Conceal, Protect - By Carol Ericson Page 0,38
sipped the remaining latte while she got dressed. Applying some lip balm, she inspected herself in the mirror. The crash had given her both a cut and a bump above her right temple. Those wounds were nothing compared to the one J.D. had inflicted on her heart with his deception.
The orderly insisted on wheeling her out of the hospital in a wheelchair, so she sat back and closed her eyes. Maybe this all had a silver lining. If that lying hunk of...hunk knew who was after her, she had a fighting chance.
Maybe not for the relationship she’d been foolishly imagining with J.D., but a chance to confront her stalker head-on. She touched her bandage—maybe not head-on either.
The orderly waited with her on the sidewalk in front of the hospital until J.D. drove up in a rental, a silver SUV.
He and the orderly each took one of her arms and walked her to the passenger side of the vehicle. J.D. helped her up and into the seat, and they both thanked the orderly.
As soon as J.D. hit the driver’s seat, Noelle snapped, “Tell me.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait until we get back to the ranch? You might need to be more comfortable than you are now to hear this story.”
Her stomach rolled, and she pinned her folded hands between her knees. “Just tell me.”
He reached into the backseat and tossed her hat into her lap. “I saved this from the wreckage, along with your bag with your laptop in it.”
“Thanks. Now talk.”
He adjusted the mirrors and glanced at her. “Nico Zendaris is an international arms dealer.”
Her jaw dropped, and she turned to stare at his profile. “You’re kidding.”
“Would I lie about something like that? Wait, don’t answer that.”
“He’s an arms dealer? Why would an arms dealer be after me? That’s insane. I don’t believe you.”
“You had a roommate in D.C., Abby Warren.”
“How do you know about Abby?” A chill crept across her flesh.
“Not from you. Every time I’d ask you a leading question about unusual occurrences lately, you never brought up Abby—not until yesterday. Isn’t the sudden disappearance of a roommate unusual? Or does that happen to you all the time?”
She ground her teeth together. “If you knew about Abby, why didn’t you just ask me? In fact, why all the lies and deceit?”
“I’ll get to my lies and deceit in a minute. Do you want to hear about Abby’s lies and deceit first and her connection to Zendaris?”
“Abby has a connection to an international arms dealer?”
“Had. Abby Warren is dead.”
Noelle covered her face with her hands. “This is crazy. How? Who? This is too much.”
“One thing at a time. Abby’s twin sister, Beth, worked for Prospero, an undercover intelligence agency. Through her twin, Abby met a few people, learned a few things and developed a lunatic crush on one of the agents.”
She jerked her head up. “You?”
“Not me—my buddy, Cade Stark. Abby was also a computer whiz, but maybe you knew that already.”
Cade Stark. Noelle drew her brows together. That name sounded familiar for some reason. “I knew she worked as a private IT consultant. She went after hackers mostly.”
“Takes one to know one. She hacked into Stark’s computer and nabbed some plans that he had just stolen from Zendaris. To make a long story short, she contacted Zendaris in the end to let him know she had the plans.”
“Did he kill her?” Noelle’s eye twitched.
“No.”
“Did you kill her?” She wanted to know what kind of man she was dealing with—what kind of man she’d been falling for.
“No.” He shot her a quick look.
“Where are the plans now?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it, darlin’?”
Widening her eyes, she jabbed a thumb against her chest. “Me? This Zendaris thinks I have the plans?”
“Either that or he thinks you know something.”
“And so did you.”
“What?” It was J.D.’s turn for the look of openmouthed surprise.
“That’s why you kept me in the dark all this time. You thought I was in cahoots with Abby or something. You thought I had the plans—maybe you still do.”
“You’re quick but not completely accurate.” His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel. “I never believed for one minute you had anything to do with Abby’s crazy scheme, not after I’d met you.”
“Someone did.”
He nodded, a quick dip of chin to chest. “Someone whose job it is to be suspicious, but I convinced him otherwise. I told you the truth when I said I was ready to spill everything this morning.”
She wedged her boots against the