He opened the takeout bag and slid a wrapped breakfast sandwich at me. “Wheels up in an hour, so hurry up and eat.”
I took his offering and peeled the foil back. Scent of egg, bacon, and cheese wafted out and made my mouth water. “Wheels? Where are we going?”
“Houston.”
I stopped with the sandwich halfway to my mouth.
Bray unwrapped his own sandwich. “Ramesh was able to track Wallace’s last moves before he died. He visited a bank in downtown Houston that same day. Security log shows he accessed a safe-deposit box.” He let the words linger with an obvious weight.
My head briefly spun as I kept up. Wallace was murdered in Houston; the diamond was last known to be in Houston; Wallace had visited a bank the day he died. “So, the diamond is in the box? It’s right where this whole thing started?”
Bray nodded. “He either put something in the box or took something out of it.”
“He couldn’t have taken it out. They would have found it when they killed him, and none of this would be happening.”
“I agree. So, we need to get to Houston and see what’s in that box.”
I shoved another bite into my mouth, still sorting it out. “So, to summarize, Wallace finds out Olena is on to us, has me relocated, makes a pitstop in Houston, and never makes it back out. That means they were able to follow him to Houston. They must know he’s protecting me, or at least that he knew where I was.”
Ice slid through my veins. We didn’t know what was in that safe-deposit box, and neither did they. They might not even have known Wallace went to the bank. They were tracking him—theykilledhim—to get tome.
“And I led them straight to me.” I numbly finished my thought aloud.
“What?” Bray asked and unwedged one of the coffee cups from its tray.
The pieces were crashing together in my mind. “That’show they found me, Bray. That day in Del Rio when I thought Wallace was calling me, it was Olena’s guy on the other end, and I blabbed my own location to him. He had Wallace’s phone because he killed him.”
Bray considered with narrowed eyes and then pulled out his own phone and tapped at it. “I’ll have Ramesh run Wallace’s phone records from after his death. He didn’t look further than that, but I bet you are right.”
I palmed my face. “It’s my own fault they found me.”
“You couldn’t have known,” he justified.
“It was still a stupid mistake,” I muttered and let it all sink in. Wallacewastrying to protect me. He died trying to protect me.
I thought back to that night on the phone with him. The scrape in his voice, the cracking sound. The way he’d called me by my real name. It was a goodbye.
Bray’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Erin, I’m sorry about last night. I crossed a line, and it won’t happen again.”
I startled at the abrupt change in topic, half shocked he was addressing it at all. A coy smile bent my mouth. “Which part, when you yelled at me or when you pinned me to the wall and kissed me to within an inch of my life?”
His lips pressed together. His cheeks turned pink. “You know which part.”
I shrugged. “I like it when you cross lines.”
“Well it’s not going to happen again. I’m sorry.”
I held his eyes with a look that said I wasn’t sorry. That I’d let him do it again right now.
“We should go,” he said, breaking the spell and severing the chance at anything happening.
“I have to get changed.” I shoved a big bite of my sandwich in my mouth and slowly turned away from him. I felt his eyeson my back as I walked toward the hall, and wondered if he’d keep his promise.
I hadn’t been on a chartered plane in years. Not since Wallace put me on a job tracking art theft in an elite ring of one-percenters. I’d otherwise flown commercial, usually coach, but then, I hadn’t been palling around with a DSA director’s son.
Simmons stayed behind, leaving the small, sleek bullet of a jet empty except for me and Bray, the pilot, and one flight attendant.
“How long is this trip?” I asked once we were in the air. We’d taken off from Oakland.
