“I’ll meet with him,” Connor volunteered. He needed to feel like he was doing something. He wasn’t the type to sit around and wait.
“Me too,” Alessia said.
“You don’t have to come,” he said. He trusted Owen, but he didn’t know this hacker personally. A new protective instinct had come to life inside of him, and he didn’t want Alessia in a situation that could be dangerous if they could avoid it.
“I know I don’t have to. But I’m in this now, and I want to be there.”
The challenge in her eyes was more of a turn on than he wanted to admit, and he could see that she wasn’t going to back down. Fighting about it would be a waste of time.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll arrange a meeting for tomorrow. We’ll figure out exactly what’s going on, one way or another.”
11
ALESSIA
She was lucky to have Beaux to look after the gallery when she wasn’t there. Investigating her dad’s human trafficking was starting to take up more and more of her time, but it was important enough to be worth it.
They didn’t have any new product deliveries, so she didn’t have to do much more than hand over the keys so that he could close the place at the end of the day. Walking out of the gallery, she paused to pull her sunglasses out of her purse. Once they were on her face, she glanced around.
The strangest feeling of being watched had just washed over her. She couldn’t say exactly why, but unease ran down her spine, creating the urge to move, to get away from whoever might be lurking around unseen.
Or maybe she was just paranoid because she knew that her recent activities were dangerous.
But when she got into her Mini Cooper and pulled away from the curb, a black SUV did the same thing just a block behind her. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, but when she turned to the left suddenly, the SUV did the same. She circled the block, and it followed.
There was no way shewasn’tbeing tailed.Shit.
She had no idea who it could be. Someone working for her dad? Someone from the Irish side that still didn’t trust her? A third party that considered her dad an enemy?
No matter what, she knew she couldn’t go straight to meet up with Connor. She was supposed to meet him in ten minutes at the restaurant. Instead, she drove around for a while, sticking to the part of the city controlled by the Italian mafia. The SUV stayed behind her the whole way, and she wondered if they thought she was too stupid to notice or if they just didn’t care whether or not she did.
She couldn’t see who was behind the wheel through the darkly tinted windshield, but she was starting to feel shaky and nervous. What should she do? The list of people she could trust in this situation was depressingly short, and she was shocked to realize that the man at the top of the list was Connor. But she’d already decided she couldn’t go to him.
She’d have to lose the SUV herself. The entrance to the interstate that ran in a circle around the city was ahead, so she got on it going east. That led her further away from her destination, but she decided that was a good thing while she was being followed.
Traffic was heavy at this time of day, and the SUV immediately had trouble keeping close to her, exactly like she planned. Her nervous energy sharpened her senses, and she was laser-focused as she wove through the traffic for two miles. Then, there was an exit. She stayed in the middle lane for as long as she could before moving to the right just before the exit came up, without using a turn signal of course. The woman she cut off blared her horn, and Alessia cringed, but she couldn’t feel sorry for doing it as she took the exit and the SUV was unable to follow. Just in case, she turned to the right and got right back on the interstate, going in the other direction this time.
Her eyes kept flickering to the rearview mirror, just in case the SUV somehow found her, though she couldn’t see how it would be possible. But it never reappeared, and she was finally able to go to the restaurant to meet Connor.
He was waiting for her in the parking lot, his teeth clenched in an angry oppression that reminded her a lot of the day they met.
“What the hell, Alessia?” he asked as soon as she got out of her car. Her legs were still shaky, so she moved slowly as she shut the door and headed toward him. “You’re almost half an hour late. Where were you?”
“I was being followed,” she said, watching his demeanor completely change as her words sank in. The skin around his eyes tightened and his brow furrowed. His hands were no longer tightened into fists as he reached for her, holding onto her arms as he looked her over as if he were making sure she was okay.
“What happened? Who was it?”
“I-I don’t know. Some black SUV. They were waiting for me to leave my gallery. Don’t worry, I didn’t lead them here. I made sure I lost them.”
“You should’ve led them here,” he said, looking angry again, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “Then, I could take them out.”
“I’m not sure Owen would like that.”
“He understands protecting a woman that he…”
Connor trailed off, brushing his hair back in a way that she noticed he did when he was agitated.
“We need to get going, the hacker’s waiting for us.”
