White-Hot Hack (Kate and Ian #2)(77)

“That’s quite clever of you, appealing to my competitive nature. Banking on the fact that I wouldn’t want to be shown up by a woman. If I drive too fast and get pulled over, there goes my plan. I can’t say I’m surprised, because I know you’re smart. Those sob stories you gave me back at the food pantry and those tears you manufactured on command were pretty convincing. You even had me fooled for a while.”

Though he reduced his speed, the minutes passed and the miles flew by quickly in the darkness. He hadn’t changed direction or veered from her route, so Kate assumed he’d booked the charter at an airstrip far enough ahead to give him time to catch up with her. She worried they might reach it soon.

The phone rang and Kate’s heart leapt, but it wasn’t Ian’s number that flashed onto the screen; it was Chad’s. “That’s my brother. If I don’t answer, he’ll just call back.”

That seemed to throw him. He scrubbed his hand over his face as the ringing filled the car, the sound echoing off the walls. “Make it short and tell him you have to go.”

He pushed the button to answer the call, and Kate said, “Hey Chad. I just stopped to go to the bathroom. I’ll call you right back, okay?”

“Sure, Kate—”

Zach disconnected the call before Chad could say anything else. Kate had been monitoring their route on the navigation screen, and by her rough calculations, she figured Chad and her dad were somewhere in Ohio by now. If Zach stayed on course, they would soon be less than half an hour away from each other.

Kate tensed when the phone rang again less than a minute later, but her heart filled with joy when she realized who was calling. “That’s Ian.”

“Keep it short and don’t say anything that will cause a complication for me. Trust me when I say my way is better for all of us. If you freak out and start screaming, things will become much more difficult for you. But if you do what I tell you, nothing bad will happen.”

But Kate didn’t believe him. Anyone willing to put this much time and planning into achieving his goal would stop at nothing to attain it. If he was pushed into a corner, Kate would see exactly what Zach Nielsen would resort to, and she knew it would be far more violent than his calm demeanor illustrated. Money had a way of turning people into monsters.

Zach answered the call and jabbed his finger at Kate.

“Hey, sweetness,” Ian said. She could hear the fatigue in his voice, but she heard wariness too. Had he noticed the tracking on her phone had been turned off?

“Hey!” She forced herself to sound cheerful and upbeat, praying that Ian—the most observant man she knew—would pick up on the slight tremble in her voice. Before he could utter another word she yawned loudly and said, “Sorry about that. I need a cup of coffee.” The sentence wouldn’t seem strange to Zach. She’d been driving awhile and it was late, so coffee would be an obvious choice for anyone in her situation and should not arouse suspicion.

“Coffee, huh?” There had been a pause that seemed a bit long before he said the words, but Zach hadn’t seemed to notice, so maybe it only seemed long to her.

“Yes. I stopped at Starbucks on my way out of town and got one of those silly Frappuccinos Charlie’s always talking about, and I could use another.” Kate almost gagged. Coffee itself was bad enough, but it was especially nausea-inducing when she thought of it combined with a sickly-sweet flavoring. She swallowed hard and kept talking. “You said I wouldn’t like it because it would be too sugary, but Charlie was right when he said they put just the right amount of syrup in. I told you he always has my best interests at heart. I was right about him and you were wrong.”

Zach twirled his finger in the air: wrap it up. She didn’t want to stop talking. She needed to hear Ian’s voice because it was the only thing grounding her at the moment.

“Sounds like I was wrong about him. Hey, sweetness. Let me call you right back, okay? Somebody needs me real quick.”

“Okay—” She barely got the word out before Zach disconnected the call and her heart sank. Ian was the smartest person she knew, and Kate clung to the belief that the real reason he’d hung up was because he’d understood. He would need a few minutes to gather his thoughts and determine the best way to move their conversation forward in a way that would not arouse Zach’s suspicion.

“That was good, Kate. Somehow I thought your conversations would be a bit less boring, but that’s marriage for you, I guess. When he calls back, make sure you stick to some more of that uninteresting Frappuccino conversation. And keep it short.”

She turned her head away from Zach and stared out at the darkness as tears filled her eyes. At that moment, she would have given anything to be enjoying one of those marriage moments he found so dull. Oh, Ian. I need you. But there was no time to feel sorry for herself, because they still had work to do.

Kate did take comfort in one thing. When it came to her and Ian, Zach Nielsen had no idea how smart they were and just how well they worked together.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Ian set the phone down on the desk. The hum of the room faded away, and he no longer heard the sound of celebratory voices or fingers typing on keyboards. He’d heard what Kate said, had picked up on the slight difference in the cadence of her words. She was scared but trying to hide it.

There was no way she would stop for coffee considering her aversion to it, and the only reason she’d said that was to get his attention. It was the second part of the story she’d really wanted him to understand.