Page 12

Which meant maybe he was right about her not wanting to see him grumpy.
“I’m CIA,” she said, her tone stupidly indignant. After all, he probably already knew she was CIA. “This has got to be a mistake. My ID’s in my pocket. This is definitely a mistake. Just let me make a phone call and you can—”
“This isn’t the kind of arrest where you get a phone call, O’Donnell.” The man’s head didn’t move. Those dark glasses were pointed in her direction. She couldn’t see his eyes behind them. She didn’t like that one bit.
“Arrest?” It took her a moment to process what he’d said. “I’m being . . .arrested? By whom? For what? This is crazy. And it’s totally a mistake. It has to be a—”
“Look, O’Donnell,” he snapped, cutting her off with cold precision. “I’ve been authorized to make any deal I see fit. Which means I can help you. But I need towantto help you. And we’re not quite there yet.”
The man smiled now, a tightly cold smile that messed with Indy’s mind.
“What . . . what gets us there?” Indy stammered.
“You know what.”
“Oh, right. You’re asking the questions, but you don’t like to ask questions because asking questions makes you grumpy and you don’t want to get grumpy.” Indy wanted to roll her eyes but managed to stop herself, gulping when it occurred to her that Moses was nowhere to be seen or heard.
Was he lying dead outside the door, his neck broken by Mister Not-Yet-Grumpy?
But now it also occurred to Indy that she’d heard the Range Rover’s engine roaring to life just before this monster roared into her life and turned it upside down—or at least sideways.
“Did you kill Moses?” she asked, her tone dumbly accusatory given that she’d already guessed Moses had left her and hightailed it out of here.
“Forget Moses. You have bigger problems, O’Donnell.”
“Most people call me Indy.”
“Shut up, O’Donnell.”
Indy raised both her eyebrows. “Make up your mind. You want answers or you want me to shut up?”
Grumpy McMonster said nothing. Indy wished she could see his eyes so she’d know if she was getting to him.
Except wait, why did shewantto get to him?
She needed to convince him this was a mistake, right?
And a good start would be to not aggravate him, right?
So her plan should be tonotgetto him, right?
“We’re getting further away from where we need to be, O’Donnell,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, unnervingly gentle, like this was the calm before the storm, the eye of the hurricane, the deadly stillness before everything exploded into chaos.
Indy said nothing. She needed to think. This man was American, and from the way he was built almost certainly military. A SEAL or Delta guy, if she had to guess. CIA mostly pulled from those branches of U.S. Special Forces.
“You’re Delta,” Indy said with fake self-assurance, like she knew even though she was just guessing. It was a 50-50 chance she was right, and being right might get to him.
But wait, Indy reminded herself angrily. The point isnotto get to him, you dumb bitch.
The man shifted on his feet. It was a subtle shift, just a slight movement of weight from one foot to the other. But it told her something.
Told her that maybe shewasgetting to him.
And as ill-advised as it might be, maybe that was her only path forward, her only way out of this.
Whatever the hellthiswas.
The man said nothing for what felt like a long time. An awkwardly long time, during which Indy shifted about eight times on her own feet, was desperate to adjust her bra strap which was itching from the darn shoulder holster that turned out to be totally pointless because it was empty now.