Page 28 of Her Loving Hero

“Em’s listening in. Keep it clean.”

“I’m always a gentleman in front of a lady,” Kane responded. “It’s nice to meet you Miss Hoag.”

Wyatt snorted.

“Let me tell you what I’ve done,” Kane continued. “Wyatt, you’re now Scott Lyle. You met Emily when she was going to the American School in Oman because you were teaching a class in Information Technology. You were doing that to practice your Arabic so you could eventually pick up some consulting work with some of the big Middle Eastern businesses.”

“Got it,” Wyatt said.

“Emily, you kept in touch with Scott even after you moved to Saudi Arabia. He’s stayed in Oman and ended up working for one of the top five international consulting firms working in risk management. His specific area of expertise is ensuring that companies security systems are state-of-the-art and can withstand any kind of cyber-attacks. As a result, he’s in everyone’s business in Oman.”

“Sounds plausible,” Wyatt said.

“So far I’ve made our buddy Scott a comprehensive IG account, so if anybody checks him out, he’s legit.”

“This guy has an on-line presence?” Wyatt asked. “It seems to me he would want to stay under the radar.”

“He’s into extreme sports, so his Instagram has a lot of photos of him doing dangerous shit. Our boy Scott has a bit of an ego.”

Emily could hear the satisfied grin in Kane’s voice. Wyatt immediately called up Instagram and keyed in the name Scott Lyle, images of Wyatt showed up.

“You’re an asshole,” Wyatt growled. “How did you manage to download my pictures in a half hour?”

“At least know it was pretty damn difficult. I like some of your base-jumping shots, those were nice pics. Anyway, they’re up on Scott’s phony Instagram account.”

“You base jumped?” Emily asked.

“Don’t forget the paragliding and cave diving,” Kane mentioned helpfully.

“Let me get a closer look,” Emily pushed at Wyatt so she could see the Instagram account for Scott Lyle. She couldn’t believe her eyes. “You did all of that? Wyatt, you could have been killed,” she gasped.

Kane laughed.

“Let’s focus on our next steps, Honey,” Wyatt said gently. “Okay, I know what my backstory is. Let’s make this phone call.”

Emily walked over to the kitchen counter and plucked her cell phone out of her purse. Her hand trembled and she hoped that Wyatt didn’t notice. Those pictures really scared her. Here she’d been thinking that she’d been doing better, but the idea that Wyatt put himself at risk like that was really frightening. She didn’t want anything to bad to ever happen to him.

The worst part is that she realized how much she had come to rely on him, and that was the scariest thing of all.

“Em? Are you ready to make that phone call?” He walked over to the couch, and she followed. “Kane, I’m going to put you on mute, while we put Emily’s phone on speaker so you can listen in.”

“Fine,” the man said.

Wyatt nodded at Emily and she pressed Carly’s number. Of course, it went to voicemail. Darn it. She pressed in Mercedes’s number and she picked up.

“Hi Emily. Carly’s trying on Petra’s dress. Hold on for a sec.”

Wyatt raised his eyebrows at Emily, and she shrugged. They waited.

“Hi Big Sis, thanks for calling back so soon.”

Despite the circumstances, Emily still smiled because Carly was back to calling her Big Sis.

“I lined up my friend Scott for you to talk to." Emily said. “Can you get everybody together so we can talk. I can conference him in. He has some information.”

Emily cringed. They’d talked about a cover story, but she had no idea what in the world Wyatt was going to say to Carly and her friends to deter them from setting out on their own. He gave her a comforting smile and squeezed her shoulder. “Trust me,” he mouthed.

He sure was good at reading her mind.