“It’s not blind loyalty. I’ve seen that barn.” She had to fight to keep her voice down. “I’ve spent days helping her rummage through the place to find things to auction on eBay for extra cash. She certainly wouldn’t be doing that if she was making money counterfeiting passports.”
She wanted to drop all this nonsense and just stop talking, but she was so angry, so confused. Her whole world was upside down. Everything she thought she knew was being challenged.
“This whole thing is insane. I’m beginning to think you’re insane,” she told him. “You and Everly and this supposed team we’re going to meet. When we roll through Rockport in about ten minutes, just stop and let us out of this truck. I’m about to have a nuclear melt—”
Something connected in her brain. Something vague and just out of her mind’s reach. But the whisper cut off her words and made her stomach drop to her feet.
She cut a look at Ian. At his strong profile, the jump of his jaw beneath a day’s worth of stubble. “The reason you’re here?” She thought for a moment, forced the wheels of her brain to turn, and repeated words he’d just said. “‘At the center of the reason we’re here’?”
He repositioned his hand on the steering wheel and kept his gaze out the window while he scraped his lower lip between his teeth. He looked decidedly uncomfortable. Cold seeped into her gut, chilling the burn of anger.
“Are you saying you’re not here, fresh out of the military, looking for a new start? That you didn’t call in friends when these crazy notions about Misty popped into your warped mind?”
“I never said—”
“Because that would mean this was all planned.”
“Like I said, things didn’t go as expected.”
All the dots connected at once, and the flash of information burned like the stab of a knife. “A security team? Th
e Manhunters?”
He cut a look at her, surprised. “Where did you hear that?”
“Misty. I told her about your tattoo, and she found it on the internet, connected it to the Manhunters.” The depths of her gullibility stunned her. Shame washed over her, heating her face, burning her neck. “Oh my God. You’re after Hank and Lyle. This was all planned. Everything between us was…nothing. Less than nothing. I was a tool. A means to an end. Just part of the plot or the mission or operation or whatever the hell you call it.”
“Savannah—”
“No.” She held up her hands. “I get it now.” She crossed her arms and looked out the passenger’s window, unable to look him in the face. Her gut throbbed with a fresh ache, a mess of fury, self-loathing, disgust. “Talk about pathetic. I let you into my life. I let you close to my boy. Jesus, I must have been your easiest lay ever.”
“Don’t do that.”
She laughed at herself, the sound dark and ugly, exactly how she felt right now. “How could I not have seen it? How could I have put Jamison at risk like this? Maybe he would be better off with Hank.”
Hearing those words out of her mouth told her exactly how badly she’d screwed up. Screwed up because she’d trusted Ian.
Everything inside her cooled and hardened. She stuffed all her emotions behind a solid concrete wall inside her—at least something she’d learned from Hank had proved useful.
“I know this doesn’t look good from where you’re sitting,” he told her, “but I—”
“Just tell me this.” She didn’t want to hear any more lies. Didn’t need him rubbing salt in her fresh wounds—wounds she’d thought she’d insulated herself from. “Will Jamison and I be free of Hank? Forever?”
“Yes.” His answer was immediate and unequivocal.
Something unraveled inside her, a little relief, a little insanity, a lot of pain. “Fine. As long as that happens, I’ll do what you say for now. Beyond that, there’s nothing left for us to talk about.”
She closed her eyes and fought to keep the burning tears from spilling out. She meant nothing to him. Showing the hurt he’d caused her would only make her even more pitiful. She was stronger than that. Better than that. And she wouldn’t let another deceitful man ruin the woman she’d been fighting to recover for years.
But the tension wafting off Ian was palpable, and he didn’t listen to her any better now than fifteen minutes ago. “I was going to tell you when we had all the concrete information.”
“When you got evidence against me,” she corrected. “Everly told me.”
“No,” he said. “When we had evidence against everyone else and had cleared you.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” he repeated, his voice tense with frustration. “One assumes guilt, the other assumes innocence. I knew you weren’t part of it. Savannah, I’m the same man that was with you last night.”