Page 73 of The Defiant Curse

He told him.

“You’re going to tell Ivan you have to go to work. Tell him there’s a profiling issue, and you’re going to work in the office. He won’t question it, and he’ll not worry about you being safe if your tracker shows you there.”

He kept listening.

“I’m available, and your security, so he’ll ask me to take you. That’s what we’ll do. Let him decide I’m taking you, so it doesn’t sound like we plotted this. He’s easily made suspicious.”

Oh, he was aware.

Raphael continued.

“We’re going to go to the office, and you’ll take your tracker off there. I’ll temporarily take mine off to drive you to the airport. It will look like we’re both at FBI West the whole time, and no one will be any the wiser. He doesn’t have immediate access to FBI cameras to double-check on us, and as long as he’s not suspicious, he won’t.”

He let him plot it all out.

“I’ll get you to the airport, and you can get into the air. Periodically, text your husbands, so they think you’re working. Tell them you’ll be there late. That will give you the excuse, and they aren’t going to check your location because there’s no reason to be suspicious. Keep harassing Gene to tell you her location so he also doesn’t get suspicious.”

Oh, someone was good at planning.

“When it’s about eleven our time, I’ll go ‘find you’, and you’re going to be gone. Oops. Where is Ethan? My bad. He slipped away.”

Ethan liked this plan.

“Turn your phone off each time after you text. Prewrite the texts because the security hardware needs over a minute to put a trace on your phone if someone does get twitchy and suspect something. Ivan won’t immediately suspect, but at some point, he’s going to get a bug up his ass and check on you. If you drop a text in seconds and turn it back off, he can’t trace you.”

Ethan hugged him.

“Thank you, Winn.”

He wasn’t done.

“Callen keeps vehicles there at the airport. You know the code into the storage unit at that hanger. Use it to borrow a car. Jim isn’t available to fly you, because he’s on his way back from Scotland and going to Fiji. You’ll have to do the legwork with the military for that. I can’t get you clear with that. I don’t have authorization to wipe logs. That’s a Gabe thing.”

Yes, yes, it was.

So, he knew who he was calling next.

“I’ll handle it.”

Raphael went there.

“I’ll go into your office tonight, and oh my god! He’s missing, and his watch is on the desk. You’ll be on your way, and if the jet is not trackable… they won’t know when you went. Oh, but they’ll find out because that’s when Ivan will get access to the FBI security cameras.”

Oh, he was well aware.

“At some point, your husbands will be bitchy. That is also your cross, not mine. You made the mess, so…”

He got it.

“Just get me out of here. I have to get to my wife. She needs me, and it’s time I took care of her.”

He stared into his eyes.

“Ethan, you’re running out of chances with her,” he said, being honest. “It’s a lot. The Shaman thing was also a lot. You need to really search your soul and see if everything you’ve chosen is the right choice because you lied to her about your feelings about Gene, and she knew. You didn’t tell her you wanted to be Shaman and instead dropped it on her when you knew she wanted to go home. At some point, you need to figure out if you love her enough to be with her.”

He gasped.

“Do you all think I don’t?”