“Savannah.” He hit the brakes and reached for her. “Wait.”
She dropped to the snow before he could grab her arm. She had a son to secure. A life to salvage. Strangers to assess.
“Who’s that?” Jamison asked, his voice drifting to her from the truck.
“They’re friends of mine,” Ian told Jamison. “Everything’s fine, buddy.”
The men turned toward her, and Everly followed their gazes. She glanced behind Savannah toward the truck, then introduced her to the men.
“Savannah, this is Roman, our CO, Sam our tech genius, and Liam, who evidently tagged along whether we liked it or not.”
Savannah didn’t know what a CO was, but she didn’t care. “I need to see some credentials.”
They all stared at her a long second, as if she hadn’t spoken English.
“I have no idea who you all are,” she clarified her position. “I’ve discovered Ian—if that’s even his real name—has been lying to me for over a week, the ex-husband, who’s trying to steal our child, has been dealing in counterfeit passports, and you all believe my best friend is in on it, which you’re wrong about, by the way. Before I listen to what you have to say, before my son and I go anywhere with you, I want to know who you are and whether or not you truly have the ability to do something more for me than I can do for myself, because I can screw up my own life just fine. I don’t need anyone’s help to make things worse.”
As anticipated, they didn’t look pleased, but Savannah had stopped giving a damn what people thought of her a long time ago. She was angry and hurt and scared, and there would be no holding it back in this insane situation.
Two of the men reached into their pockets and pulled out wallets. She took them both. Roman’s ID claimed he was with the Department of Defense. Liam’s ID was from the FBI. Neither impressed her. Law enforcement hadn’t exactly earned her respect. Besides, she had no way of knowing whether the IDs were authentic.
She handed their IDs back and tilted her head toward Ian, still standing at the truck’s front bumper. “Which one of you is his boss?”
“I am,” Roman said.
She crossed her arms against the cold and met his gaze steadily. “Are you the one who told him to sleep with me?”
The gaze Roman turned on Ian could have burned the hair off his head. “No.”
The you-fucking-idiot tone in Roman’s voice confirmed that sleeping with Savannah had been Ian’s idea. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it was immaterial.
“You’re so in the doghouse,” Everly said, grinning at Ian like a bratty little sister.
“You’re so not one to talk,” he shot back.
The man named Sam burst out laughing. But Everly cut it short with a smack to Sam’s gut. “Neither are you.”
“Come on,” Roman said, clearly the disapproving father of the group. “We need to get going.”
“You’re wrong about Misty,” she told him. “I’ve known her for five years. If she was involved in something as odd and illegal as counterfeiting passports, I’d know.”
Roman cut another frown at Ian. “What?” he aske
d with sarcasm. “You didn’t show her pictures too?”
“I’ll do it,” Sam said with too much enthusiasm. He stepped toward her and handed her his phone. The camera app was open, and Sam angled behind her to point out all the areas in a sterile, concrete room.
Sam went on and on, sliding picture after picture of unidentifiable images past her.
“I’ve never seen any of this. That room is not on Misty’s property and certainly not in her barn.” She frowned at Roman, her confidence in this group dropping. “Are you sure you had the right address?”
“Oh, wait,” Sam scrolled ahead. “Here I’m coming up from the basement.”
He tapped a video, and Savannah watched Roman, Liam, and Ian scout the space, which was, as Ian had claimed, decked out with some seriously high-tech computers and printers. They were wearing fatigues, helmets with cameras or binoculars or something attached to the top, and seriously scary-looking rifles. Savannah had no experience with the military, had no way of reliably determining whether this was even real. She could only say the way they moved and handled the equipment held a casual mastery learned from years and years of doing what they were doing in the video.
“What have you got there?” Sam’s voice came over the cell as he approached Ian, who picked up bottles off a shelf.
“Thermochromic and optically variable security ink.” His voice was familiar, but his tone was direct and businesslike.