Fatal Secrets - Desiree Holt Page 0,45
man, and, after being shuttled to three other numbers and proving who she was, finally got to talk to him. It took a lot of convincing before he agreed to meet with her, but he wasn’t promising he would tell her anything.
Hank was still not too excited about them leaving the ranch, but Sean knew the man trusted him to take care of Zoe. He wasn’t going to betray that trust, for more reasons than just Hank.
Years of experience with the SEALs had conditioned Sean to have eyes in all directions as he drove from White Oak Ranch to the outskirts of Billings. Zoe traveled the area a lot for stories, even the ones outside Helena and Bozeman, so she knew a place where Ridge would be comfortable, or at least as much as possible. They were careful and on the alert for any suspicious vehicles, anyone staying with them too much or anything, as they drove. It had really struck him over the past forty-eight hours that Zoe’s jobs carried a certain element of danger. Both jobs, as a reporter and an author of true crime books.
He’d thought about it a lot last night as he lay in his bedroom at the ranch. He’d have been much happier lying in Zoe’s room with her, but he didn’t think they were anywhere close to letting Hank and Sadie know what was happening between them. He’d be eternally grateful to his cousin for dragging him up out of the pit he’d let himself wallow in, and he did not want to do anything to endanger that.
He wanted Zoe. Wanted to be with her, and that shocked the shit out of him. He’d spent the past several months making sure he had no emotional ties to anyone. He was still a fucking mess, and the nightmares were far from gone. What did he have to offer anyone? But Zoe seemed to calm him. That night with her was the first one he’d slept through in a long time. No nightmares.
And it wasn’t just the outstanding sex. He’d had a lot of good sex. But this had a different element to it, as if they had reached into each other’s soul. It happened so fast he wondered if he was imagining things, but then he’d pull out every memory of the night and realized her walking into his life was some kind of miracle. It came out of nowhere, and he’d do his very best not to fuck it up. To get his shit together so she didn’t decide the sex wasn’t good enough to take a chance with him. Whether he took Hank’s offer or talked to Alex Rossi, for the first time in months he had a chance at a future and he didn’t plan to fuck it up.
He did have a feeling, from the looks Sadie snuck at them every so often, that she sensed the chemistry between them. Luckily no one asked questions about what they’d been doing for so long at Zoe’s apartment when her car blew up, but when this was all wrapped up he wasn’t about to let her go. And he sensed she felt the same way, At least he hoped.
Finally, satisfied they were clear, he parked next to the truck stop outside Billings that Zoe directed him to, entered the restaurant portion, and took a corner booth.
“You really believe he’ll show?” Sean asked.
“I do.” Zoe took a sip of her coffee. “Ridge got kind of a raw deal when he was arrested. He was a runner for Montoya—although he didn’t know that was who actually headed the operation. He’d gotten caught in a trap and ended up taking the fall for things he hadn’t done. Justine had done her usual investigation and interviewed him several times in jail.” She looked at Sean, pain in her eyes. “That was about the time of Justine’s murder.”
“You think he knows anything about it?”
She shrugged. “It’s worth asking. You never know what someone hears, especially considering the situation then.”
“He was willing to talk to you?”
“After a lot of persuading,” she told him. “He wanted to get out of jail, but he was scared to name any names he had, even those on the lowest rung.”
“So, how’d you make it happen?”
“I was really impressed with him from our talks, and I agreed with him he’d gotten the short end of the stick. I promised to speak at his parole hearing.”
Sean cocked an eyebrow. “Did you? And did it work?”
She