She took advantage of the time alone to send a brief outline of what had happened to Gretchen, trying to maintain some emotional distance from the horrors. Hopefully Gretchen could find someone to meet Natalie’s ambulance at the hospital and provide protection.
Swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, Emma dropped the phone into a zippered pocket in her bag just as Jason returned with two bottles of Henniez with the blue cap.
God, could he be any more perfect?
Fresh water had never tasted so good. Once she’d rinsed her mouth a few times and replenished some fluids, Jason took her free hand, his grip strong and warm and inexplicably soothing, and gently guided her back into the evening’s crowd. Just a happy couple on vacation, that needed a disguise, stat.
“Where to?” he asked, favoring his left leg slightly.
She mentally sifted through their options.
He must’ve misunderstood her hesitation, because he said, “These guys think I’m with you, so splitting up won’t necessarily keep either of us safe. They figured out where you’re staying, so I’m sure they can find my hotel just as easily.” He routed them around a clueless family of five taking up half the walkway.
She stopped and looked up at him. “What do you mean they figured it out? I assumed they followed me or Nat.”
Jason shook his head. “They got off the elevator, and the guy you, uh…encounteredwalked straight to your door. He knew exactly where he was going.”
Her veins iced over. That changed everything.
Unless Jason was lying. But if he wanted to hurt her, or force her to give up the drive, he could’ve done that already. He didn’t need to play rescuer to get what he wanted.
In which case, the Night Herons had been compromised, or she, Natalie, or Jason had been tracked. “Change of plans.” She ducked into an alley and removed the battery and SIM card from her cheap, pay-as-you-go phone before dropping it into a trash bin.
Then, she unlocked her work phone and went through the steps to wipe it. “What kind do you have?”
Eyes narrowed on her, he slid an inexpensive prepaid phone from his cargo pocket, along with an iPhone.
“We need to break that up,” she pointed to the cheapie, “and erase the iPhone. Sorry. Be sure to turn off tracking.”
He sighed, but did as requested, putting the battery and SIM card from his prepaid phone into his pocket with the reset iPhone.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He shrugged. “Everything important is synced to the cloud, but when we have a minute, I have questions.”
“I’ll answer what I can.” They started walking again, and she picked up the pace, planning out a surveillance detection route in her mind.
With his long stride, Jason easily kept up, his body locked in full alert mode. “And none of this bullshit about wanting a scoop for your friend.”
So much for having his trust. “We really are investigating a story.” Someone else would publish it, but that was just splitting hairs.
“Whatever,” he muttered.
As they passed another public trash can, he dropped in the SIM card and she followed suit soon after.
“You have somewhere in mind?” he asked.
“The first thing we need to do is change our appearance. And I know just the place to start.”
Clandestine meetups, men with guns, memory cards, phone tracking, costume changes. There was no way in hell Emma was a simple investigative reporter, right?
If Jason wanted to figure out what was going on, he had to follow her lead as they rushed through the maze-like walking streets of Old Town Lucerne. The hair on the back of his neck stood at attention, but he didn’t spot any obvious tails. Which actually made him more nervous.
After a complex series of turns that were clearly meant to lose anyone tracking them, Emma stopped in front of a wig shop.
“How do you know your way around so well?” he asked, grudgingly impressed.
She shrugged. “I studied the map of the city center, looked up a few key businesses… I also spent a week here doing background research on a big corporate scandal once.”
