Chapter 10

Ryder pulled down the sedan's visor because even with sunglasses on, the glare from the evening sun was bad. It would be dark by the time they reached the safe house the ambassador had arranged and that didn't make him happy. If the cop hadn't derailed their plans last night, they'd have arrived in Tahoe around dawn, and maybe no one would have shot at Langley. The sniper changed everything, and to get her to their hideaway as covertly as possible, they'd needed to handle a few things before leaving San Diego. Like buying two used cars.

They'd gone the private seller route for a number of reasons, including the fact that cash would be expected, not looked at suspiciously, and in California, the license plates stayed with the vehicle. Stony had done the talking, spinning some convincing stories for the owners. Ryder had done the vehicle inspections, and he was grateful his dad had insisted on giving him and his brothers an extensive education on auto mechanics. He'd used that knowledge today. It had taken four vehicles to find the pair that he thought would get them the five hundred odd miles they needed to travel.

They had ten days to register the cars, but that wouldn't be an issue. This whole thing would be over long before that. Ryder clenched his hands around the steering wheel and then relaxed them. "You're a damn good liar," he commented, looking in the rearview mirror at Stony. His buddy was jotting something on a notepad, and Ryder noticed Langley had finally dozed off, her head on the back of the seat. It had taken a hell of a long time for exhaustion to win out over adrenaline and he'd been worried about her.

"Damn good actor," Stony corrected quietly.

Ryder turned his focus back to his surroundings. They were more than 400 miles out of San Diego and in the middle of fucking nowhere. There were mountains in the distance on either side of the freeway, but the rest of the landscape was arid, and the only vegetation appeared to be sagebrush. He didn't know if they were technically in the desert or not, but it sure looked like one to him. There was only one other vehicle visible—the car with Griff and Mako trailing behind them. He liked that they had the road to themselves, but the drive was growing tedious and they wouldn't stop again until they reached the house.

Stony had driven most of the way—they'd switched when they'd gotten fuel—and he sat in the backseat with Langley where Ryder had been previously. Now that he'd finally been allowed behind the wheel, he wanted to be a passenger, but it wasn't fair to his buddy for Ryder not to take a turn.

"The shooter must have followed the cop," Ryder said, returning to the thing that bothered him most—how the sniper had found them in San Diego. "He probably didn't bother to check if anyone was tailing him."

"It's the most likely scenario," Stony answered. "The odds against having the GPS on her phone pinged in the short period of time between Rio's arrival and when we put it in the privacy case are staggering."

And they'd sent Mako out to find a twenty-four-hour shipping location to get her phone away from them. It must have been halfway to her condo in Florida when the shot had come this morning. "There's no way anyone could have put a tracker on the Explorer. The only time the four of us left the SUV unattended was when we went in to rescue Langley."

"The odds are against that, too," Stony said, sounding distracted.

And this morning, in case they'd had a tail, they'd ridden around town for a while before buying the cars. No point letting the shooter know what they were driving. They'd returned the Explorer to a remote location for the rental car company and then headed east to make doubly certain they weren't being followed. About seventy-five miles out, in another place in the middle of nowhere, they'd made the turn north.

"She was damn fucking lucky today," Ryder said quietly. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about this morning for more than a few minutes at a time. "If she hadn't tripped…" His heart raced, just remembering how close he'd come to losing her forever.

"It's a good thing you weren't carrying her."

Ryder swallowed hard. He almost had. He'd been impatient with how slowly she'd been moving and concerned about how much pain she'd been in. The only thing that had stopped him was that he knew Langley didn't like any kind of public display that would call attention to her. He hadn't wanted to face the icy politeness she would have directed his way if he'd embarrassed her in front of his teammates.

They hit a rough stretch of road that jostled them around and Ryder firmed his grip on the steering wheel to keep the car between the lines. When they reached smooth pavement again, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "What are you writing?"

"I've been making sketches and doing some calculations, trying to figure out that shot this morning," Stony said.

"You reach any conclusions?"

"Yeah, and you're not going to like it."

Ryder's shoulders tensed. "There hasn't been one fucking thing I've liked since we arrived in California. Hit me with it."

There was a pause, then Stony said, "If the shooter was positioned where I think he was, we're looking at a distance of almost 1800 meters. That means heavy duty training, I'd guess in the military."

