Her breath caught. “Another weak point of mine.”
“What, seeing things through to the end?”
“No, the together thing.”
“Me too,” he said. “But maybe it’s time for us both to try. To take a risk.”
“Next!” one of the airline representatives called from the counter.
For a moment, Noah didn’t move, just looked at her, gaze heated. Then he shifted around and moved to the counter.
“A ticket for your next flight to Cabo,” he said.
Bailey rifled through her purse and pulled out the last of her cash and slapped it on the counter.
Noah pushed it away.
Bailey pushed it back.
The airline representative divided a bemused gaze between the two of them. “I can split the cost, fifty- fifty.”
“No.” Noah pushed his card toward the representative while palming Bailey’s cash, which he handed directly to her. “How about the next time we fly commercial, you buy,” he suggested.
“But you never fly commercial.”
He smiled. “I know. Come on, let’s do this.” He looked up their gate number, then at the long, long walk they had to make, and sighed. “What do you think the chances are that they’ll serve something more than peanuts on board?”
“Slim to none?” she responded and tipped back her head to look into his face.
And caught him.
He’d been talking to her with a light teasing tone, keeping his touch casual, but though his head was bent close to hers, nothing about the tense, still way he stood was light or teasing as his eyes carefully and thoroughly and continually scanned the area around them.
“Expecting trouble so soon?” she asked softly.
His gaze dipped momentarily to hers. “With you? Always.”
“Noah.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Did you tell Kenny where you were off to before you sentenced your phone to cell hell?”
“No, but it won’t matter. We’re going to the last place the money could be. They’ve been following me; they’ll have figured it out by now. They’ll be watching for me.” The spot between her shoulder blades began to tingle, and she turned around, looking.
No one was paying her any mind at all, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. “You think they’re here, too.”
Noah didn’t say anything to that as they made their way through the line to get past security. Ahead of them, security agents opened up two more lanes, calling out warnings for everyone to remove their shoes, jewelry, and keys. The crowd collectively obeyed with the usual grumbling.
Noah toed off his athletic shoes, stuck them in a bucket, and then handed her an empty bucket to use.
Bailey bent to unstrap and untie her sandals. One of these days she was going to get over her shoe fetish and just buy regular, easy to put on and easy to pull off shoes.
Okay, probably she wasn’t. She carefully set her Nine West sandals in the bucket and watched them move on the conveyor belt until they vanished from sight.
“They’re going to be okay,” Noah said dryly.
She nodded, hoping her underwire bra didn’t set off the alarm as it had the last time she’d flown commercial.
“Sir.” Another uniformed security officer waved Noah to come on through.
Just as he stepped under the metal detector, and just as Bailey was dumping her purse into her gray bucket, she heard the voice calling through the crowd.
“Bailey!”
And everything within her went still.
Kenny.
Clutching her purse, she whipped around.
Her brother was weaving his way through the crowd, his gaze on her, his face creased into tense lines. “Wait!”
“Bailey,” Noah said urgently from the other side of security. He made a move to come back through, but the security officer stepped in front of Noah. “I’m sorry, sir, but-”
“Bailey!” Kenny yelled again. He was wearing a white button down and trousers, not looking anything like a wanderlust carpenter.
She had no idea how he’d pinpointed her exact location, but the thought terrified her. If he’d found her, then the others could, too. She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, and before that it had been months, so she wasn’t prepared for the changes he’d undergone.
He’d always been an athlete, albeit a bit of a pampered one. But the muscles he’d refined in basketball, track, and baseball had faded. On top of that, he’d lost weight. His face seemed too thin, almost to the point of gaunt.
Worse, his eyes were hollow, and haunted.
And leveled right on her.
“Excuse me,” he said to the people in his way, pushing past them one at a time, his expression growing more and more desperate. “Excuse me-”
“Hey!” A huge guy who looked as if maybe he was a linebacker for a living, shook his head. “Dude, wait in line like the rest of us.”
“I just need to talk to-”
“A hell to the no,” the linebacker dude said firmly, slapping a hand to Kenny’s chest. “Get in line.”
“Get through security,” Noah said tightly, looking as if he might leap back over the security table, the officer be damned.
“Bailey! Bailey, it’s not what you think!” Kenny shouted, now being held back by a security guard who’d stepped in front of him. “Don’t go!”
She stared at him, throat tight, eyes burning. “I have to. You know I have to.”
“It’s not there. Please. Trust me. You don’t understand-”
Another security guard joined the first, and now she could no longer see Kenny at all.
He wanted her to wait. Possibly so that he could get more men in place.
More men to take her down.
Kill her.
Oh, God, Kenny.
And turning her back, she walked beneath the metal detectors toward a waiting and clearly relieved Noah.
Chapter 21
They boarded their plane without any trouble, though in Bailey’s case, she half expected to be held back for being over the weight limit, since she felt so heavy and stressed she could hardly move.
She was bringing Noah back to the place of his personal hell for her own gains.
How could she do that?
Leaning in, he put his mouth to her ear. “You’re thinking so loud over there that I can’t hear the flight attendant’s emergency spiel.”
She managed a smile for him, one that turned more real when he returned it.
“Why don’t you try to sleep?” he murmured. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”
True enough. She hadn’t managed to sleep more than a few minutes last night. Although, to be fair, that couldn’t be blamed squarely on this. Nope, she’d burned the midnight oil in Noah’s arms, letting him de-stress
