Just in case Sierra’s Web didn’t come through for him.

  And McKenna?

  She was one hell of a bodyguard. He was thankful.

  And would leave it at that.

  * * *

  The afternoon slipped from early to mid, on the road, after they’d handed William over to a Sierra’s Web associate who’d been an hour away and met them at the truck stop. McKenna, having served up tuna sandwiches, which she and Joe had eaten in silence as they drove, was getting closer to stir-crazy.

  A state so unlike her she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  Emotions roiled within her, making it difficult for her to find her work Zen, though she was definitely focused on seeking out any possible dangers lurking around them. There just wasn’t enough for to concentrate on outside the rig to keep all other thoughts at bay.

  Bits of conversations kept drifting in. Him wanting to know about her family. Her life.

  Her aversion to wealth. He’d wanted personal details.

  She’d slammed his way of life instead.

  Joe had been reaching out to her. She’d rebuffed him.

  It was the right thing to do.

  And hurt way more than it should have.

  His fingers, warm and tender, on her back, brushing healthy skin as he’d gently placed the antiseptic-coated bandage over her tiny cut...she kept feeling them there. Hours later.

  Their situation...living together in such cramped quarters, him in hiding, in real danger from multiple sources, him being so engrossed in a lifestyle that used to give her severe anxiety attacks...of course there’d be emotional overloads.

  Her not fully trusting him, even as she was growing to admire many things about him.

  William’s brief moment in their lives just seemed to set it all off for her. To frame it. The caring, compassionate, astute way Joe had handled the aggressively surly teenager—seeming almost to identify with him—to the point of being able to find the exact carrot to dangle in front of William to prevent him from ruining his life—her heart filled every time she replayed those moments between the two males.

  But at the same time, she was equally aware that Joe had served his own end. That he could have manipulated William, used the boy’s own needs against him, in order to get what Joe most needed—no police on scene.

  And William’s continued silence.

  Two huge reasons to work the boy.

  And with a payoff attached that was less than he’d be paying Sierra’s Web.

  Her heart eschewed the negative thoughts every time they came to her. But they eventually found their way back.

  And...his mom had died when he was little, too. She craved details. About his mom. What had happened. Most importantly to her, how it had affected him.

  She couldn’t ask, though. Because she couldn’t tell.

  Not without giving away the deepest parts of her heart, and that most definitely was out where Joe Hamilton was concerned.

  About an hour outside Yuma, she saw what looked to be a long-ago-deserted planned development. There were roads, overgrown lots that looked like they’d been staked out for homes and nothing else but dust. She had Joe take the exit and circle back to the abandoned community. After his tutelage on how to drive the rig, she had him work on the cars’ tires while, in the rig alone, she drove in long circles around the property, making both right and left turns, and eventually, attempting to back up the rig.

  She ran off the road a time or two. Her neck stiff with tension, she kept at it, and before nightfall, she was proficient enough that she could drive them if she had to.

  And it looked like the car was back in service as well.

  So, maybe...in the interest of mental health...

  “What do you think about parking the rig at the first big box store we come to and then taking the car and going somewhere for dinner?” she suggested.

  Probably a huge mistake.

  But the alternative—the two of them cooped up inside a rig with no slides out, in a public parking lot—seemed to carry the most danger at the moment.

  “You asking me on a date?”

  Yep. Definitely a mistake. She knew she shouldn’t have...

  “I’m sorry.” His apology came softly, with warmth. “That was uncalled-for, inappropriate and wrong. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to get out of this tube and have some semblance of normal personhood, even if it’s only for an hour or so.”

  “I’m not talking about sitting in a restaurant,” she quickly clarified, afraid, just that quickly, that she was about to disappoint him. “I was thinking more about ordering something, picking it up and finding a place to picnic. Maybe from within the car.”

  “We’re at the border. We could cross over and have some great, authentic Mexican food.”

  Was he serious?

  “And show your passport?” she asked, frowning at him.

  The way his face fell, as energy seemed to drain from his expression—and him—he admitted, “Believe it or not, for a second there, I forgot.”

  As soon as he said the words, his second hand moved from his thigh to join the first up on the wheel. She saw the whites of his knuckles as he gripped with both hands.

  And she knew.

  What he obviously feared she’d figured out.

  The idea of a time out with her had completely wiped away thoughts of why they were together at all.

  She had that much power.

  Or the idea of time out did.

  Needing to rescue him, needing him to be allowed to feel good for a second without regrets, she went with her most immediate thought and admitted, “I’m about to crawl out of my skin here. And I’ve only been cooped up in this thing for a couple of days. You’ve been in it for over a month. As your bodyguard, I have determined that it’s in the interests of your mental—and thereby physical—safety to have a night out.”