Before he could speak, Ryder had to unclench his jaw. "Are you sure?" he asked and looked in the rearview mirror. Langley's head was resting on Rowland's shoulder, and his arm was around her. Ryder's muscles went rigid again.

"I'm as sure as I can be without physically measuring the distance, and like I said, if I'm right about his position. It's not like we stopped to look for the shell casing."

"Son of a bitch," Ryder muttered. He took it as a given that Stony was correct about where their assassin had been shooting from. Or at least close enough. "This means whoever made the threat hired it out."

"It looks that way, and if they could afford to hire a sniper of that caliber, I'd bet they paid enough to get a full team." Stony sounded unperturbed, and Ryder wished he could be that calm.

"Fuck." This made protecting Langley much more difficult.

"We could call Andy Harper when we get to Tahoe. He'd know the names of snipers who were good enough to take a shot like that—hell, he could have trained them—and since he's working for Bent Tree now, he might know who was willing to sell their services to the highest bidder."

"Maybe tomorrow morning," Ryder allowed, but he didn't want to call Harp if there was another choice. It had been disillusioning to have his mentor quit the team last year and go to work for Bent Tree. Theoretically, they were a security company, but that outfit was a bunch of mercenaries as far as Ryder was concerned. "The man doesn't have to be US military, though. Soldiers for hire could be from any country."

"There aren't that many snipers worldwide who would try from that distance and Harp might have heard of them anyway. It's a small club."

Ryder briefly took a hand from the wheel to run it across the back of his neck. "You're assuming he's not over in the Middle East, earning big bucks from the US government for security." He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"Yeah, I know," Stony said, tone every bit as dry as Ryder's had been. "It was only an idea." He changed the subject. "You talked to the ambassador. Was he confident that no one could trace this safe house to his family? It does belong to a friend of his."

Ryder glanced in the rearview mirror and scowled. If anything, Langley was closer to Stony than she'd been the last time he'd checked.

"Ski?"

Shaking his head, he said, "The ambassador said that nobody in his family had been there in nearly twenty years and that there was no reason anyone would think of it in connection to him or Langley. He also mentioned that he has other friends with property around Lake Tahoe. We should be okay."

"I hope so. We vetted the place and its plans when we believed this was nothing more than a couple of days of babysitting. Things are different now. A team of pros means that the FBI needs to find the person who made the threat and get them to ID who they hired. They might need to find the men on the team. This is going to add to the length of time we'll need to keep her under wraps."

"I know." He said that between gritted teeth, but Stony was making no attempt to put any space between him and Langley. "The house has state-of-the-art security and sits on some major acreage. We won't have to deal with traffic or neighbors."

"Don't forget the tunnels. That's a potential problem despite the sensors, cameras, and the barricade bars on the doors."

"Those tunnels are also an escape route if the worst happens. Do you want to go over the other choices again?" Ryder couldn't prevent the irritation in his voice, but for fuck's sake, they'd had this discussion once already, and the four of them had agreed it was the best option. But yeah, Stony was right—they'd made this decision before they'd known the threat was real. The reasons they'd chosen this place to begin with, though, continued to hold true and the other locations they'd considered had had much larger security holes.

And this house had a second set of tunnels, a system his team knew nothing about because they weren't on the blueprints, and the ambassador had sworn him to secrecy. That was his ace in the hole. His way to get Langley out quickly and quietly if the need arose .

"No. I just didn't want you to lose sight of the issues we're facing. You seem distracted."

He tried to hold back the words, but they escaped anyway. "Langley's snuggled up against you for fuck's sake." At least he managed to keep his tone modulated so he wouldn't wake her up.

Amusement was evident in Stony's voice when he said, "Do you want me to tip her the other direction so her head's against the window?"

As if on cue, they hit a bump, rocking the sedan. "No," Ryder said, "but you don't have to enjoy it so much."

"I'm enjoying your reaction," Stony corrected.

Ryder's scowl deepened. He glared at his buddy for a moment in the rearview mirror.

"Ski, I'm not going after your woman and you know it. Why are you getting so territorial?"

"You have your arm around her." The words came out harsher than Ryder intended.

There was a long pause—Ryder suspected Stony was trying to get his laughter under control—before his friend said, "You might as well get used to it. Tampa isn't New York or Los Angeles, and at some point you're going to run into her when she's out on a date with another guy. Hell, if we stay at MacDill, someday you'll run into her with her husband and children."

