A Covert Affair (Deadly Ops #5)(60)

Maybe he should split town before taking anyone else. He had a new ID already made, but he could get more aliases. Just disappear. He wouldn’t have as much money as he’d planned on, but he could find new work.

Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He’d have to sleep on it. In the morning he could put his getaway plan into motion. Maybe he’d take one girl so no one would get suspicious and then he could split town and no one would realize, at least for a little while.

Amelia unlocked the back door to her restaurant and let herself in. She’d already stopped by La Cocina de Amelia first to see everyone. While she hired mainly college students at Plátanos Maduros, the first restaurant she’d opened was very family-oriented and had long-term, slightly older staff. Definitely not as much employee turnover.

She’d wanted to assure everyone that things would be operating as usual. Because she’d been in the business long enough to know that people would freak out, and the story of her accident—and she wasn’t telling anyone it had been intentional—would morph into a tale of her going out of business and everyone losing their jobs. It was just the nature of gossip in this industry.

She didn’t want to be here, though. Didn’t want to face anyone. Nathan had left her house late last night, telling her that he had a meeting today. She had no idea if he was lying. Things between them had been awkward, and she didn’t know what to do to make it right. She was afraid there wasn’t anything she could do. He said he forgave her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have anything to do with her.

And now she had to worry about another date with Mercado. She wasn’t nervous around Mercado, not after their last date, but she didn’t feel like herself, didn’t want to put on a fake smile and pretend to be happy. She knew she could say no, but she’d seen the news this morning and knew they’d found a lot of bodies—and she was hurt that Nathan hadn’t said a damn thing to her about it. She didn’t know for sure that the finding was related to his case, but she wasn’t stupid. She wanted to help them either nail Mercado to the wall or clear him.

The scent of delicious fried foods wafted through the air as she shut the door behind her. It automatically locked, part of her security precautions. She’d taken a few steps down the hallway when she saw that her office door was open. No one should be in there.

Panic and paranoia pumped through her. After yesterday it was hard not to feel jumpy. She had reached into her purse for her pepper spray when her front-of-the-house manager, Sylvia, stepped out.

Her coffee-colored eyes widened as she saw Amelia. “What the heck are you doing here?” She took a concerned step forward and Amelia automatically dropped the pepper spray and withdrew her hand. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“I’m fine, I swear.” And wasn’t she sick of saying that to people? Which made her feel a little bit like a jerk, considering that everyone was just concerned. “Everything okay here?” She tilted her head to her office door.

“What . . . oh yeah, just updating the floor plan for today and dropping off the receipt for yesterday’s bank deposit. Sales were crazy yesterday.” She leaned against the doorframe and shoved her hands in her pants pockets. “I compared them to last year and we almost doubled what we did on the same date one year ago. I bet we see more today too, especially after that news clip they did on you.”

Amelia’s heart rate increased. “News clip?”

“You didn’t see it? Of course you didn’t,” Sylvia said, “or you wouldn’t have asked. Yeah, it came on after that awful story about the remains of all those women being found this morning. Did you see that?”

Amelia nodded. It was why she’d turned the news off. One depressing story was enough for the day.

“It was on right after that. They just talked about how you’d been in a hit-and-run and there was a brief interview with two women who said that you avoided hitting them to your own detriment. We were all so worried yesterday, but the police wouldn’t let us see you. And then you were just gone. Are you sure you’re okay?” As usual, Sylvia was going a million miles a minute. She always seemed to have an unending supply of energy. It was one of the reasons she was so good at her job.

“I’ll be so much better if you tell me there’s fresh coffee made.” There should be, this early in the morning. Her staff lived on the stuff. She’d had a cup at home, but she was still dragging. Lack of caffeine had little to do with it, though, and the truth was, she probably should have just stayed home.

“There is. I’ll grab you a cup. Hey, how’d you even get here anyway? It looked like your Jeep was toast yesterday.”

“Ah, rental.” Which wasn’t the truth, but Amelia had no problem lying. She wasn’t going to say that the FBI—or whoever, per Sinclair’s cryptic words—had let her borrow a vehicle until she got things straightened out.

When she woke up this morning, she’d had a text from Nathan telling her that she’d have an escort to work who would follow in another vehicle and that they’d left a mini-SUV in her garage. Which reminded her, she needed to call her insurance company and Sinclair. She wanted a copy of the police report so she could get a rental ASAP. She also wanted to grill Sinclair about who Nathan worked for.

She’d been a mess yesterday afternoon and last night. Nathan had been an absolute rock too. He’d just been a solid presence in her house, making her feel safe even though they’d barely talked. Of course that was probably because she’d been asleep more than half the time he was there. She tried to think why Nathan would lie about who he worked for and couldn’t come up with anything.