Savage’s eyes meet mine before they light with amusement on Harper. “Worried about me? Or sending me to my room for being a bad boy? Because the only women who send me to my room, since my mama and my grandmama, want to join me, and you fit neither definition.” He glances at me. “I couldn’t resist, man. Don’t punch me.”
“The list of people I want to punch right now include my brother and my father,” I say quite honestly.
“Me and my best friend got in a fight over a Snickers bar. That’s the truth and don’t ask for details. They’re too sordid.” He eyes me over her head. “Let’s sit so I can speak freely.”
I nod and ease Harper over to the booth, helping her slide in again. By the time I’ve joined her, Savage is sitting directly across from me. “What happened to your eye, Savage?” Harper presses.
“Same story, Harper,” he says. “I’m sticking with it.”
I can see a man avoiding a dark alley he doesn’t want to travel, and I help him redirect. “Did you find the guy that cornered Harper at the hospital?”
“Yes,” Savage says, and I can feel the punch of his relief that we’re moving on, mixed with the grimness of his answer, even before he finishes with, “in a hotel bed, with his throat cut.”
Harper sucks in air. “Oh God. Oh God.” She turns to me. “Eric.”
I stroke her hair. “Easy, baby. It’s going to be okay.”
That earns me instant rejection. “It’s not okay,” she insists. “Nothing about any of this is okay.”
“We are,” I say. “We are. And we’re what matters when this is all over and done.”
“And you’re going to stay okay,” Savage assures her. “Better than okay. You have Eric and you have me, as well as my badass team.”
“Isaac got to us.”
He flicks a look at me. “I sent you a text giving you the heads up about Isaac.”
I glance at my phone. “So you did.” I squeeze Harper’s leg and glance down at her. “I had other things on my mind.”
“We need this over, Eric,” she whispers. “We need it over.”
I know she’s talking about me forcing us to take a break, but I did that for a reason. “One thing I’ve learned in my life, in the SEALs more than anywhere, is that pushing harder doesn’t lead to an end. When you push too hard, too fast, just to do something, you end up doing the wrong something.” I look at Savage. “What about the woman who was with the man at the hospital?”
“We caught her on camera leaving the hotel. We’ve been working to ID her along with law enforcement, and so far, it’s a no go on a name.”
“Wait,” Harper says, her hands flattening on the table. “Are you suggesting that the woman that was with him killed him?”
“That’s what we believe,” Savage replies, eyeing me. “That’s our working hypothesis.”
“Go further with that,” I urge, wanting to know where the Walker team is taking this. “Play along. Assume out loud. Tell me where your head is right now.”
Savage’s eyes light and he leans forward. “Assuming you’re right, and the message our newly dead, fake FBI consultant, gave Harper was from Gigi, the man and the woman worked for Gigi.”
“But you think the woman killed the man,” Harper says, jumping in. “How does that make sense?”
“Exactly,” Savage says. “Which means that Isaac found out about them, but the man couldn’t be bought.”
“So they ended him,” Harper supplies, following his lead.
“Or,” I suggest. “He knew too much, maybe even tried to use it against Gigi, and she had him dealt with.”
“Gigi,” Harper says, sitting up straighter. “I got an international call earlier.” She eyes me. “I told you, right?” She doesn’t wait for a reply. She is back to Savage. “Did your team track it?”
“It came from a café in Italy,” he says. “And yes. We believe that has to be Gigi and we’re homing in on her.”
“She must be trying to warn us,” Harper says. “She didn’t have that man killed. Isaac did. This is all Isaac.”
“No,” I say, my fingers thrumming on the counter. “Gigi is not the good guy in this.”