bianca, then he’d been playing her this whole time. The ramifications of that rammed her in her stomach.

How much of what he’d said and done was an act?

Was that why he’d been intimate with her? To gain unquestioned trust? It had worked.

She had to finish up with Nanci. “I hear you. Please tell Murdock that I’ve got this. We’ve finally gotten a break. Give me the time I need to find answers.”

“If no one shows up in the next ten minutes, take it as his approval to move ahead.”  

Bianca left one earplug in so she could monitor the iPod for a little longer.

Ryder kept checking his rearview mirror and the side mirrors. “She’s dropping back.”

“You know which car is hers?”

“Yes.”

Because he was trained far better for these kinds of operations than she was.

Ryder turned to her, questions bombing his gaze but he only asked, “Are we clear?”

“We’ll know in ten minutes.”

While she waited through a tense silence of what felt like the longest ten minutes of her life, Bianca considered the best way to find out the truth about her kidnapping. Asking him would be a mistake.

He’d deny it. Then where could she go from there?

Ryder threaded his car through light traffic as the interstate ended and they continued on a highway through country that reminded her of home.  

Fifteen minutes had passed. She drew a breath of courage and watched Ryder carefully when she told him, “I know Kearn’s boys had nothing to do with kidnapping us. I know who did.”

He was dead still. The way she imagined he could be for hours and days while waiting to make a sniper shot.

When he didn’t say anything, she decided to go for broke. “Why didn’t you tell me your Slye team kidnapped us? Why did they do that? Why did
you
do that? To terrify me?”

“No.”  Muscles in his throat flexed and his fingers gripped the steering wheel. “I would never scare you unnecessarily.”

But he hadn’t denied her accusation. “But you would go along with it.”

“Bianca, it’s not what you think.”

Oh, God. Murdock was right. Bianca didn’t give into the hurt welling up inside her. “Really, because I think I’m pretty clear on this. You made a fool of me with my agency. With my boss. You let me believe I was in danger.”

“You
are
in danger.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize what a joke this had become. The joke had been on her. She’d given her heart to another man who’d stomped on it. “Someone is trying to kill me.”

“Yes,” he said with a fierce growl. “Which is why I need you somewhere I can keep you safe.”

“
Oh, cut the crap, Ryder!
This has all been a scam to convince me I can trust you.” She was fighting hard to sound mad and hide her pain. She would
not
break down in tears. How could he do this to her? “I’m supposed to believe that someone’s hunting
me
. But they haven’t managed it yet, have they? How strange that someone who supposedly killed a British diplomat
and
J. K. Kearn can’t seem to hit one woman. Lot of near misses. Was all that necessary to gain my trust?”

He turned shocked eyes to her. “You think all these attempts on your life are
my
team? You dropped
eight
floors in an elevator.”  His voice was getting louder with each word. “Do you really believe I would allow
anyone
to harm you?”

“I don’t know what to believe after finding out you lied to me about the kidnapping.”

The lost look on his face would have been funny if not for the sick punch to her stomach. This changed everything she’d believed about Ryder. Her heart still protested that he was innocent of the Kearn killing, and the diplomat’s death. But how could she trust him after he’d played on her fears that way?

His attention was back on the road ahead of him. He raked his fingers through his hair. “Let’s just get this out in the open. Are you going to sit there and tell me you’ve been straight with me about all the things you’ve been doing? That you’ve held nothing back? Because I’ll tell you right now I know that’s not true. I knew about your iPod the first day, and I know you haven’t been honest with me about this case.”  

Busted.

He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about the kidnapping, Bianca.”

“But you’re not sorry about lying to me.”

“Yes, I am. I didn’t plan to and I didn’t want to. But I owe Sabrina and the team for supporting me when nobody else did. Murdock—and you—were looking at me with blinders on. Nobody in your agency was going to do anything they thought would help me, whether I was innocent or not. I was a means to an end for you. Slye did that so they could ... talk to me.”

He’d just held back information again by not telling her what information they had shared. He clearly didn’t want to tell her.

She hadn’t told him about Murdock being behind the cyber attack on VDE’s computer systems, but she was a federal agent. This was her job. She could understand his loyalty to Slye Temp, especially Sabrina, but holding that back meant Ryder didn’t trust her.

Holding out on him about the cyber attack meant she didn’t trust him either. That might make them both even, but it was lose-lose for both of them.

What had made her think there was a future for two people with so much mistrust between them?

She didn’t know and needed some time to think this through, but heartache or no heartache, they had to stop a terrorist attack first. She managed to keep her voice from cracking. “I will keep my end of this and comb through the files to find anything I can. And I’ll let you look through the evidence gathered against you.”

“Thank you.”  That had come out low and with a dose of disappointment that only added to the ache in her heart.

He was disappointed? So was she.

Understatement of the century
. Yes, she’d kept things from him, but the one thing she hadn’t done was sleep with him out of some ulterior motive. He’d used that kidnapping to win her trust. It wasn’t a stretch to grasp that he’d sleep with her for the same reason.

