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“Can you hear me?” she asked into a small radio after I was far enough away.
I heard it, but she’d been right about the volume being low. I nodded.
“Say something.”
“I hear it, but it’s faint.”
“Try yes followed by no,” she said.
I tapped my chest where the microphone lay the way she’d taught me. One tap for yes and two for no if I wasn’t able to speak.
“I can hear you fine. We’re good to go.”
I followed her into the other room where the guys were congregated and almost tucked my hair behind my ear by accident. That was going to be difficult to control.
“How do you feel?” Adam asked when I reached him.
“Nervous.”
He smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “You can do this. We have your back, Miss Benson. Everybody here will have eyes on you.” With the other FBI guys here, he hadn’t called me Sugarbear once, or Kells either.
Somehow reassurance flowed through his touch, and my doubts lessened. “It’s the only way, right?”
“It’s the best way… Now, tell me what you’re supposed to do.”
I felt the eyes of the entire group on me. “Answer the phone when it rings. Repeat anything important, if I can. Cough twice if the caller is a voice I recognize from work. If somebody comes up to me and I recognize him from work, also cough twice. Follow instructions, but refuse to get in a car with him and go anywhere.”
“And if he asks you to change locations and go somewhere we can’t see you?”
“I refuse, because I’m in charge. I’ve got what he wants, and he doesn’t have anything I want.”
“Very good.”
Looking around the room, I felt better as the other agents nodded at me. I could do this. I had to do this.
One foot in front of the other, follow the steps. Take the call, turn over the bag of fake jewelry, stand back, and wait for Adam and his crew of armed agents to take him down when he reached wherever his lair was.
I shivered at the wordlair. It was such an appropriate word for the animal who’d killed my friend. I shivered, trying not to imagine how long Melinda and Daya Patel had endured the horror of being assaulted by him, tortured and killed. He was lower than an animal. Animals killed to eat. He’d killed for who knows what reason, certainly not to survive.
Adam’s glance broke me out of my temporary trance—the look that said he understood how scary this was. I wanted to find the strength in his arms to carry this out, but couldn’t with the other agents around.
He followed it with a simple nod that told me he cared, told me he understood. My man had my back.
After we caught the Ghost, I planned to have Adam escort me back into work. If Krause had a problem with being kept out of the loop, it was a sure thing that a talk with my FBI boyfriend would get it all straightened out. At this moment, there wasn’t any problem he couldn’t fix, anything we couldn’t tackle.
Krause was a pompous ass, and Adam was ten times the man he was. Krause would fold like a cheap suit.
“Okay, let’s get set up ahead of time. I’ll bring Miss Benson over a few minutes ahead of schedule,” Adam announced to the group.
With that, they started to file out. In a moment we were alone.
Adam took me in his arms. “I know you’re scared, and that’s okay.”
I tightened my hold on him. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Follow the script, and you’ll be okay. I’ll be just across the street. Rylie and Oscar will be by the fountain. We have people in each direction. Just say the safe word, and we’ll all be there in a flash.” He’d chosen the safe word,yesterday,because it was easy to weave into normal conversation without standing out.
I pretended I’d gotten enough strength from our short hug. “Let’s do this.”
