I don’t reply. I find the dark car with my peripheral vision and I walk toward it without hurrying, without running, without doing anything that would tell the man in the gray coat, wherever he is now, that I’ve made him.
I get in the back seat.
“Drive,” I say.
Crater looks at me in the rearview mirror. Something in my face must communicate what my voice isn’t saying because he doesn’t ask questions. He pulls out.
I watch the street behind us as we go. The man in the gray coat is standing at the corner I just left, hands in his pockets, not following. Just watching.
Just noting.
My phone buzzes.
Matteo: Lindsay.
One word. But I know him well enough now to hear everything underneath it—the specific response of a man whohas just understood something and doesn’t like what he understands.
Me: I’m in the car. I’m fine. We need to talk when I get home.
I watch the corner until it disappears from view. The man in the gray coat doesn’t move. He doesn’t need to.
He already has what he came for.
He knows what I look like now.
Matteo: I’ll be there.
Matteo is already waiting when I walk through the door. No jacket, sleeves rolled, which means he came straight from his office. He doesn’t say anything when he sees me—just takes me in, the way he does when he’s running an assessment rather than a greeting.
“Tell me what he looked like,” he says.
I do. Gray coat, mid-forties, wrong posture, gone too fast. Matteo listens without interrupting, which is how I know it’s serious. He asks two questions—which corner, which direction the man faced when the car pulled out—and then he’s quiet for a moment.
“Okay,” he says finally.
“Okay?” I repeat.
“You did the right thing.” He crosses to me, tips my chin up briefly, checks my face like he’s confirming I’m still intact. “Go eat something. I’ll be up.”
He excuses himself. The door to his office closes behind him.
I stand in the hallway for a second, listening to the silence on the other side of that door. Thinking about what a man like Matteo does with information like that.
Thinking that the gray coat man has no idea what he just set in motion.
CHAPTER 22
Lindsay
It took a lot to convince my bodyguards to make one pitstop before we headed back home. They wanted to call Matteo to ask for permission, but I convinced them that he probably already knows. Simply because he already confessed to hacking my phone and I haven’t had the chance to get a new one yet.
We’ve had a conversation about my right to privacy and how he can’t invade it like that. But I think he was too busy staring at my tits to really listen or take any of my words in.
He gets one pass on that. He’s really lucky I like him.
When we arrive at the café where Fadden and I usually meet, I head inside with Crater in tow. Those were the terms I was able to land on. If I was going in, at least one of them was going to come with me. My jaw is clenched as I head in to the café. I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well.
Fadden’s seated in the same spot as the last time. A look I can’t decode flits across his face when he sights me. And then his lips turn down in a frown when he takes in my companion. He gets to his feet at my approach.