That’s what high-level field operatives did, right?

So
not
what she was or would ever be.

Bottom line? No matter which way she worked it around in her mind, she’d never be able to look at what they’d done together in the same way. Never be able to kiss him or make love with him without wondering if he was doing it to get her help.

Some trust lost just could not be regained.

Her heart cracked into two pieces as the hard reality hit her. Nothing they’d shared had been real.

She swallowed hard and added, “When this is done, regardless of the outcome, I don’t want to ever hear from you again.”

“Wait a minute—”

“No, you listen to me.”  She gripped the dash when she turned to face him. “I thought I could trust you.”

“You can trust me,” he said quietly. “Just as much as I can trust you.”

Fair was fair since she hadn’t been totally honest either. But she’d believed he really wanted her, but now ...

“I thought—”  She choked on the words. She’d thought he was different, like no other man she’d ever known and once they found the truth that he’d want what she did.

To have more than a few nights together.

“Say it.” He reached for her hand and wrapped it in his. “Just tell me what you want, Sweetheart.”

That endearment had meant so much and now it just hurt like hell to hear it. She pulled her hand away, fighting back tears she would not shed in front of him. “Nothing. I just want to finish this job.”

He looked away, but not before she saw agony that reminded her of the first time she’d seen him in the prison.

That knocked the last of the wind out of her sails.

The silence that followed for the next thirty minutes practically suffocated her.
She tapped her fingers against the door handle, missing their easy camaraderie of the past days. Not enough to be willing to let go of the disappointment that was choking her, but she couldn’t spend another minute in this car with him.
 

She wanted to cheer when she saw a sign for a convenience store and gas stop ahead. “Pull into that gas station.”

Ryder looked at her, surprised. “What?”

“Gas station. Please pull in.”

Ryder wheeled into the empty, pot-holed lot past two gas pumps and parked to the side of a single-story wooden building with a screen door and a faded sign indicating they were at the
Stop & Get It
.

When Ryder killed the engine, Bianca held out her hand palm up in an understood request for the keys.

He blinked at her. “Do you really think I’d leave you out here alone?”

“No, but then I’m not a good judge of people these days. I didn’t think you’d play me for a fool, either,” she said, swallowing the hurt.

 Ryder’s mouth flattened into a hard line, and a muscle in his jaw twitched, but his eyes pleaded with her. For what? Forgiveness? Understanding for his position maybe?

On a logical level, she did understand his being loyal to Slye Temp, but forgiveness? She had taken one for the team to do this mission
, and she
had
shared things with him in defiance of Murdock’s orders.
Not everything, but still…
 

Ryder was looking to the wrong person for absolution.

She kept her hand out, patiently waiting.

 Ryder pulled the keys from the ignition and placed them on her hand then leaned back, arms folded.

She was stuck half in and half out
of the car
, drinking in his profile. He’d catered to any need she’d had for the time they’d spent together. They still had hours ahead of them to spend going through files.
She was dying inside, but s
he could do polite.

“Do you want anything?”

He lifted his head and leveled her with the same hungry look that had crashed through her walls last night and this morning. “They can’t sell me the one thing I want.”

Don’t even think about taking that bait.
“Okay, be right back.”  She dug money from her purse and shoved the cash into her pants pocket. Why carry her purse?

Ryder had been accused of murder, not theft.

An insane rationalization, but he’d done that to her. Turned her into a crazy woman, because all she wanted to do was climb across the console into his arms.

Bianca yanked the screen door open, rusty springs creaking. Rows of canned goods and household products lined one crowded shelf after another to her right. Country music on a low volume drifted from behind the counter along with a whiff of cigarette smoke.

She picked up a bottle of water, meandered around for another minute until she had a grip on her emotions, then strolled to the cashier who rang up her purchase and wished Bianca a nice day.

Too late for that.

Outside, Ryder leaned against the front fender of the car with a cell phone at his ear.

Her
cell phone, dammit.

Who was he talking to? Sabrina Slye or someone else on that team? Bianca would let him talk, then the minute she saw Murdock, she was handing her phone over as proof that Sabrina did not keep her end of the deal.

Murdock could have at her.

When Bianca got close, she heard Ryder say, “That works for me.”  

He stepped over to open her door.

Bianca stood there, waiting for him to end the call and return her phone, but Ryder just kept talking with an easy nature and strolled back around to the driver’s side. He kept opening his mouth as if he was trying to get off the phone then he’d quirk a smile.

“I’ve never done that, but I’m willing if you don’t mind taking on a rookie,” Ryder said, settling behind the steering wheel.

A rookie? At what?
Bianca looked at his face.
He seemed genuinely happy. What could make him so upbeat in the middle of the mess they were in?
Maybe he was
shading the truth in some way with her back around.

Ryder extended his hand palm up.

Bianca lifted the keys from her pocket before dropping into the passenger seat. She was handing the keys to Ryder when he said, “Fried chicken and pole beans would be wonderful.”