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gave me a place to store the car that I prefer to keep for emergencies.”
    The little dance turned into a full-fledged stomach jig. He presented this tough-guy tarnished image but underneath he was about helping people. Maybe it came from being abandoned by his mother that he never let anyone else get stuck out there all alone. Whatever the origin, it was one of those things that had made her fall in love with him in the first place.
    “You rescued her,” Lara said.
    “Uh, no. I came up with a way to neutralize her.” He walked around to the passenger’s-side door and opened it. “Get in.”
    It was just like him to duck a compliment. He saw admitting to the existence of his bone-decent good side as some sort of weakness. She’d never been able to make him see that the size of his heart was much more impressive than the size of those biceps.
    Rather than fight, because, really, there was nothing for her to win on this one, she slid into the seat. She waited until he’d climbed in before asking the obvious question. “Where are we going?”
    “Pax’s boat.” Davis slid the key in and turned. The engine roared to life.
    “Is being surrounded by water really the safest choice?” Then there was the problem that she got queasy if the boat rocked too much.
    She’d never been on this one, but they’d gone boating with friends before. She’d tried that focus-on-a-spot-in-the-distance thing and ended up losing her lunch over the side of the boat. Not the best impression on his then–work friends.
    “It’s not registered to Pax. Only a few people know about it and all of them have brutally high security clearances. Whoever is behind this shouldn’t have a clue.”
    She waited until he’d pulled out of the spot and relocked the gate to talk about the point nagging at her. “I notice you didn’t ask if I had a boyfriend before you added me to your spy story.”
    The car grew deadly quiet as she traced a pattern on the inside of the window. When the silence stretched, she glanced over. The rigid jaw and tick in his cheeks told her what she needed to know. This was not his favorite topic. Understandable, but she thought she knew his response, so she was prepared to wait all day. And she let him know that when she glanced over and lifted her eyebrows but didn’t say a word.
    He exhaled in that women-are-so-annoying way men often did when they were cornered. “Do you?”
    He didn’t even try to make it sound like an honest inquiry. “Oh, please. I know you know exactly what’s going on in my life. Or at least you think you do.”
    A smile broke over his mouth. “Yeah, I’m single, too.”
    * * *
    C LIVE E BERSOLE BROUGHT his car to a slow crawl and stopped behind the designated warehouse on the southwest waterfront in Washington, D.C. He didn’t have to look at his watch to know he’d lost some time on this job. Took him longer to clean up Steve Wasserman’s row house than expected. Clive had wiped the place down, except, of course, for the evidence he needed the police to find.
    Remembering the scene brought Lara Bart to the front of his mind for about the hundredth time in the past two hours. He hadn’t counted on her. That one proved to be a fighter and a significant complication.
    Good thing she’d left her work case file when she’d run off. The documents inside helped him track her identity and find her apartment. She hadn’t run back there, so he couldn’t tie up that end, but the trip hadn’t been a total waste. Not after he borrowed a few items.
    And it had only taken him a few minutes to find exactly what he needed to take back and plant in Wasserman’s bedroom. A few pieces of underwear and her address book, along with her laptop and a brush. With all of those pieces, one would hang her.
    The move was off script but to his mind brilliant. And perfect in the execution. Not even the best lawyer would be able to dodge the reality of her property and DNA being all over the crime scene, as well