5
H e’d always considered himself pretty damn good at multitasking. But keeping an eye on his rearview mirror, on his passenger, and on the street in front of him was proving to be more challenging than it should have been. He chewed on the corner of his bottom lip and made yet another lane change, then swung off at the exit with no flicker. The lights he’d been tracking behind him did the same thing. The asshole obviously hadn’t been expecting the move and came close enough to side-swiping a car whose driver blew him the hell out of it with the hooter.
“Wha—?”
“Fuck,” he cursed quietly and reached for his phone, but couldn’t get it out of his pocket without unclipping his belt, and there wasn’t a hope in hell he was doing that while he had someone tailing his ass. That would teach him not to put his freaking phone in the holder on the dash. “Can you grab my phone out of my pocket? I need to stay concentrated on the road.”
“Um—okay.”
It was a damn shame he didn’t have time to focus on how her fingers felt sliding into his pocket as he lifted his butt off the seat, but he hoped he might get the pleasure of feeling it sometime in the future.
“Got it. Here.” She offered it to him.
“Hit speed dial one,” he instructed, and hit the gas. “Tell the man who answers, it’s my phone, and I’ve got a tail.” If he was on his own, he’d have been tempted to stop the truck and ask what the hell the fucker’s problem was, but he wasn’t alone, so it was a moot point.
“Dude, you’re meant to be drunk or fucking some bird right about this point.” Trev’s voice filled the cab of his truck. “Why the hell are you calling me? Do you need directions for where your dick goes?”
He winced at the crudeness of Trev’s words when Rose inhaled sharply. Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting the kind of greeting Trev was famous for when she hit the speaker as the call was answered.
“Cut the shit, Trev, I think I got a problem.”
“You know you don’t get participation trophies from the condom factory when you wrap it up?—”
What the ever-loving hell?
“Dude, are you fucking on drugs or some shit? Listen to me,” Caleb snapped, cutting Trev off. “I think we have a problem. There is someone on my ass, and I don’t know who or why.”
The sound of feet hitting the floor preceded wheels rolling, telling him Trev probably had been sitting at the war-table rather than his desk and was now scooting across to his computers. “Where are you?”
“Fifth and ninth,” Rose supplied.
“Who’s that?”
“Need to know.” Trev didn’t need to know everything unless it turned out this person was after Rose and not him.
“I got you.” Trev didn’t push the issue. “There’s a left coming up. Swing down there, and let’s see what your tag-a-long does.”
“I don’t understand,” Rose whispered so quietly. He wasn’t even sure Trev would have picked it up on speaker.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. It pissed him off to see fear on her face. She should not have to be afraid of a damn thing. The second he had the opportunity, he was going to pound the asshole tailing them into the ground, just for shits and giggles. “Trev’s got us on street cameras,” he explained to Rose. “I work with him.”
“Turnoff is coming up in three…” Trev gave him the countdown.
Caleb sped up, trying to give himself a little clearance from the car behind them, and mentally crossed his fingers that the driver wouldn’t figure out what he was up to in time to follow them.
“Two.”
When the vehicle following them sped up too and shifted into the outside lane. Caleb checked the review mirror and said a silent prayer that the vehicle right on his bumper wasn’t with his tail.
“One.” Trev gave the final number just as the nose of the truck was level with the exit. “Go, go, go.”
Caleb slammed on the brakes, then whipped into the street Trev had mentioned. Rose leaned hard to the side; only the seatbelt kept her in place. “Okay, where to?” he asked Trev.
“Go straight, then take the second left, then right again to get back on the freeway, and go back the way you came unless I see something better before then. I’m still looking,” Trev instructed. “Plates come back to a rental paid for one Janek Nawrocki out of DC.”
Rose’s harsh inhale sounded louder than she’d probably intended to, and Caleb narrowed his eyebrows. “What does that mean?” He glanced in the rearview mirror, and thankfully, all he saw behind them was an empty road, at least back to the last turn.
“I don’t?—”
“Not you, Trev.” He cut him off. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Rose, what does that name mean to you?”
“No—nothing.”
She was lying through her teeth. He didn’t think she realized she was now as paler than Casper after a flour bath. “Liar.” He called her out softly and hit the locks with his elbow when her hand reached for the door. What the heck was she going to do, jump out while he was speeding through the streets of Riverton? Hell no, he liked her pretty neck too much to allow her to break it by pulling a stupid stunt like that.
“I can’t find any connections to Nawrocki and the name Rose,” Trev supplied helpfully over the phone, dragging a distressed noise from Caleb’s passenger. “I’ve cross-referenced all the usual channels.” The sound of furious typing filtered through the phone. Clearly, Trev was still searching for intel.
“Shit.”
“Bro, there’s an underground parking lot coming up on your right,” Trev said. “Take it; code is one seven zero four.”
Harsh breathing next to him told him Rose was panicking. He didn’t bother responding to Trev. Their comms tech could see his truck on the street cameras and knew what he was doing. He hit the button for the window and tapped the code into the device. “Come on, come on,” he told the barrier. “Lift, damn it.” He barely waited for it to rise high enough before he was through and flipped off his lights to make it less obvious where he’d gone from the street outside.
“I’ll keep an eye on the dude,” Trev said helpfully. “You figure that out.”
His unspoken instructions were clear. It was up to Caleb to figure out who Nawrocki was and why he was following the wedding photographer. He drove to the back of the parking lot and reversed the truck into a spot in case they needed to make a fast getaway. Fallujah style when parking was always best.