She opened the door and got behind the wheel.
So Rio planted himself between the open door and the frame, leaning in to say, “Casey, please, whoever was driving that car obscured the plates. There was no other mud on the car—that had to be intentional. And I know this is gonna sound crazy, but... he did see you. I saw his face. He saw you.”
“Please move.” She looked up at him as she reached for the handle to pull the car door closed, and yeah, in that moment, he clearly saw her face, too. The trepidation and mistrust in her eyes made his heart sink, but it was the small frisson of glimmering fear that broke him. She honestly didn’t feel safe with him standing there, looming over her like that. So he moved back.
And she immediately shut the door, locking it with a click.
“Please don’t go home,” Rio tried to tell her through the tightly shut car window, raising his voice over the sound of the engine starting, hoping that she could hear him, but knowing that she probably couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. And yeah, she turned on the radio and turned up the volume, too. Still he tried. “Go somewhere else. Anywhere else. And call your security person—call Ella.”
She put the car into gear and started to pull away, so he knocked sharply on the window. But she still didn’t look up.
“Call Ella,” he shouted again as she pulled away.
As he watched her taillights disappearing down the street, Rio took out his phone, and quickly texted her everything he’d just said. Don’t go home. If the men who are after Jon found you here, they know where you live. Go to hotel or friend’s house. And call Ella, tell her what’s going on w Jon and have her call me so I can fill her in. Please.
He hit send, but it didn’t go through.
Casey had already blocked him.
“God damn it!” Rio said, and immediately started to run. There was a rental car place just around the corner. Please Jesus let it still be open.
Tasha answered Rio’s epic thread of texts by immediately calling him back.
He hadn’t wanted to call her—spouses of Navy SEALs often got terrible news about their beloveds from teammates who were friends. And yeah, the regular MO was to deliver really bad news with an in-person visit—a knock on the front door.
Still with Thomas out in the real world along with Dave and most of the others guys from Team Ten, Rio knew Tash had to be worried, and he didn’t want to make it worse. So he’d texted her. Telling her damn near everything, but focused on his fear that Casey was in danger, and she was failing to acknowledge it.
And when Rio answered the phone Tasha cut right to the chase. “There are no rental cars in San Diego? At all...?”
“Not even at the airport,” he reported. “I was trying to figure out how much it would cost to get a Lyft to Los Angeles—”
“That’s insane,” she said bluntly. “You can take my car. Where are you? I’ll come pick you up.”
“I’m actually outside of your building,” he admitted. “I went over to the car rental place that’s halfway between my place and yours, and since I was already halfway here...”
“I’m on my way downstairs, meet me out front,” she said, cutting the connection.
And then, yeah, there she was, coming out of the locked gate at the front entrance to the building. Tasha had clearly been having a quiet night in—she was wearing pirate-themed pajama pants with little ships and skull-and-crossbones flags on them and a faded T-shirt that proclaimed “Nope!” Her face was scrubbed clean of any makeup and her wild red hair was loose around her shoulders. She also wore what looked to be Thomas’s flip-flops—too large, but getting the job done—on her feet.
“My car’s right here on the street,” she said, holding out her set of keys. “It’ll be easier to park in LA than Thomas’s truck.”
“Thanks,” he said, turning to scan the street—oh, there it was. Compact and bright yellow. Not exactly inconspicuous, but wheels were wheels, and he was grateful.
“Keep me posted, okay?”
“I will,” Rio said, turning back to her. “When I get there, maybe—if you’re still up—you could call her for me. Tell her I’ll be keeping watch. I don’t want her to freak out if—when—she sees me.”
Tasha nodded. “I’ll still be up. Watching Our Flag Means Death for the eighty-seventh time. It’s my comfort show.”
He looked at her more closely. She was clearly exhausted. “You okay?”
She laughed a little. “Mostly.”
“You sleeping?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “This is the longest he’s been away. Nobody knows anything.”
“Somebody knows everything,” Rio reminded her. “It’s just not us.”
