Page 124 of Edge of Midnight

If she got wiped off the face of the earth, it wasn’t like the world would stop. Her mom and Erin would be sad. Miles would be relieved. The Rumors would find another sax player. Life would go on.

On the table was a box of Seth’s latest tiny beacon transmitters, still in their packaging. She grabbed one of them, on impulse, and stuck it in her pocket.

Chances were, Mindmeld and the Haven were exactly what the guy said they were, in which case, well, bully for her. The Haven was all about expressing dormant brain potential, right? God knows, her brain was as dormant as they came. Who knew? She might even learn something. Stranger things had happened.

She reached out, poised her fingers over the keyboard. Hesitated.

Me again. I decided. Would luv 2 meet with u. Where?

CHAPTER21

“Please slow down,” Liv asked him for the fourth time. He didn’t ease off the accelerator on the car Davy had rented for him. He was showing admirable restraint by staying below ninety.

“If you don’t like how I’m driving, tough shit,” he said. “You should have stayed with Tam, where you’d have been safe.”

“I don’t want to sit on the shelf like a china doll,” she said. “So far I’ve contributed exactly nothing to the solving of our problem. Other than servicing you sexually, of course.”

He gave her a sidelong glance, caught the teasing gleam in her eye. “Not that it’s such a chore,” she added. “It’s excellent. Even so, I don’t want to spend this whole investigation with my legs in the air.”

He started to speak, but she cut him off. “Yes, you’re the super commando whiz with a zillion languages, but I have some ideas, too.”

“I never said you didn’t.” He slowed down as they entered Garnett. “I think you’re brilliant. Which is why you should be working on Kev’s drawings. I stared at those suckers until I went batshit fifteen years ago. I have no ideas left. You might see something fresh.”

“I’ll study them all you want. I would have studied them all night, if you hadn’t kept distracting me.”

“Distracting you? There’s a brand new euphemism. Actually, it was you who distracted me. I remember lying helpless, flat on my back, with a sweaty, dominating bitch goddess riding me hard.”

“You were hardly helpless. And that was after over an hour of being distracted by you, Sean,” she pointed out. “But I suggest we don’t discuss it now. This is a dangerous road, and we’re almost there.”

“We could pull over in the woods,” he suggested hopefully. “I could distract you up against a tree. Or we could try the backseat.”

“I want to talk to Trung, and so do you,” she said. “Concentrate.”

He appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood, but it just didn’t seem right to him, wandering around under a big, open sky with Liv beside him and no squadron of Special Ops soldiers flanking her.

He didn’t know how to deal with this fear. Usually he faced danger with the what-the-fuck attitude of a guy who wasn’t particularly afraid of death. He was afraid for Liv, though. Pissing himself afraid.

He was nervous as an alley cat, constantly checking the rearview. Peering into the sky to check for helicopters, for fuck’s sake. This was the flip side of what happened when a guy allowed himself to give a shit. It clouded his brain, made him stupid and thick and useless.

“It’s not safe,” he said. “I can’t concentrate. I could get us killed.”

She reached over, touched his thigh. “I feel safest with you.”

His throat went hot and hard as a fist. “Please, don’t say that.” He forced the words out with difficulty. “Don’t set me up.”

“I’m sorry if it makes you nervous, but we got into this thing together, and we need to figure it out together.”

The bracing inspirational lecture about togetherness was going to make his head explode. “Grab my phone,” he growled. “The address is in Con’s last email. Google the directions.”

“Really? For Mr. Photographic Memory?”

“You wanted to make yourself useful? Be useful,” he growled.

They pulled up in front of a seedy-looking grocery store. Sean parked and got out, turning a slow three-sixty. He grabbed Liv and hustled towards the store. He didn’t want her out in the open. Not that she was recognizable in that fancy dress and that blond wig, but even so.

A pimply teenaged boy manned the counter. Sean gave the kid a bland smile. “I’m looking for a man named Mr. Trung.”

The boy went motionless, eyes big. He scampered out of the room.

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