She murmured in agreement.

Richard eyed her keenly. “But?”

She stared into the near distance, then set her cutlery on her plate, her food barely touched. “I don’t want to leave anything to chance, or to anyone unreliable, as Dr. O’Neal has proven herself to be. It’s up to us, you and me, to make this work.”

Realizing there was more to what she had to say, Richard leaned back in his chair and patted his lap. She came around and sat in it. In a wifely manner, she adjusted the Windsor knot of his necktie.

“I’ve had an idea,” she said. “It’s rather audacious. Don’t say no until you’ve heard me out.”

“I’m intrigued. What do you have in mind, darling?”

Chapter 15

4:12 p.m.

When they left the cabin, Goliad offered to place the black box in the trunk of the Mercedes, but Rye had insisted on it riding in the back seat with him. It was on the floorboard between his feet. His flight bag was in his lap. Snug in the pocket of his jacket was his nine-millimeter. Sans clip. At Goliad’s insistence.

As Rye reluctantly surrendered the clip, Goliad had told him that as soon as Dr. Lambert signed off on the delivery of the box, Rye would get his bullets back.

He hadn’t specified how.

Rye hadn’t been fooled into thinking that Goliad believed the tale he’d spun about needing Lambert’s signature on the receipt. Goliad had brought him along only because he hadn’t known what else to do with him. But after the drug was delivered to Lambert, Rye would be expendable. Possibly, so would Brynn. He tried not to let on that he was aware of that.

Riding with his head resting on the back of the seat, eyes closed, he pretended to be dozing, but he was wide awake and acutely aware of every movement made by the others in the car.

In the passenger seat, Timmy fidgeted as though bugs under his skin were trying to work their way out.

Goliad maintained a speed just below the limit, kept both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, except occasionally when he looked at Rye in the rearview mirror.

He was a seasoned pro. Too intelligent to let his temper dictate his actions. There was a quiet dignity about him. He would kill Rye if need be, but he wouldn’t do it with gusto as Timmy would.

Different styles, equally lethal, accountable to their employers, the unnamed mister and missus, one of whom was the patient. Rye wondered who they were to be able to trace cell phones and have people, like this pair, doing their dirty work.

Was Nathan Lambert another of their puppets? Or was Lambert pulling the strings? Brynn had described him as a genius, but that wasn’t necessarily an endorsement. A lot of geniuses were madmen who used their brilliance as justification for committing atrocities.

But whether Nate Lambert was a saint or sinner, immediately after handing the box over to him, Rye needed to get the hell out of there.

His dilemma was achieving that, while at the same time getting payback for Dash and Brady White, whom he had intentionally avoided mentioning in the cabin standoff. If he’d tipped his hand about the revenge he sought, bloodshed probably couldn’t have been avoided.

He needed a plan of action. But how could he formulate one when he wouldn’t know what kind of situation he was walking into until he was already in it? He didn’t even know the specifics of their destination. They could be on their way to a penthouse or a dump ground. He had to be prepared for anything.

And what about Brynn?

He still didn’t know what role she was playing in this fucked-up drama.

Being apprehensive of Goliad and Timmy, she had gone along with his rigmarole about the receipt, sounding just hacked enough to be convincing. But that didn’t mean there was blind trust between the two of them. Was what she’d told him about GX-42 just another in a series of lies and half-truths?

A miracle drug with a short shelf life? Really, Brynn?

If that was true, and said drug was destined for a patient whose days were numbered without it, and Brynn was delivering it with more than twenty-four hours padding, which was exactly what she’d been desperate to do, then why wasn’t she chatty and bubbly with anticipation of soon achieving her goal?

Instead, she’d been silent and forlorn ever since their departure from the cabin.

They hadn’t been given an opportunity to speak alone, and, dammit, he needed to know what was going on with her. He stopped pretending to doze and looked over at her. She was looking out the car window at Atlanta’s skyline, which had appeared on the horizon, visible but blurred by fog.

She seemed about as excited to see it as a lifer approaching Alcatraz.

Her posture was rigid with tension. Her hands were in her lap, clasped in a death grip. He reached across the seat and cupped his hand over them. Jumping like she’d been shot, she turned to him. Their eyes locked. They didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

Nor could he account for her expression of stark desperation.

She knew something that he didn’t. Frustrated by his inability to crack her reticence, he pressed his fingers around her clasped hands as though to squeeze truthful information from her.

Then, startling everyone, his cell phone rang.

Timmy turned his head, his vulpine face appearing in the space between the two front seats. Goliad’s unblinking eyes met Rye’s in the rearview mirror. “Answer it,” he said.

Rye took the phone from his jacket pocket and saw that the caller was Dash. He clicked on. “Here.”