Page 12 of Jonas (Silver Team #4)

CHAPTER TEN

“So…” I started and lamely let that hang.

I was surprised to find we were staying only a few miles from Dulles. It made sense Zane Lewis would have a safehouse close to one of the busiest international airports in the region, but I was shocked we weren’t that far from my apartment.

“Sorry,” I grumbled, then admitted, “I ramble when I’m nervous.”

“How’s that work for you when you’re undercover?”

I stopped staring out the window and focused on the man driving.

Or more specifically, his big hand curled around the steering wheel.

And why was the way he drove with his left hand at the ten o’clock position, his right elbow on the center console, totally at ease but in control so sexy?

The only thing that would make it sexier was if his hand was resting on my thigh, or if he was holding mine.

And don’t get me started on the way his bicep stretched the cuff of his sleeve or the pair of Gatorz hiding his eyes.

Jonas Lang was a walking Cool Guy advertisement.

“Dee Dee?”

Gah.

There went the flutter in my stomach.

“Sorry. I ramble in my head, too.”

I heard his chuckle, but better, I watched him do it.

“You ramble in your head?”

“You don’t?”

“If you mean, do I have thoughts I don’t speak out loud, yes. If you mean, do I carry on conversations in my head, no.”

Weird.

I thought everyone silently argued with themselves. Not that I was arguing with myself at the moment. I was doing what he said he did, thinking but keeping those thoughts to myself.

“Well, sometimes my thoughts are more like…me mentally babbling about nonsensical things.”

Sweet mother of pearl, I needed to shut up.

“Care to share?”

Heck no!

“Nah, it was nothing that would excite you.”

I glanced back at his hand, then to his forearm and wondered how I’d missed internally musing about…

Thankfully, Jonas’s voice pulled me from my forearm porn thoughts before they got out of control.

“Is that a determining factor whether or not you share?”

No, but my embarrassment level was.

“Do you think we’re off base with the bridge?”

Since I was still staring at Jonas’s profile, I got a front-row seat to his fantastic lips arching up.

“Not the smoothest change of subject,” he rightly noted. “I’ll give you this, but I reserve the right to circle back to the mental rambling.”

I waited for him to answer my question. When no such response came, I asked, “Are you waiting for me to agree to divulge my innermost thoughts?”

“I wasn’t, but now I am.”

I wasn’t touching that comment.

“Then why the pause?”

“I was thinking about how to answer,” he told me.

“My gut says yes, the Key Bridge collapse was not an accident—it was a cyber-attack. I also think your theory, that this wasn’t the first bridge they hit, just the biggest causing the most damage, is correct.

Which makes me wonder what other parts of the blueprint they have started.

We’re working under the concept the attacks will be done in stages, but what if the plan is to hit multiple targets at once? ”

“Like the bridges and ports at the same time. The data centers and cyber-attacks. The electrical grid would have to be last, right?”

“Yeah.” He nodded as he checked the mirrors.

His vigilant glances should’ve made me feel better but all they did was serve as a reminder we weren’t simply on an errand, we were in the middle of an assignment that already had us taken hostage.

“When do you think you’ll hear from your team?”

“Hopefully soon. We never finished talking about you going back to work.”

“We didn’t?”

I saw the muscle in his cheek jump. Clearly he was unhappy with my two-word response.

“No one’s going to try to kidnap me or Kira off the Delcon campus. There are over two hundred employees rotating through the building. There is never not a time someone isn’t around.”

“Someone managed to turn off the security cameras outside this very afternoon,” he reminded me.

“You don’t think that same person or group of people can’t do it inside the building?

From what Kira said, the cameras are independent quadrants.

The whole system doesn’t have to be taken offline—just a section and you’d be vulnerable and so would Kira. ”

Right, Kira.

“Maybe she should postpone her interview. She could call Janis and tell her she’s sick, or better yet arrange for a Zoom meeting.”

More clenching of the jaw before he said, “That doesn’t keep you out of harm’s way.”

It took me a moment to recover from the bitterness in his tone. I didn’t have to think to know no one had ever cared if I was in danger or not. I couldn’t say I hated someone caring, even if that concern was coming from a stranger. But I had a job to do, the same as he did.

“I’m always careful,” I told him. “But if it’ll make you feel better, I promise to be double extra careful.”

“Double extra?”

“Okay, maybe triple and I promise not to leave my desk without carrying my phone.”

