“What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure yet. But there was something that Natalie said about Mick a while back that bothers me. How did he stay one step ahead of her all the time when she was the one who was supposed to be giving him information?”
“You think someone else on the inside is involved?”
“I don’t know. But I only talked to Mick for a few minutes, and it was long enough to know that the guy was a smug asshole but not a leader. And why did they keep Natalie around for so long?”
“What do you mean?”
“She never gave them anything useful, and yet they kept her around.”
“Maybe they needed someone around to take the fall.”
“Maybe.”
Kate paused. “Are you sure this isn’t wishful thinking on your part, Scott? Are you sure you aren’t looking for something that isn’t there?”
He wasn’t sure of anything. Was he so desperate to hold on to her that he was trying to see something bigger?
He hoped not because he was waging his career on it. But Travis’s murder and the fact that Scott’s men were still being hunted told him that there was more to this than they were seeing.
He hung up the call with Kate and decided to clear his head with a run before joining Natalie down by the pool. He’d been out of commission for almost a week, and the lack of exercise was getting to him.
Maybe he’d hit the weights, too. He was sure this place would have a gym.
It did, and an hour later—after a forty-minute hill run on the treadmill and a few sets of weights—he was feeling considerably better. From a body standpoint, at least. His head, however, was still in second-guessing mode.
Scott had always prided himself on his clear judgment, on his ability to make the right call, and on his confidence in his decisions. Uncertainty was new for him, and realizing that his emotional involvement with Natalie was the source made him uneasy.
She was clearly a blind spot. How could he be sure he was doing his duty to the job and his men when his feelings for her were affecting his decisions?
He couldn’t. Which left him in this no-man’s-land of impaired judgment, being unsure of himself, and not knowing how to proceed, which pretty much sucked.
None of which put him in the best frame of mind when his sperm donor cornered him in the gym as he was leaving.
Scott stopped suddenly. He thought about walking around him, but the old guy looked so frail Scott was scared he’d touch him and accidentally knock him over.
“I’m glad to see you found the gym. It hasn’t been getting much use lately.”
It wasn’t hard to guess why. The former senator was barely strong enough to stand let alone lift a barbell.
Scott clenched his jaw, refusing to let himself feel sorry for him. Lots of people had cancer. People far less deserving than a man who’d cheated on his wife and foisted a bastard off on another man.
But did the guy have to look so pathetic? Scott wasalready hot from the workout, but he felt his temperature rising even hotter with the reflexive anger that seemed to rush through him whenever they were in the same room.
He never should have let Kate talk him into this. He’d known that it would be a disaster.
But he couldn’t deny that they were probably safer here than just about anyplace else. “Fort Knox” was putting it mildly. Greythorn had started his career in the CIA and continued his intelligence work in the Senate Intelligence Committee as chairman. He’d made a lot of enemies along the way with his hard-line, pro-military positions and had been the focus of a number of threats from extremist groups that had obviously been taken seriously. His security system was extensive; no one was getting within a couple of miles of the estate without someone knowing.
Not that inside was any less monitored. Scott had noticed the security cameras following him to the gym. He knew this was no accidental meeting. “Yeah, I was just leaving to meet Natalie at the pool for a swim.”
“I’m sure you do a lot of that.”
Scott didn’t crack a smile at the SEAL reference. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He started to brush by, but the senator’s words stopped him in his tracks again.
“Is she pregnant?”
