Page 74 of Silk Shadow

He gave a curt nod.

They got into the car. Thorn opened the back door for Izzy. She glanced at Viper to see if he'd sit beside her, but he walked around to the passenger door. It was protocol and they had to keep up appearances.

Thorn was a confident driver. She navigated the junctions and intersections as they left the airport with ease, and then joined the flow of traffic back to D.C. "So, you two have had quite an adventure," Thorn said, once they were in the fast lane, overtaking the slower cars on the interstate.

"You could say that." Izzy glanced at the back of Viper’s head, slowly moving from left to right and back again, constantly alert. "I owe my life to Viper and Phoenix."

"Pat is so glad you're safe," she said. "He's waiting for you at HQ."

"Is that where we're going?" Izzy asked.

"Yeah. I know you're probably desperate to get home, but it won't take long. He wants to debrief you and give you an update on the investigation."

She sighed inwardly. All she wanted to do was take a shower, get changed into her own clothes, and fall into bed. Preferably with Viper, but she knew that was not going to happen. Not anymore. Not now they were back. He was her bodyguard, and she was the client, or principal, as he called it. Their closeness at the resort seemed to be fading away, and there was nothing she could do about it. "Okay."

"I hope you don’t mind if Blade joins us," Pat said. They were sitting in his office, on the comfy chairs, around a small coffee table, two cups of coffee in front of them. Viper was close enough to touch, but he was stoically refusing to look at her.

“Not at all.” Izzy had only met Blade briefly. He was a giant of a man, at least a head taller than everyone else, and broader than most. While his stature was intimidating, he had a reassuring smile, and exuded the same kind of masculine capability that Viper did.

As he came in and perched on the edge of Pat’s desk, she wondered how he found clothes to fit him. He really was enormous.

"Excellent job in getting her back," Blade said, shaking Viper's hand.

"Thanks, but I had help.”

“I heard.”

"Izzy, when you're ready." Pat nodded at her to proceed.

She took a deep breath and thought back to the party on the yacht. "I was talking to Robert on the deck of Casper's sailboat, when all of a sudden, four masked men jumped over the side and grabbed me. They threw me into a small motorboat and took me to this old fishing trawler that was moored some distance away."

"We know that much," said Blade. "Viper followed you on the jet ski. That's how we knew the name of the ship."

"You followed me?" He’d neglected to mention that part.

"Only as far as I could," he muttered. "Then I ran out of gas."

"The Coast Guard picked him up some time later," Blade supplied. "Luckily they found him, otherwise he’d have been drifting for days."

Viper ground his jaw. "There were a lot of vessels in that vicinity. Someone would have spotted me eventually."

Izzy stared at him. The guy wasn’t afraid of anything.

She carried on with her story. "They hauled me onboard and locked me up in this stinking cabin."

"Did you see their faces?" asked Pat.

She shook her head.

“I did,” Viper cut in, and proceeded to tell them about the golfers at the hotel in San Diego, how they’d chatted up Emily, and how he and Phoenix had cut them down in the jungle in Mexico.

Izzy sat quietly, taking it all in. The terror she’d felt on that trawler, the fear in the jungle, it would never leave her. Viper had killed for her. What guy did that?

“The FBI pulled some prints from their hotel room,” Pat said. “They can match them against the bodies in the jungle. Do you know where you landed?”

“I could probably work it out,” Viper said.

Pat nodded. “They’ll send a team down to retrieve them.”

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