Closing her eyes, Zoe nodded. “Yeah. We do. Ethan didn’t drive all the way across the country to watch me from a distance.”
“No, he didn’t,” Spence replied. “But between us, Nico and I will do our best to keep you safe this weekend.”
Zoe saw the barely hid irritation in his expression. “I know you think this conference is a terrible idea. Part of me thinks it is, too. But I can’t bail out now.”
“I know that, Zoe. Yeah, it is a bad idea. But we’ll keep you safe. I promise you.”
She studied him for a long moment, her stomach clenched into a tight knot. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Spence.”
He sucked in a breath. “We’ll keep you safe or die trying.”
“I don’t want either of you to die,” she whispered, horrified at the thought.
“Then follow our directions, do exactly what we tell you to do, and you’ll be fine.” He drew in a breath. “Mel is working on something for me for your conference. It’s a ring that looks like one of those exercise rings -- the kind you wear all the time and it tracks your steps, your sleep patterns, the time you spend sitting every day.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about those rings.”
“The one you’ll be wearing will look identical, but it’ll be a GPS tracker. I’ll have an app on my phone, and so will Nico, that will tell us exactly where you are every minute. So, if by some terrible circumstance Davies manages to grab you, we can follow you wherever he takes you. As long as you don’t take off the ring.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” she said, cheered a little. She liked knowing that Spence would know exactly where she was every minute. It made the thought of Ethan snatching her marginally less scary.
Zoe straightened. “Let’s change our schedule a little. Leave early in the morning, come ho… back here around two or three in the afternoon. That’d throw Ethan off if he’s watching for a chance to grab me before the conference.”
Spence nodded as he studied her. “That’s a good idea. But I thought your days were pretty structured.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I do have lots of meetings,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell Janet to schedule them for between seven a.m. and three p.m. I’ll spend about the same amount of time in the office, but it’ll be shifted a little. I suspect Ethan won’t expect me to do that. And there’ll be no rush hour traffic, so it’ll be easier to see Ethan’s car.”
Spence tilted his head, a tiny smile on his mouth. “You’re reminding me a lot of Mel right now,” he said. “That’s the kind of easy, logical solution to a problem she’d come up with.”
“Just make sure you give her little sister credit when you tell her about the idea.”
“Don’t have to do that,” Spence says. “Mel sings your praises all the time. She knows exactly how amazing her little sister is.”