Ryder wasn't stupid. He knew Stony had said that deliberately to play him. The damn thing was that it worked anyway. A growl escaped before he could stop it.

"If you don't like the idea of her with someone else, dude, then you better get your shit together."

"When I want your opinion," Ryder said coldly, "I'll fucking ask for it."

Ryder couldn't get the image out of his head—Langley with a couple of brown-haired, brown-eyed boys calling her mommy. Or fuck, he could come face-to-face with her while she was pregnant. The idea of her carrying another man's child made bile rise in his throat.

Stony didn't leave it alone. "When you find your person, you hang on to her as long as she'll let you, but you've done everything you can to push her away. You do realize you'll compare every other woman you ever meet to Langley, right?"

Ryder scowled, determined to stop letting him push his buttons. "She'd never want me for the long term." The words escaped involuntarily.

"You don't think dating for more than a year proves you're wrong about that?" Rowland asked.

This time, Ryder kept his mouth shut, sorry he'd said as much as he had.

"You can't be worried that she'll cheat on you. If she has a problem, it's being too loyal. You saw that yesterday when she was willing to risk her life to save her friend. She's also strong and independent enough to take care of herself while you're out in the field."

"I know that." She might be a princess, but she was a self-sufficient one.

"Then what the hell is your problem?"

Stony was usually pretty smart; Ryder couldn't believe he needed to spell it out for him. "My dad is an auto mechanic. Her father was a US ambassador. My mom is a school lunch lady. Her mother throws parties."

"Her mom did a hell of a lot more than throw parties . Because her father was in foreign service, her mother basically was too, although she wasn't on payroll. Even Langley was affected by his career choice."

Ryder nodded his head. "The death threat. The kidnapping in Puerto Jardin."

"That wasn't what I meant," Stony said. "Imagine growing up the way she did—moving from country to country every year or two, bodyguards in most, if not all, of those locations, always having to be careful of what she said and what she did. How much time did she spend in the states as a kid?"

He stayed quiet, considering what Rowland had said. He'd never really thought about it before, but his buddy was right—it had impacted Langley's behavior. She tended to hang back, to observe for a while before she relaxed. Getting the lay of the land—that thought had crossed his mind more than once when they'd been out together. She pulled away from any kind of public display and he'd learned not to sling an arm around her shoulders as they walked. He'd simply never equated her restraint with the way she'd been raised.

"Foreign service might look glamorous from the outside," Rowland continued, "but it's a lot of hard work for the entire family."

"You might be right, but it's not blue-collar work."

"That's your problem, Ski, not hers." Stony's voice was soft. "After having a nearly six-hour conversation with her in the car today, it's obvious she's not a snob."

Ryder's lips quirked. Stony was generally quiet, and Langley tended to be reserved with people she didn't know, but she'd been bored, and since he'd refused to let her play on his phone, she'd started talking with Rowland.

Ryder sobered. "No, she's not a snob, but her friends are a different story."

"How the fuck would you know? You've never met any of her friends."

Stony had said that at regular volume and Ryder checked the rearview mirror, making sure they hadn't woken Langley. She didn't stir. "Keep your voice down."

"If you met the people she enjoys spending time with, I bet you'd find they're as genuine and down-to-earth as she is." Rowland was much quieter now. "I don't think she'd have the patience to hang out with anyone who wasn't."

"The fundraisers she holds for the Paladin League—"

His buddy cut him off. "That's her job . I mean her real friends."

"She's a volunteer. She doesn't have a job."

Ryder looked in the rearview mirror in time to see Rowland shaking his head. "You have some strange misconceptions. She might not be paid, but fundraising is a job. A thankless one, when people like you underestimate how much time she must put into it." There was a pause, then, "What does the Paladin League do?"

"They're a nonprofit that grants funds for archaeological digs around the world."

"She's interested in archaeology? I wish I'd known that before she fell asleep."

He kept his mouth shut. Ryder assumed she had an interest, but he'd always changed the subject when she'd talked about the organization because it reminded him that she didn't have a real job and didn't need one. It embarrassed him now to realize he'd minimized something that was important enough to Langley that she'd volunteered to help.

What had his friend said on Friday in the gym? Something like it was a miracle that Langley had put up with his shit as long as she had?

Yeah, maybe he needed to think about that.