He grinned at her. “Here,” he said and pushed the trolley between the two beds.
She looked to see a beautiful latte with a pattern on the top. She smiled. “So, even in times of stress like this, I get something pretty.”
“Is there a reason not to enjoy every moment?”
“I think I have even more reason to enjoy every moment,” she said.
“Especially now.”
She sat up, lifted the cup, and took a sip. Then she put it on the night table and hitched her butt backward, so she could lean against the headboard with the blanket up around her chest and then hugged her coffee again.
He returned to the silver coffee carafe. He poured two cups, for him and Keane.
“How did you guys know I like lattes?”
“We know everything,” Keane said in a dry tone.
She winced at that. “Well, I hope not,” she said.
“And why is that?” Nico asked.
“Nobody wants their entire life completely opened for viewing.”
“Very few people ever get to see the details,” Nico said. He again turned toward the trolley and lifted the lid off the dome in the center.
She’d seen it there but hadn’t even registered it—or what was under it. A big plate of cookies and muffins. She cried out in delight and immediately snatched a muffin.
He stared at her. “Are you still hungry?”
“Well, I ate the apple to give my jaw something to work on,” she said by way of explanation. “But this looked so good. And I guess maybe I am a little hungry.”
Nico offered Keane something off the plate, and, when the plate was returned to the trolley, she still saw several cookies and another muffin. She had no intention of being ladylike and not indulging. She was still hungry and still afraid that whatever was coming would be a little harder than anything she’d seen yet. “Are you going to tell me any details about how we’re leaving?”
“No,” Nico said, “not yet.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll just sit here and eat then.”
“You do that,” he said.
And she did, but, after the coffee and the food, she felt sleepy again. “You guys won’t leave me alone, right?”
Nico looked over with a smile and said, “Go to sleep. I’ll wake you when we’re ready to leave.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Are we leaving tonight? Well, I guess it’s technically morning.”
“In a few hours,” he said. “Go ahead and sleep. It’s the best answer yet.”
Not being able to get any more information out of him, she curled up and laid her head on the pillow, then pulled the blanket back up to her chin and fell asleep.
“You’re getting too attached,” Keane growled.
“I don’t think so,” Nico said. “I’m just a little friendlier than you are.”
“It seems to me that you’re getting too attached.”
Nico ignored Keane. Nico’s partner was big and gruff, but he had the heart of a teddy bear. They were just trying to make this as easy on Charlotte as possible. Nico got up and moved the trolley out of the way, so, if she had to get up in the night when she was still groggy, she wouldn’t trip over it. She’d left them two cookies, one each. He handed one to Keane and then took the last one, collecting all the dishes as he put the trolley back outside the door. “Do we have an update on the timeline?”
“Helicopter’s arriving on the roof in one hour and forty.”
“It’s not quite enough sleep for her, but anything she gets is good.”
“It’ll be all she gets for a little while,” Keane noted.
Nico nodded. “It should be an interesting trip.”
“Well, it’s the way this has panned out,” Keane said. “We have a long way to go to get back. The flight’s the most direct, but, short of a private jet on a private airstrip, it won’t be the easiest way to go.”
“That’s all right,” Nico said. “I’m okay to go back on a cruiser or a submarine or whatever.”
“It’ll be a combination,” he said with a smile.
“Right.” Nico sat down and worked on his research. “I’d like answers from that damn idiot though.”
“Not to mention the shooter.”
“All that the Mavericks team says on the shooter is how he was carrying a wad of cash, and they suspect he was paid for the job.”
“Which we already figured out,” Keane said in a dry tone. “So that’s really not helpful.”
“I know,” he said. “So we focus on the last two men of the kidnapping team. The one we caught and the one we haven’t seen yet.”
“And whether the shooter was the mastermind or if he’s just another minion.”
“I’d say minion.”
“She didn’t recognize him though.”
Nico nodded. “Still, you’d think getting more men involved would make it even messier. Or they suspected that, if the shooter failed, we’d have killed him anyway.”
Just then the chat window opened up, and a picture of a fourth male came up. A search of the local reports by Australian authorities regarding gunshot wounds tracked the gun used to kill the first two DBs.
“Good. Now if only we can find the fourth man,” Nico said, sharing this newest intel with Keane. “Still our bloody prisoner should be damn glad he’s alive.”
“Interesting,” Keane said. “So they’re cleaning up and getting rid of everybody.”
“Which means they’re changing the operation or moving it.”
“I’d say more like shutting it down,” Keane said quietly. “We’ve got her, and it’s obvious we won’t give her up.”
“Or they’ll lie low and grab her later.”
“We’re thinking it’s about the brother?”
Yes,” Nico said. “At the mention of her family earlier, she looked more puzzled than anything.”
A soft voice spoke from the bed. “That’s because I don’t have any family,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your records surely would show that I was in foster care.”
“You had a brother,” Keane said. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We were separated when I was in fourth grade, and he was in
