“Whoa.” Wolf turned to her with a frown. “There’s no way you’re goin’ home alone.”
“Excuse me?” She huffed out a breath of indignation.
“We don’t know what today was about. We don’t know who those guys were or what they were about. No way in hell I’m leavin’ you by yourself until we have some answers.”
When she smiled, it was all teeth. “Not even if I tell you that the reason I was beating feet a few minutes ago was because I need a break from your tender charms?”
His chin jerked back. “Me? What’d I do?”
“You mean besides coercing me into granting you my forgiveness when I thought we were all about to die?”
“Here we go again,” Romeo grumbled.
“Fifty bucks on Chrissy,” Uncle John muttered, glancing back and forth between Wolf and Chrissy. If he’d had popcorn handy, he’d have been chewing with avid interest.
“No deal.” Romeo shook his head. “Women always win. Didn’t your mamma teach you that?”
Wolf ignored them both, pasting on his most contrite expression. “You’re right, Chrissy. That isn’t how I should’ve done it. My only excuse is I didn’t want to slip off into the great beyond with you hatin’ my guts.” He swallowed uncomfortably. “Do you hate my guts?”
“Maybe.” She let her eyes roam over him. “But it’s hard to know for sure since the package they come in is pretty okay.”
Never had he been more happy to hear the phrase “pretty okay” in reference to himself. Also, he recognized an olive branch when it was extended his way, and decided to extend one of his own.
“You can take your forgiveness back if you want to.” He waited for her response with bated breath.
“No.” She grabbed her face, her thumb and forefingers rubbing her temples. “Today put things into perspective. I don’t want to waste any more time harboring resentments. What happened that night happened.”
He blew out a windy sigh of relief.
“What did happen?” Uncle John asked. “We’d all like to know.”
Chrissy went on as if John hadn’t spoken. “Neither of us can do anything to change it. But I can do something to change the way I smell. Fear-sweat and seven hours in a hot, humid interrogation room is not a good odor on me.” She dropped her hand. “I just want a shower, something to eat that isn’t a ham sandwich, and my own bed.”
“We can make the first two happen. But that last one is a no-go.” Wolf shook his head, trying to couch his dictatorial decision with a gentle tone.
“Don’t you think the police would’ve assigned us a security detail if they thought we were still in danger?”
She had a point. The truth was, whatever today had been about, whether it was the Baitfish Bandits or something else, all the bad guys were dead. The danger was probably a done deal.
It was the probably part that stuck in Wolf’s craw.
“The police have been known to make mistakes.” His eyes implored her to understand.
He would get his way. He could be the most stubborn, domineering bastard ever born when he set his mind to it. But he hoped she’d see reason and not make him go there.
“Fine.” The look she gave him was tired and defeated. Then she turned to Romeo. “You didn’t happen to reserve a room at the hotel for me, too, did you?”
“Mi amada.” Romeo waggled his eyebrows. When they found themselves in the middle of a shit sandwich or when he was wooing a woman, Romeo often slipped in a word or two of Spanish. “You can bunk with me. I know just what you need to forget this day.”
Wolf heard himself declare “Over my dead body” in a voice he barely recognized.
Chrissy blinked, as shocked by his deadly tone as he was. He opened his mouth to say… He wasn’t sure what. But he was interrupted by the sound of a honking horn.
One of the taxi drivers hung out the window and yelled, “Hey! Y’all coming or what? I got an airport run scheduled in twenty minutes!”
“We’re coming!” Uncle John hollered back. Then, in a quieter voice, he told the group, “Let’s go, children. I think we’ve all had enough fun for one day.”
Chrissy followed after John, so much weariness in her steps that Wolf wanted to scoop her up and carry her the rest of the way. But she wouldn’t welcome the gesture. The woman prided herself on being as tough as Teflon.
“If you try to use Chrissy’s exhaustion and vulnerability as excuses to seduce her, I promise a slow, painful death,” he said when Romeo fell into step beside him. Each of his words was hard enough to make his jaw hurt.
Instead of looking properly cowed, Romeo grinned that stupid grin that was all perfect white teeth and swarthy swagger. “Handguns or hunting knives?”
“Hand grenades.” Wolf fixed him with his blackest scowl.
Romeo snorted. “That’d be painful. But I’m not sure it would be all that slow.”
“You’re not sharin’ your room with Chrissy.” It wasn’t a question.
“She can have the room I reserved for you, and you can shack up with me. I can make you forget this day too.” Romeo hooked an arm around Wolf’s neck and gave him a noogie as if they were thirteen instead of in their thirties.
Wolf had just had a very, very bad day.
He feared a night stuck in a hotel room with Romeo might be worse.
Chapter 11
9:38 p.m.
“Yes, I understand. I will let him know.” Navid disconnected his call and was quiet for what seemed to Izad to be an eternity.
He tried to be patient. He truly did. His head of security was a thoughtful man, never jumping to conclusions or making snap judgments. But eventually Izad couldn’t take it a second longer.
“Well?” he demanded, raking in a deep breath that smelled of the hotel room service they’d ordered for dinner.
More to the point, the hotel room service the others had ordered for dinner. Izad had been too nervous to partake. But even if he had been able to keep anything down, nothing on the menu suited him.
American fare was so salty and greasy. They didn’t know how to season their foods with herbs and spices and so added flavor with oil and sodium.
Oh, how he longed for some baghali polo or Fesenjan.
How he longed for home.
If he closed his eyes, he could almost smell the saffron in the air, see Kazem’s winning smile as the winds from Mount Tochal ruffled his son’s black hair.