Page 68 of The Saint

His phone rang again, and his body tensed. She could almost read the excuses running through his mind so that he didn’t have to answer. But for as impulsive as he claimed to be, he let her go, cursing until he answered with the same “Yeah? What?” as before. He raked a hand through his wet hair and said, “I’ll text you the address.” He hung up, and the hungry glimmer in his eyes had almost dissipated. Camden tossed the phone onto the bed, reached for the coffees, and handed her a mug that she’d doctored with powdered creamer and sugar. “Beth’s on her way.”

“What?” Amelia had no doubt that Beth would be able to pick up on how they’d spent their night if she didn’t jump into the shower. “I don’t have my bag.”

The problem wasn’t just a lack of clean clothes. She didn’t have her makeup or hair products or anything that would leave her feeling as on top of the world as she needed to be when facing off with Beth. Then she stopped and turned to Camden. She hadn’t even asked the reason for the meeting. How could she have let one night of really great sex erase the reason they weredoing this to begin with? Guilt needled under her skin. “Why are we meeting Beth?”

“She says there’s some place we need to see.”

“Was my sister there?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Guess so. Beth doesn’t give straight answers, and I didn’t waste my time asking.” His finger tapped against his coffee mug. “You ready to go down this path?”

She nodded. “You didn’t tell Beth about the people following us last night.”

“I didn’t say a whole lot of anything.”

“How come? I thought the CIA didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I don’t think they do. Otherwise, they would have just knocked on the door and not gone through that whole shitshow. But…” He shrugged. “Trust but verify.”

She sipped her coffee and wondered what news about Hailey the day would bring. Three weeks had passed since that awful night, almost four. Where the hell was Hailey?

“There’s different sizes in there.” Camden gestured toward the dresser. “I don’t know about bras but socks and underwear. I’m not sure if there will be any pants and shirts you want to wear, though. We can swing by your condo later and stock up on whatever you need.”

“I’ll wear my shirt and jeans from last night.” She padded into the bathroom, which was still steamy from his quick shower.

In the corner of her eye, Camden dropped the towel and dressed. This was a terrifying level of intimacy. Or maybe he didn’t even think twice. When a person looked like Camden did, maybe modesty didn’t matter. But he didn’t come off that way. How had she blustered her way into his bedroom? She was so far out of his league that she didn’t know which way was up. Until that morning, the idea of getting physical with him hadseemed like the best distraction she could imagine. Distractions had consequences.

An hour later, Beth had whisked Amelia and Camden from the safe house and wasn’t telling them where they were going except that it was someplace Hailey and Jonathan had worked. Camden didn’t seem all that concerned. From the back seat of Beth’s sleek Lexus, Amelia had come up with ten thousand possibilities and stopped adding to her list only when Beth drove through the front gates of an industrial complex, announcing that they were there.

Amelia scanned the decrepit landscape. Overgrown weeds threaded through a rusted chain-link fence topped with sagging barbed wire. The parking lot looked immaculate compared to the building behind it. The three-story brick monstrosity might have once been a bustling manufacturing depot, but that wasn’t the case anymore and probably hadn’t been in decades. This place wasn’t on her list of ten thousand possibilities.

Camden snorted from the front passenger seat. “Hope everyone’s up to date on their tetanus boosters.”

“We’re not crawling through the windows.” Beth parked next to the only other car, a black Mercedes, which stood out like a gothic rose in a sea of dead grass.

Amelia eyed the building. The panes of remaining windows had been grayed out. Iron bars crisscrossed over dilapidated glass. Nobody could see in or get out of that building.

“This wasn’t what I pictured when you said we were headed to a place my sister and Jonathan worked.” Amelia flicked a glance to Beth. “What is it? A receiving location for black-market art sales? A storage facility?”

“Nope. Nothing like that.”

“A dungeon.” Camden laughed.

“Getting closer.” Beth rested her hand on the door handle. “I will gladly take you back to yournewestsafe house”—she gave Camden the stink eye as though he’d put her in danger and not the missing CIA NOC list that started the whole nightmare—“and forget this whole idea of searching for Hailey.”

“No,” Amelia said.

Beth’s lips flattened. “Amelia, listen. If we get out of the car, everything is going to change.”

“Everything in my life has already changed.” Why didn’t Beth see that?

“No, I mean that everything you know about your sister and your brother-in-law, the memories you have, what you understand about their life and work, it will just…” She made explosions with her hands. “Boom. Be gone.”

The warning reminded her of wanting to sleep with Camden. She thought she knew what she was getting into. She practically demanded he kiss her and acted as though she were fully aware of the consequences. But then he took her on a date and treated her like a queen, and what she wanted afterward was so much more intense. Her stomach dropped. Amelia needed to stop thinking about Camden. She forced herself to look out the window. The old building loomed like a dystopian movie set.

“An old scary building won’t change my mind.”

“It should.” Beth clucked.

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