“I’m just covering bases. If anybody uses that phone for any reason, we’re going to know where it is. With luck, Con will be in the same place. If we need to go back into Steele Street to get him, at least you’ll have a better idea of the layout than you probably had going in the first time.”
Damn good point. There was a reason he loved her, and it was the same reason he made a point of taking up with more intellectually challenged women. No one could compare, not in beauty or brains, so he saved himself the trouble of even attempting to find someone who could hold his interest beyond the bedroom.
He was a jerk. He knew it. But he was a heartbroken jerk, a condition he didn’t see a solution for, so he cut himself a lot of slack in the romance, such as it was, department.
Karl the college professor—hell. Just when he’d decided to try to move their relationship to the next level, to take a chance and put himself out there, she’d had to go get a boyfriend who had a damn good chance of being a real step up in life, somebody a helluva lot classier than an ex–Army Ranger, somebody who probably never got shot at.
“We should go back to the motel and wait for him there. That was the original plan,” he said.
“Motel?” She slanted her gaze at him from across the interior of the Buick, both of her eyebrows raised.
“The Star Motel, a dump on the north end of Denver, up in the suburbs.” He knew she was used to much nicer digs. When they were on a job, he and Con holed up in whatever place was least likely to get them noticed. But on missions he did with Scout, Con usually managed damn nice accommodations. Of course, he let Scout in on only the most benign operations, doing things no one even half as skilled could get hurt executing, like low-risk surveillance, document preparation, money shuffling, and the occasional security analysis for people who had more money than actual trouble. She was a good courier, too, a world-class traveler who slid through airport security, overworked customs agents, and foreign cities with ease. She always delivered.
Con would skin him alive if he took Scout into the Kashmir Club after Lancaster. The best thing he could do, for her and for himself, was take her back to the motel and lie low. Jack knew Con would rather miss his chance at Lancaster a hundred times over than put Scout in danger again.
“A dump?” She sounded appropriately skeptical.
“The sheets are clean, the water’s hot, and I’m on the couch, so you’ve got a bed. Not that you’ll need it for long. We’re booked on a jet out of here at seven a.m.”
“Headed to?”
“Paraguay.”
“How’s the river house?” she asked. It had been her home, on and off, for the last four years.
“There’s not much left, but Con thought you might want to go through it before we move on.”
“Move on where?”
He shrugged. “Paris, I think, the apartment.”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than she smiled, a grin that lit up her face and broke his heart all over again for about the millionth fucking time. She loved Paris. He knew it. Con knew it. And if she loved a place, they were both hoping it meant she would stay put.
After this job, it was downhill for everybody, especially Con, and one of them, either he or Con, really needed to step up and tell her. If for no other reason on the face of the earth, that was why he needed to find the boss: so Con could do the dirty work.
There had been a time when he and Scout had been easier with each other, when she’d been younger, and they’d been friends. Not that he’d ever wanted to be just her friend, but as badly as he’d wanted to kiss her, he’d never gotten the job done, not even when he might have had a chance, and now he wished he had—before she’d gone and gotten herself a damn boyfriend named Karl.
God, he was such a sap.
Turning on his blinker, he eased the Buick back into traffic and headed toward the motel.
Such an idiotic, star-crossed, ridiculous, romantic sap.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Randolph Lancaster was good at his job, all of his jobs, and he had a good half a dozen on any given day of the week. In all of