He tipped the man behind the bar and took his two caffé freddos out to the table.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Cold cappuccino,” he replied sitting down.

“Did you think to ask what I wanted? Maybe I like tea.” She definitely sounded pissed off. “So what’s wrong? You switched into automaton-David as soon as we left the restaurant, and you dragged me here as if I’m some kind of suspect in something. What happened?”

He couldn’t even bring himself to try to talk her down. He just sighed and raised his eyebrow at her. “You slipped Doubrov something. I saw it, and forgot it with all the—” he waved his hand at her “distractions.”

“Distractions? You mean me? Is that what I am?” She sat back in her chair and leveled a look at him.

“Nice try, Mol. Enough with your tangents. What did you pass him?”

She paused and took a sip of the coffee and shrugged. “I don’t like tea, actually. I love freddos. I just…” She took another sip.

“You just wanted to be contrary, didn’t you?” He put his sunglasses on and relaxed a little. He was going to get to the truth, if they sat there all day. “We should have spent more time together in Iraq.” Let her try to chat her way out of it, but he’d get his answer.

She leaned forward. “You were working for the bad guys.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but so were you.” He shrugged, but inside, poking at this wound made him nervous. Making light of his nightmare year working for a private security company that turned out to be full of criminals and murderers felt wrong. But easy. Easier than being real anyway.

“That’s so unfair. I didn’t even know I was working for the bad guys. You, however, did. Wait. Didn’t you?” She shoved her sunglasses on her head as if to see his expression better.

He kept a poker face going. That he was good at. “I had an idea. I just didn’t know how bad it was until all the shit went down. And what you saw, that wasn’t even the half of it.

Concern etched her forehead as she watched him. He wondered if she was genuine or if she was wondering how to play him. Or if he was just too suspicious of everyone. This wasn’t how meeting Molly again was supposed to go down. Amazing sex followed by revelations and suspicions.

“What happened after Iraq for you?” she asked, unwrapping a straw and sticking it in her coffee.

“Not nearly as much fun as happened to you, I think,” he said. “I saw you on television. A lot.” It had been a sweet torture. Seeing her in his room, on the airport TV screens, her voice speaking to him, had been agony. But the positive outcome of seeing her on TV was that it had fooled his body into thinking she was unattainable.

“Well, Harry thought that the more coverage we got, the safer we all were. If anything happened to us, journalists already had us on their radar. Stuff would have been harder to cover up.

Harry—or Henrietta—Molly’s boss, and David’s friend’s wife, had been smart. And lucky. “No one I ever worked with at the company was scared of being found out. Few were scared of anything. That’s why I mostly rolled alone.” And that was still true.

“So what happened?” she persisted.

“Not much. I had to give evidence at a few committees, none of which made C-SPAN, thankfully. I stopped my short-term relationship with bourbon and severed my ties with MGL Inc. That was the easy part, as most of my bosses had gone to live in federal prison. There were so many charges.” He shook his head. “Then a friend hooked me up with Barracks Security and gave me a second chance doing some good. The company’s a good one. Not driven by money. They only take jobs for the good guys. It makes a difference.

“What about you? What happened after the cameras stopped rolling?” He was determined to get to her truth one way or another. God she looked good in the sunlight that dappled her face, shining through the trees, playing light tricks over her lips. He wanted to grab her and kiss her right now. And that pissed him off.

“When we got back from Iraq, our team was sequestered while they rounded up all the ringleaders. Then we were questioned. A lot. Debriefed, over and over. They wanted to know everything. We’d been working for tomb raiders for three years.” Her voice rose in indignation.

“Tomb raiders?” he suppressed a grin.

“That’s what one of the senators called it. I mean, we never found a tomb per se, but they did take our site research and just plundered those areas, stealing everything they found there. It was heartbreaking to find out what they’d been doing.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d known she was finishing up her studies at the time, and he imagined that discovering the last three years of her life had been nothing short of criminal must have been devastating.

She shrugged. “The State Department debriefed us, and then I basically went on the speech circuit, warning people about the stolen artifacts and the dangers of private archaeology. And how easy it is to proliferate a country’s history across borders. And demanding that the government establish some way to monitor private archaeologists. But, actually, when my speech here is done, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing next. Harry’s taking a break from the company”—her eyes lit up—“She’s pregnant.”

He smiled. “I know. Matt told me a couple of months ago when I ran into him in Florida. Very good news.” Matt was one of David’s old EOD buddies he’d met up with again in Iraq at the same time he’d met Molly for the first time. “Anytime I get down, I remember what they went through, and figure if they can make it through hell and out the other side, then I can.” Shit. That was a little too much information to share with someone he didn’t know if he could trust. He decided to cut to the chase. “Okay. Enough about history. Let’s talk about last night. What were you trying to slip Doubrov when he got shot?”

She sat up straight. “Dr. Doubrov? I don’t know…”

“Sure you do, sweetheart. And whatever it is nearly got you shot.” He moved in for the kill. “I’ve waited a year to see you, and if you die here, because you didn’t clue me in on what you’re doing, I’m just not sure I could handle it.” True, but also, he hoped, a good enough manipulation to make her talk.

Instead she got quiet. Crap, was she going to cry? Her lower lip trembled, and he wondered what black magic he’d used to make her so emotional. He’d better dial it back down.

“David, I…” Her phone bleeped, and she grabbed it off the table like it was alive. She pressed a button. “Hell…what? I can’t hear you. Say again? What?”

CHAPTER SIX

It was Brandon Peterson at last, but he was breaking up really bad. “Don’t say…I can’t help…my flight lands in three…Trust…one. Stay away from…”

“I can’t hear you. What?” She plugged her finger in her other ear and waited, but there was just silence. She looked at her phone. The phone just showed a photo of the beach near her house. No! He had to call again. Who was she supposed to stay away from? Not one word of his fractured message had been comforting. Whatever he’d meant, she figured she’d better just stay mum until he got there. For David’s sake. She didn’t want to involve him in whatever she’d gotten herself messed up in. She’d just have to wait for Brandon to arrive and dig her out. Which was three hours, or maybe three days. Crap. Well she could maybe hold it together for three hours. If she could distract David. Everything would be better when Brandon got there. He’d always seemed on top of things during her debrief the previous year, someone she could trust. At least he was a US official, and presumably he knew what was going on. He could take over, and she could concentrate on giving her speech to some very important and influential people from governments all around the world. Butterflies danced in her stomach as she remembered the speech she had to give.