“I’m swapping cars in a few minutes.”
She flicked her eyes to his face; he kept his attention on the road so that she could only stare at his profile. “Why?”
“Your absence will have been discovered by now. There’ll be an APB out for me. My car’s plates will be tagged in the system. The tunnel security cameras will have picked us up. I’d say we have about an hour, at the most, before police catch us.”
“Unless we swap cars?”
“Exactly.”
She swallowed, settling back against the upholstery. “I guess this isn’t your first kidnapping.” It was an attempt at humour to lighten the dense mood of the vehicle, but it fell flat. He simply flicked the indicator on and pulled the car off the highway, into a street that was delineated by billboards and trash cans.
And though she was disgruntled and afraid, Lilah leaned forward a little to study the unfamiliar streetscape. “This is so …” Her sentence trailed into nothing as she watched a group of young men ride their skateboards down the footpath. At the last moment, one crossed the street and did a flip into the air.
“Not exactly what you’re used to,” Will surmised.
“No. But I was going to say that it is very urban. Not like the parts of New York I usually see.”
“Everything looks different from a limo,” he hazarded, turning down yet another street.
Lilah heard his off-handed condemnation and again wondered at the cause of it. “When I come to America, my work tends to be centred around the embassy. Occasionally I am in DC.”
He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter but didn’t allow his mind to dwell on the notion of Washington. “Do you come over here often?”
Lilah shook her head. “Not so often as I’d like. Ki is strangely wary of the influence America might have on me.”
“He’s traditional,” Will supplied.
“It’s more than that.” She swallowed. “Are we off the record?”
His laugh was a disbelieving grunt. “I’ve just forced you to climb off the balcony of a high rise. I think we’re a little past worrying about the record.”
Lilah bit on her lip. “You didn’t force me.” Her brows knitted together. “And I am right to be wary. It is important to my brother that the story of his marriage to Melania be told properly.”
“We’re off the record,” he promised.
“Will …” she swallowed. The urge to confide had come out of nowhere. But why? What about this stranger engendered such a level of trust. “Never mind.”
“Suit yourself.” He flicked the car down a narrow street and pulled up out the front of number eighty six. Will didn’t need the number though to know which house he was after. God knew he’d been there enough times over the years.
“Stay here.”
Lilah’s eyes were enormous in her face. In her whole life, she’d never been spoken to so abruptly. “Would simple manners absolutely kill you to use?”
He shook his head with a rueful expression on his face. “Don’t use your phone. They’ll be tracking it. In fact, give it to me.”
“My phone?” She pulled a face. “I didn’t exactly bring my bag with me.”
“Good. So it’s in the hotel?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Don’t move.”
She lifted her fingers to her forehead in a mock salute. She’d seen the gesture in enough movies to be able to imitate it perfectly.
Will slammed the door a little too forcefully and then strode onto the front lawn.
“Harry?” He called, before taking the porch steps two at a time. “You here?”