She exhaled slowly, fighting her own uncertainty and fear to speak in a reasonable tone. "I'm not asking for all the answers, but don't hold out on me. Every minute we spend on this"-she threw a hand in the air to encompa.s.s the road before them-"is time we aren't working on helping Trey. The judge's ruling is coming fast. We have nothing, and Trey's time is running out."

She shook her head and felt the tears burning at the backs of her eyelids. "This will make me sound like an unfeeling b.i.t.c.h, but Otis is dead. I can't change that. All I can think about is Trey spending the rest of his life in prison. He'd rather be dead than face that."

Bryan's jaw tensed, but he didn't answer. How could he?

Chapter Fourteen.

December 28 Midafternoon AN HOUR AND a half later, The Hot Pot was bustling. It smelled of stale coffee, fried food, and diesel fuel as Sa.s.sy and Bryan grabbed a table in the back of the diner and settled in to wait on his friend. They ordered coffee from the overworked but friendly waitress.

Bryan hadn't spoken to Sa.s.sy much in the car, and the tension radiated off him in waves. Sitting across from each other in the restaurant had a completely different vibe than they'd had on the drive. While he'd been quiet then, he hadn't been so edgy.

Here he was on high alert. His back was to the wall, and he looked around the entire restaurant as they sat, his eyes never lingering long on anything or anyone. Sa.s.sy knew he had at least one of his guns; she'd seen him put it in a hidden waistband holster as they'd gotten out of the car. He'd said that he didn't know what was going on, but he clearly wasn't taking any chances.

They'd just finished their second cup of coffee when his phone dinged with an incoming text. "Bear's in the parking lot. Let's go. We don't want to meet in here."

Sa.s.sy nodded.

Bryan dropped some cash on the table for the coffee, grabbed his pack, and steered Sa.s.sy to the exit. The blast of cool air was a shock. He nodded toward a dark green pickup on the far side of the lot away from all the other trucks and cameras.

"Over there," he murmured.

He glanced around as they walked to the vehicle. The driver never got out or waved any greeting as Bryan led her to the pa.s.senger side and opened the door for her. Warmth emanated from the cab of the truck, along with the scent of cinnamon coffee.

The man sitting in the driver's seat turned to her with a curious smile, and she could see exactly where he'd gotten his nickname. Bear Bennett looked like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Smokey the Bear park ranger campaign. He was built like Bryan, most likely as tall, too. But where Bryan was blonde, Bear had longish dark hair and a full beard, with blue eyes almost the color of her own.

He was all muscle dressed in jeans, work boots, and a dark green fleece pullover with the logo of the U.S. Forest Service on his chest. "h.e.l.lo, Hollywood!" he thundered.

Sa.s.sy should have been a little taken aback, but she was so tired and so grateful to see a friendly face that she figured to h.e.l.l with it and climbed inside the truck.

Bryan crawled up beside her so that she was sandwiched between the two imposing men. Tension continued to pour off of Bryan, and she could feel him vibrating with it beside her as his hip and knee b.u.mped hers.

Bryan exchanged one long glance with the man in the driver's seat but didn't say h.e.l.lo. He simply nodded.

"Anything?" Bryan asked.

"Nothing. But I parked where no cameras could see us." Bear shifted the truck into drive.

"Good." Bryan moved closer to the door so he wasn't squishing Sa.s.sy. "The car we drove is on the other side of the building. Let's get out of here."

"You got it." Bear pulled onto the highway. "I'm Bear." He stuck his left hand across his body and took Sa.s.sy's in an awkward shake. His hands were huge, but his grasp on her fingers was light. Sa.s.sy felt like a Lilliputian between the two men.

"h.e.l.lo, Bear. Thank you for picking us up." As she pulled her hand from his, his smile deepened, and Sa.s.sy did a double take. The dazzle in the man's grin was palpable and surprisingly disarming at the same time, because it appeared that he was completely unaware of its effect.

"No problem. I'd do anything for Hollywood. I owe him."

Bryan still wasn't talking, but he was shaking his head. "You've got that mixed up. You don't owe me anything," he muttered, checking the rear-view mirrors and looking all around them, just like he had in the restaurant.

"Yeah, well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree about that, my friend. Now tell me what you need," said Bear.

"A safe house until I can figure out what's up."

"You okay with coming to my place? I'm right on the edge of the Francis Marion. We drive through the national forest to get there."

Bryan shifted on the seat again. "We're most likely bringing a boatload of trouble that I can't explain. I don't like getting you involved."

Bear shot him an inscrutable look before shaking his head. "Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself."

Indeed. Sa.s.sy stole a glance at the man beside her again. Bear Bennett looked like the kind of man who could very much take care of himself with or without traditional weapons, his lethal smile notwithstanding.

