engine trouble, let’s stop and help and figure out how to fix it with the random things in our pockets and bags! That’s Ted’s MO, too.”
“He sounds...”
“Complicated?” Tasha finished Thomas’s sentence for him. “Yeah.”
“I was going to say interesting,” he said.
“Most complicated people are.”
And now she was looking at him like she could see inside of him, which made him nervous, because he wasn’t quite sure himself why he’d started this conversation about her soon-to-be-fiancé.
There was a spark of hope, and yeah, plenty of optimism, in the warmth of her eyes, so Thomas went back to the unsettlingly honest thing she’d said to him, and echoed her own words. “You know, it’s nice to meet the real, grown-up you, too. I’m glad we’re friends again, Tash. I really am. And Ted sounds like he’s pretty great, so... I’m happy for you.” He’d buttoned that badly, so he finished with, “You need to use the bathroom before I, uh, hit the shower?”
Tasha shook her head. “No, thanks, I’m good.”
Thomas closed the bathroom door behind him, thinking, shit. He’d leaned hard on that friends, but was that for her benefit—or for his?
Chapter Sixteen
As Rio and Dave approached, the little rural airfield’s runway lights powered up.
“I’m hoping that’s a signal that their tower’s had contact from the prince’s jet,” Dave said optimistically. “If he lands soon...”
If he landed in the next five minutes, it would only take seven hours and five minutes to make the round trip to Burlington, Vermont. Seven hours and five minutes before they returned to their primary mission of finding Tasha and Thomas.
Assuming the prince wasn’t packing any bullshit in his carry-on. Assuming he landed without mishap and willingly gave himself up, cheerfully climbed into the backseat of their SUV, and enthusiastically let himself be delivered to Vermont without any pushback.
Yeah.
Right.
What was the protocol for strong-arming a prince?
Dave was waiting for some kind of response, so Rio managed to make a noncommittal-sounding grunt as he navigated around one of the larger potholes in the airfield parking lot. There were five other vehicles—four pickups and a patrol car—already there, and he could see at least as many people gathered in the small, open-air hangar. Just the sight of them pissed him off. God help them if they questioned his authority or otherwise slowed them down in the slightest.
But that wasn’t the only reason they pissed him off.
“You’re from a small town, right?” he asked Dave as he killed the engine.
“Yeah, sort of,” Dave said, climbing out of the SUV and stretching. “Damn, it’s cold. I mean, North Port’s lots smaller than Sarasota. But even Sarasota’s not very big, so... I’ll go with yes. Why?”
“My small-town radar sucks.” Rio opened the back, and unlocked the weapons locker. Time for a little concealed carry—that he wouldn’t bother to fully conceal. He slipped on the nylon shoulder holster, then covered it with a jacket but didn’t zip up. “I walk into a place like this, you know, population seven-hundred-and-something—that’s like half the size of my high school graduating class—and I assume everybody in town must know everybody else. Like, there’s probably someone in that hangar, right now, who directly knows someone who’s on the payroll of the asshole who torched the Ustanzian ski lodge.”
Dave nodded as he grabbed some extra ammo. “That’s a healthy assumption,” he agreed.
Which meant that thanks to the impetuous and spoiled prince, they’d not only just lost a shitload of time, they’d also just given up the element of surprise.
Perfect.
Rio locked everything back up, double-checking that it was secure.
“Ooh, maybe the airport has working WiFi!” Dave already had his phone out as he searched for a connection. But his enthusiasm immediately faded. “Damn it.”
And now Jon-without-an-H, who still hadn’t texted Dave any response whatsoever, was pissing Rio off nearly as much as Little Prince Motherfuckin’ Tedric was.
“Let’s get this over with,” Rio said, leading the way toward the hangar.
Thomas had bludgeoned her with a friend-and-run.
I’m glad we’re fffrrriennndddsss again, Tash, gotta take a shower, k, thanx, bye!
This was definitely her cue to take her book and vanish into the bedroom, so they didn’t have to sing verse nine-hundred-and-twelve of the Awkward Song after his shower.
He’d failed to take the pink sweatshirt in with him, so when he did come out of the bathroom, he’d be not just freshly scrubbed and sweet-smelling, he’d have all those powerful Navy SEAL chest and back and shoulder and arm muscles on full display. And that, combined with his thin flannel pants with their