“I’ll take the triple, the phone, and raise you to sending me a text every time you leave your desk.”

How did this become a negotiation?

I didn’t hate that either, Jonas wanting to bargain for my safety. Actually, it felt pretty good.

“Deal.”

The clenching stopped but attentiveness to our surroundings didn’t.

I should’ve been watching my side mirror or at least scanning the cars around us, but my fascination with Jonas’s strong jawline, the beard, and his corded neck meant I couldn’t look away.

Once again, I trusted him to look out for us.

And I had to admit, it was nice not having to be hypervigilant, even if it was for a twenty-minute drive.

I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting back to the way Jonas had taken care of me, cleaning the residue of CS gas from my face, helping me into the back of the Escalade, and allowing me to lean my head on his shoulder while I kept my eyes closed on the drive to the safehouse.

The way he stared at me when I’d come out of the bathroom.

But that last part had to be wishful thinking—a delusion.

“We’ll have to send someone to your apartment to pack up your clothes,” Jonas cut through my thoughts.

“We could?—”

“I already let you talk me into going to talk to Barnes. But there’s no chance in hell I’m taking you back to your apartment. Cash will go,” he declared.

“Why Cash?” I asked, not because I cared but because of the way he’d said it.

“He’ll have the best chance getting by Barbie Brenda.”

Barbie Brenda.

That was funny; the woman did look like a Barbie—plastic and fake with not a hair out of place and painted-on makeup like she was ready for a photoshoot instead of a shift behind the desk of a luxury apartment building.

“I think she’s hoping to snag herself a rich guy working there.”

“She won’t. Men aren’t stupid. She might be hot, but no man will invite her up to his apartment knowing all he’s after is a piece of ass and court the headache of walking by her every day after he scrapes her off.”

“So what you’re saying is Brenda’s not a keeper.”

Jonas glanced over at me before he went back to the road in front of him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

Now I really wanted to talk about this—whatever this was.

“Don’t leave me hanging, J Dog. Spill.”

“J Dog? Thought I was Casanova.”

“You were but then you called me Delilah and I promised never to call you that again. So, J Dog it is.”

His lips twitched. Damn those lips and the fuller bottom one I wanted to pull between my teeth before I ran my tongue over it. Lips I wanted to feel on mine.

“I’m vetoing J Dog,” he told me.

“Fine, but you only get one more veto, then you’re stuck with whatever I come up with.”

There was a flash of white teeth. I’d never taken myself for someone with a tooth fetish but there I was fantasizing about how they’d feel nibbling my sensitive parts.

A tooth fetish?

What the hell was wrong with me?

“Stop stalling and tell me why Brenda’s not a keeper.”

“I’m not stalling. I’m trying to figure out how a woman as smart and beautiful as you are is such shit at coming up with a nickname.”

Warmth coated my insides at his compliment. However, the warmth quickly turned to ice when he finished his comment.

“I’ve never given anyone a nickname,” I stupidly admitted, then insanely went on to share more. “They weren’t allowed when I was growing up.”

“Not allowed?”

I shifted in my seat, taking my gaze from Jonas to the windshield.

Playtime was over. The bubble of safety I’d conjured up burst. This wasn’t a fairytale. Jonas wasn’t the prince and I wasn’t a lowly maiden in a prairie dress needing to be saved. I’d left those dresses behind when I saved myself.

The past was the past.

There was no reason to pull back the tape and let the trauma spill out.

“Forget I said that,” I mumbled.

“Can’t forget it, but I’ll let it go if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Where was one of those Men in Black memory wiper device thingies when you needed one?

“Thanks.”

The good guy I was coming to understand Jonas was changed the subject.

“Brenda,” he announced. “Hot but fake. Some men don’t mind fake, some get off on the attitude and high maintenance.

But no man likes a bitch and the woman bleeds bitch.

She can’t hide it even though she tries.

Men will take a bitch to their bed when it’s packaged right, but they’re not going to keep her there.

That building you lived in costs some cake, but my guess is the people who live there are living paycheck to paycheck trying to keep up appearances.

If she’s looking for a rich man, she won’t find him living at the Hemingway.

At least not the wealth she’s after, and that chick has gold digger etched right under bitch. ”

I couldn’t disagree with his assessment, so I didn’t. I kept my eyes on the car in front of us like I was being paid to memorize every speck of dirt on its bumper.

“I didn’t say thank you.”