Bear continued down the highway, keeping up a constant stream of dialogue about the national forest. On her right she felt Bryan relax, if only marginally, as Bear rambled on in what amounted to a park ranger patter about the area. The man's voice was radio announcer smooth and easy on the ear, not at all the gruff tone she would have expected from one who looked so wild and imposing.

She started to drift.

"I gotta warn you," said Bear. "I live in the boonies. It's fairly rustic."

Sa.s.sy's eyes popped open to see the twinkle in his eye now. "How rustic we talking?" she asked.

"Oh, I have indoor plumbing, electricity, and internet that works half the time. But that's about it."

"Sounds perfect. You had me at indoor plumbing." She closed her eyes again in exhaustion as the road blurred in front of her.

Bear chuckled, and the rumble of his deep laughter echoed inside her chest. She felt truly safe for the first time since Bryan had locked the door to the sleeping compartment on the train.

"You like your job, don't you?" Bryan asked. "You seem much more at ease."

"Well, medication can be a wonderful thing, but I've tapered off most of that stuff. I actually do yoga and s.h.i.t to control the symptoms now."

Sa.s.sy wondered what kind of symptoms he was referring to, but she kept her eyes closed, not wanting to interrupt.

"The job's been ideal. Not many people, outdoors mostly. I do a lot of horseback riding to inspect the trails. That's been helpful. I don't know how you live in the city, Hollywood."

She felt the muscles in Bryan's leg loosen up as the two men talked, their voices quickly lulling her into that blissful twilight state between waking and sleeping.

"Oh, it's not so bad. But I am happy for you, Bear. You seem really good."

She hadn't considered what a change it had been for Bryan to move from the backwoods of Mississippi to the big city of Dallas. Not that he'd lived in Springwater recently. But she still wondered if he missed it-the creek, the outdoors, the smaller town, the slower pace.

She took another deep breath and everything fell away.

BRYAN FELT Sa.s.sY completely relax against him and knew she was down for the count. He wasn't sure of the last time she'd slept, excepting her short nap in the shower. On the train, perhaps?

His body tightened at the memory. G.o.d, he was so screwed. He was crazy about her. All those feelings he'd tried to quash down over the years were back, and they were tying him in knots.

He couldn't do this. He didn't stick. He wasn't looking for long-term. Knowing that, he had no business even entertaining the idea. h.e.l.l, just thinking about it- "So is this the girl?" asked Bear quietly.

Bryan was grateful for the interruption, but he didn't want to admit anything, least of all to Bear. "What girl?"

"The girl from back home that you never talked about."

Bryan snorted a bleak laugh. Right, the girl he'd never talked about until he'd thought he was dying, and it was too late.

Bear had heard it all as he'd pulled Bryan's b.u.t.t out of that burning Jeep and kept him awake until just before the evac arrived. When Bryan had woken up in the hospital, he'd been horrified to find he'd shared his deepest secret, and then survived. But Bear had proven to be a solid confidant.

"Yeah, this is the one," Bryan admitted with a sigh.

"She's . . . she's tiny. Aren't you worried you'll . . . whenever . . ." Bear's voice drifted off.

Bryan snorted. "Jesus, Bear." The man's mouth often got way out in front of his brain. That, in addition to his sometimes debilitating PTSD, was why Bear lived in the middle of nowhere, even though he was a technological genius.

Bear could be making a killing, living in Silicon Valley and working for some start-up telecom company, but Bryan suspected there was no way he could handle the people end of that kind of job right now. So he was a park ranger, where the stress a.s.sociated with his battle fatigue and the opportunity for horrible social gaffes didn't present themselves often enough to irreparably damage his career.

"We're just friends," insisted Bryan.

This time Bear snorted. "I don't think so. You're a lot of things, but friends ain't one of them."

Bryan knew Bear was right, but he didn't want to think about it, especially now. "That's not an issue at this point. Her brother's in jail for a murder he didn't commit, and we're trying to find anything we can to help him before the case comes to trial."

"Who did he allegedly kill?"

"Ever hear of Elizabeth Yarborough?"

Bear nodded and sat up straighter. " 'Course. Along with everyone else living in the free world with a television. I thought that guy was spending life in a Mexican prison."

"That guy is Sa.s.sy's brother, and the judge is handing down his verdict in six days."

"So what are you doing here if your guy is in jail in Mexico?" asked Bear.

Bryan took it as a compliment that Bear accepted his word that Trey was innocent, when the rest of the country was convinced his friend was guilty as sin. He shifted in his seat as Sa.s.sy's limp body rested more firmly against his. "Sa.s.sy's a freelance reporter and has been doing some investigating into Elizabeth's disappearance possibly being related to s.e.x trafficking. According to her sources, there was a high-level cartel meeting happening at the same resort where Trey and Elizabeth were staying the weekend she disappeared."

"Do you think the woman overheard or saw something she wasn't supposed to?" Bear asked.