  His desire to have dinner with her had nothing to do with her in particular. He’d seen her offer as a brief break from the luxurious prison he’d been living in. He couldn’t go anywhere without her. It was strictly business. And nothing more.

  It was the story she offered him to go with.

  The story she was going with.

  “Fine.”

  His brief answer in no way indicated to her whether he was going with the story or not.

  * * *

  He didn’t get the dinner he’d envisioned. When McKenna had suggested getting her check-in with Glen out of the way before they unhooked the car and headed out, he’d seen the suggestion as a sign that she wanted their evening to be open-ended, with no need for anyone else to be aware where they were, how late they were up, out or together. She’d have her camera check-ins and someone would be monitoring that, of course, but otherwise...they’d have the night free.

  He was envisioning it that way whether she’d timed the call accordingly or not.

  They’d pulled into the busy parking lot where they’d be spending the night—parked at the farthest point from the store for privacy purposes—and before he’d stepped down from the rig to unhook the car, she’d wanted to check cameras and then make their call.

  As eager as he’d been to get going, he knew the connection with Sierra’s Web was most important. He might or not be a part of the call, but he had to be present in case anyone at Sierra’s Web had questions for him or something to tell him.

  It wasn’t like they could contact him. Standing right next to McKenna, he’d heard Glen Rivers’ raised voice the second the call connected.

  “Destroy your phone and get out of there, now. Turn on your other phone at ten and I’ll call you.”

  There’d been a click, dead air, and once again they were on the road into nowhere. A dark nowhere completely unlit by any form of streetlights. If not for the brightness of the clear moon, they wouldn’t have been able to see anything except the road illuminated by the rig’s headlights. And, occasionally, the lights of other vehicles passing by.

  McKenna didn’t say much, but he could tell by the terse expression on her face, the unnaturally straight posture, that she was tense.

  She had him head northwest, toward the Colorado River, which ran along parts of western Arizona, a section of the state with which he wasn’t familiar, and maybe that was a good thing. No one would have reason to associate him with the area.

  And then she left her seat up front next to him long enough to put a chicken-and-potato concoction in the convection oven and then to serve it an hour later. They’d stopped long enough for him to use the restroom, but he ate while driving. Until they knew what they were running from, he wasn’t giving it a chance to catch up to them.

  “Obviously, they saw tracking movement on my phone,” McKenna had said early on in the evening.

  But telling her to have her spare phone on at a precise time? And them calling her?

  She was watching the road with focused care, which he was paying her to do, and appreciated her for, but shortly after dinner was done, and there nothing more to do but drive into the night, he ran out of ways to keep his mind from concocting bad scenarios involving his lack of life.

  He just couldn’t come up with a viable scenario for someone to randomly change inventory numbers and have every tenth sale of Stellar double without getting caught. The six-month hold on returns had been hugely detrimental, but not as hard to do. The program allowed holds on returns to allow the returns department to verify that the return actually arrived back to Bellair and that the quality issue was indeed apparent.

  And as far as the Bellair bank accounts showing proceeds that matched the lower inventory and higher sales...then suddenly not showing them? That one sent him into the twilight zone every time. His trial attorney, the man’s investigative team, unable to explain the phenomenon, had merely used the prosecutor’s lack of proof that he’d somehow manipulated bank records to get a not-guilty verdict on the bank fraud charge.

  But lack of proof didn’t give him his life back.

  It was like someone at the bank was involved in the fraud.

  And there he was again...circled back around to the who. Looking at the what, trying to figure out the how, was still contingent upon the who.

  “How do I log on to a bank’s portal, download PDF versions of bank statements and then have them be fraudulent?” he said aloud.

  McKenna’s lack of response didn’t help.

  “There has to be someone at the bank who’s involved, and how in the hell do I prove that? Just start accusing every employee who worked there? It’s not like I, or anyone, is going to be awarded a warrant to check their personal finances without at least some cause to do so other than place of employment.”

  Still nothing. Which bothered him.

  It shouldn’t. He didn’t blame her for not engaging in a personal battle that had nothing to do with her assignment.

  But...sadly enough...she was the closest thing he had to a friend at the moment.

  Seriously. Had he really lowered his standards so far down that he’d settle for his only friend to be someone who didn’t even believe in him?

  “I need internet access to research social media accounts of known bank employees to see if there was any indication of a financial windfall in terms of new purchases, or expensive vacations.”

  He’d long ago done so for all Bellair employees who could possibly have been involved in the scheme.

  “You’ve got a team of proven experts working pretty much around the clock, Joe. I’m sure Glen and his computer forensics team took care of that on day one. And Hud’s IT team...they’ll be looking at every line of coding in every program to do with every single one of the known fraudulent postings, comparing them, running searches for similar crimes and all kinds of things you and I can only imagine. One way or another, they’re going to figure this out. I can promise you that.”

