The Outlaw Prince's Captive - Holly Rayner Page 0,41

just how much she was asking.

But it turned out that having time to think about the way the agency had set them up had strengthened his resolve.

“I’ll keep Voles in the dark for as long as it takes,” he said when Francesca called him and explained what she wanted to do. “It won’t even occur to him that you might have flown back home, because the plane will still be here.”

“What are you going to tell him?” she asked.

“I’ll tell him the streets aren’t clear yet,” Laird said. “I’ll tell him you haven’t been able to dig out the rental car. He’ll be pissed off, but what is he going to do about it?”

Francesca looked out the window. Even now, the snowplow was clearing the roads.

“If he does any research, he’ll be able to figure out you’re lying,” she said. “There are going to be satellite street views of the island, and he’ll be able to see that the roads are clear enough to drive on.”

“I’ll figure something out if it comes to that,” Laird said. “But I don’t think it will, honestly. He won’t have any reason to suspect that we’re lying about it. If we were going to make up a lie, we’d be more likely to make up one that makes you look good, right? Saying you’re snowbound in the suspect’s house makes you look incompetent.”

Francesca chuckled. “I guess you’re right.”

“I am right,” he said. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay?”

“You’ve stopped thinking I’m a complete idiot for daring to be around him, then?” she asked.

“I think you’re going to do it no matter what I say,” Laird said. “So I might as well have your back.”

“Thanks, Matt.”

“Stay out of trouble,” he said and hung up.

Viggo was waiting for her on the second-floor landing. “Let me carry your bag,” he said, reaching for it.

She let him. She would have protested ordinarily, but he looked so nervous and distraught that she thought having something to do might help him.

He lifted the bag right over his head again and carried it down the stairs, and she couldn’t help marveling at his strength. A part of her wanted to say something, to ask him when he found time to build up his muscles like that between running his business during the day and clubbing at night. But she bit her tongue.

The plan was to take a chauffeured car to the airfield. Turning in the rental would alert Voles to the fact that something was going on. That meant that Laird would have to find his way over here sometime in the next few days and pick up the car. Francesca jogged over to it, opened the passenger door, and put the key in the glove box for him. Then she returned to Viggo’s side.

He was staring down the street, fiddling with the cuffs of his sweater.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said absently.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

He looked down at her. “Is it that obvious?”

It was, but she didn’t want to make him self-conscious. “I just know I would be nervous in your shoes,” she said. “If I had to go back to a country where I’d been accused of a crime and try to clear my own name. That would scare me.”

“It does have me feeling a bit anxious,” Viggo said.

“You don’t have to worry,” she told him. “Our plan is a good one. Everything’s going to go the way it should.”

“You can’t know that,” Viggo said. “What if something goes wrong? What if your partner cracks and tells your supervisor what we’re doing?”

“Laird would never do that,” Francesca said. “I trust him completely.”

“Okay,” Viggo said. “But you also trusted him not to tell your supervisor that you were at my house, and he did.”

He was right about that, she had to admit.

“This will be different,” she said. “Laird was still trying to stay on the right side of our bosses then. He still thought we stood a chance at impressing them. Now he knows that they’ve written us off.”

“If he does tell, though,” Viggo said, “then the authorities will be waiting for us as soon as we land, and I’ll be taken into custody. All the protection we got by not flying commercial will be lost because your partner will be able to tell the FBI exactly where we’re going.”

“I don’t know if this is going to help or not,” Francesca said, “but if that does happen, you won’t be in it alone. They’d absolutely arrest me