"It seems logical, although why they'd frame Trey instead of outright killing him doesn't make a lot of sense."

"Unless they wanted people to stop looking for a woman who was alive," said Bear.

Bryan stared at him as several ideas clicked into place. He wasn't sure why he hadn't considered it before. Perhaps he just hadn't been looking at the situation with the right touch of mania.

"Authorities never found any evidence of the girl's body or any connection to the cartel, but it's hard to know if those authorities were really looking, with all the corruption involved down there," said Bryan.

"So if the evidence is so squishy, what makes you think it has to do with the cartels and trafficking at all? Do you have anything else?"

Bryan suspected that Bear's fight not to give himself over completely to paranoia was what was keeping him sane. It also made him an excellent backboard for bouncing ideas off of, because the man insisted on proof for others' conspiracy theories.

Mindful of and thankful for that, Bryan explained. "We don't have concrete evidence that this has anything to do with Elizabeth's disappearance, but we've got odd coincidences with where the couple was staying and that cartel summit. Undeniably, there was something going on at the resort the same weekend Elizabeth disappeared. That's been independently confirmed by DEA sources as well as Sa.s.sy's. She and my partner, Nick, both found connections between those same cartels at the summit and human trafficking in Mexico and Africa. Another source of Sa.s.sy's insisted Elizabeth was shipped to Africa via Venezuela. At this point it's all I have to go on."

Bear leaned forward and flashed a grin at Bryan as he drove. "Just so you know, you're making me feel better by the minute about my issues."

Bryan shook his head but smiled, too, relieved his friend could joke about his own situation now. After the roadside bombing, Bear had initially been a wreck.

"So, what else do you have?" Bear asked again. "You're sticking your neck waaay out here, and I think it would take more than just a coincidence to make you do that."

This wasn't just Bear's neurosis speaking. This was his common sense.

"Trey was my best friend growing up in Mississippi, and s.h.i.t started happening as soon as Sa.s.sy began poking around. She was kidnapped off the street in Niamey, and someone's been d.o.g.g.i.ng her ever since." He explained about the men in the hotel in New York, the train crash, and the men at Otis and Tilly's. "I even think that crazy as it sounds, there was something going on with the train crash. How paranoid is that?"

Bear shrugged. "Given everything else, not so very much at all. Like they say, you're not truly paranoid when someone really is out to get you."

Bryan snorted. Yep. That's exactly what he'd thought after the train wreck. Sa.s.sy shifted in her sleep, and he put his arm around the back of the seat to cradle her head.

"I think Sa.s.sy found something, or someone's nervous that she's about to. I need a place where we can put all the pieces together from her investigation with what AEGIS has already." He explained about the complication with Gavin and Nick and the government investigation into his employer.

"Do you think one of those guys is dirty?"

"No. But I do believe Leland is compromised in some way. I don't know how, but there's no getting around the fact that every time I've talked to him, something major has happened. There's no other way anyone could be tracking us."

"Hmmm, maybe . . ."

Bryan glanced at him across Sa.s.sy's head. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

"There are all kinds of ways to track people these days, particularly in a city like New York. The technology is amazing and scary as h.e.l.l at the same time. You've heard of nano drones, right?" Bear stared ahead as they drove through the deeply forested area.

As the sun sank lower behind the trees, Bryan watched the shadows deepen all around. "Of course. The military uses them, and now civilians are using them, too."

Bear nodded. "Well, it's more than just wedding photography and paparazzi using drones to get unique pictures. Those suckers are tiny now. Real sci-fi stuff. You can be tracked by something so small you wouldn't necessarily even see it."

Bryan shook his head. "I don't know if I can go there, man. Why? And who would be after us with that kind of technology? After her? It doesn't make sense."

He had to remind himself that Bear lived by himself because he had issues with paranoia, courtesy of his time in Afghanistan. Bryan wasn't sure that he was ready to dive off that cliff with him just yet. But while Bear might be paranoid, the guy wasn't stupid. Bear could read people, and he had to know exactly what Bryan was thinking.

As if he was reading Bryan's mind, Bear changed the subject. "You need to be able to talk to your team without any chance of being traced. Correct?"

"Right. But not in person. We were going to meet up, but that's out of the question now. It's too risky." We each have too much at stake. Leland with Anna and Zach, and Nick with Jennifer. "I don't think any of us distrust each other, it's just we know there is something going on that makes no sense."

"Sounds like you need an online chat of some kind that's data rather than text or voice. That way it can't be traced."

Bryan nodded. "Untraceable, yes. Most of what you just said was Greek, but a video chat with Leland and Nick together would be ideal."

Bear slowed at a deep curve. "Well, you're in luck, 'cause I'm sorta an expert at that kind of s.h.i.t."

Bryan smiled. Whatever other issues Bear might have, the man was a master with telecommunications.