  One way or another.

  He got her message. She still doubted his innocence. And yet he trusted her. And the confidence with which she’d voiced her certainty in her team’s abilities and the successful outcome of his case—because if they did figure it out, they’d be exonerating him—was enough comfort to recharge his sanity for another few hundred miles.

  Calmed, sitting back, trying to enjoy being out on the open road with no deadline or bottom-line pressures, Joe was more than a little startled when McKenna’s voice broke the silence.

  “I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels, being you right now.” The words themselves weren’t at all comforting, but the warmth in her tone got his full attention.

  Not that he showed her that. Or allowed himself to soak it in.

  “I just want you to know that you aren’t fighting this alone.”

  Unfamiliar spouts of emotion welled within him. Emotion that had no good outlet. Which reminded him why he should have just kept his mouth shut.

  Even if, by some weird twist of fate he and McKenna ever did actually become friends, there was no future for them.

  With her adamant abhorrence of his lifestyle, they were far too opposite to attract.

  Chapter 11

  “I’m assuming you’ve been to Lake Havasu?” They’d been on the road for a little less than three hours, and McKenna was eager for them to be safely stopped for the night before their call with Glen. Whatever was up, it couldn’t be good.

  Joe deserved time to process without having to simultaneously keep a forty-foot load on the road. To have a beer if he wanted it.

  The man had more to deal with than most could handle, and he was still right there, doing whatever was asked of him.

  He had a much more powerful arsenal of self-control than she did.

  “I haven’t been to the area,” he said after a pause. “Why would you assume I had?”

  “It’s a popular hangout for wealthy kids.”

  “I wasn’t wealthy as a kid.”

  There’d been nothing about his childhood in the news of his trial. Or on the Bellair website biography of their CFO. She knew he’d graduated from University of Southern California with honors, had a master’s degree in finance.

  “I’m assuming that’s where we’re headed?”

  Signs had been appearing for a while. Didn’t mean she’d been planning to stop. “Just north of the lake, there is a plethora of private RV stops. Some are parks, but not all. There are just random spaces to rent along the river. On both the California and Arizona sides. There’s one that I know of where we don’t have to physically see anyone to check in. Just leave payment electronically and hook up.”

  Funny the things you remembered...

  Now if only the site still existed. And she could find it.

  “I take it you and your friends partied here?”

  More like she had been held captive at a New Year’s event with her grandparents. She’d overheard someone laughingly talk about parking a troublesome in-law at the site with a cooler of beer so that the someone could enjoy the weekend celebration they were all attending that was taking place across multiple yachts.

  “I was invited to, but no” was all she said.

  “Because you were with your father?”

  That again. No more personal talk. She’d given herself a stern warning on that one. Most particularly after feeling those tender fingers on her skin earlier that day.

  Hard to believe it had been only that morning that she’d stopped William from attempting to murder Joe...

  “Because I didn’t want to,” she said when she realized his question was still hanging out there. And yes, because every chance she’d had to get away, she’d spent in Shelter Valley. And... “I didn’t really have many close friends growing up,” she told him—because her heart had spent the past hours hurting for him, and she wanted him to know that he wasn’t the only one who knew what lonely felt like. “With my life being split into two places,” she affirmed what he already knew.

  And was gratified when, other than directional discussion, he didn’t push any further conversation between them. She needed every ounce of her focus on whatever Glen had to tell them, and then spending the night alone with the man who’d be affected by the news.

  What if Glen’s forensic team had proven that the virus causing the glitch in the returns database was Joe’s work?

  Would someone be coming to get her out of there that night?

  Tamping down her wayward mind on that one, she quickly reasoned that wouldn’t be the case. He’d have had her stay in Yuma, at the busy public big box store, and wait for a ride home if that were the situation, not have her destroy her phone and head back out over the road.

  But the urgency in Glen’s voice, his command for her to wait for him to call her—no way that boded good.

  Which would probably mean more work for her. But while she absolutely needed to know as soon as possible, she didn’t worry so much about the job. She was up for it. And good at it.

  But she wasn’t sure how much more bad Joe’s big shoulders could take without starting to crack.

  At which point, she strongly feared she’d feel a compelling need to step in and offer to help take some of the weight off—because keeping those shoulders, part of his body, safe and well was, after all, the job he was paying her to do.

  * * *

  It was almost eerily easy to find a pay-by-card site to stop for the night. The space they chose, accessed by a service road just off the two-lane state road they’d turned on to at Lake Havasu, was just yards from water’s edge. The space they chose, while big enough was largely hidden from the road by the mass of trees surrounding it.

  She’d expressed pleasure that it was that last space on-site, so there’d be no reason for any vehicles to approach.

  Joe liked that it was at the end of the road. And hoped the privacy meant it would be their last stop.