“Parker told me to stay,” she said.

“Then stay,” Wyatt said without missing a beat.

“What?” Zoe asked. “You don’t just tell a woman to stay and expect her to do it blindly.”

Wyatt sighed. “You’re calling me again why?”

“Because this is all your fault, he’s your friend!”

“And I think he’s something far more to you,” Wyatt said calmly. “Or you wouldn’t be calling me all bent out of shape because someone bossed you around, when we all know you have to be the boss.”

“I don’t—” Zoe pressed a finger to her twitching eye. “I just . . .” She didn’t know. She’d called an end to things and she’d already been conflicted about that before the kiss. “I’m a little out of my league here,” she confessed.

“Well, join the club,” Wyatt said. “Falling in love isn’t for the weak, that’s for damn sure.”

“I’m not falling in love.”

“You sure?”

Dammit. She’d never been so unsure in her entire life. “I’ve got to go.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “But Zoe? Do him a favor and give him the benefit of the doubt. And then if you care about him like I think you do, hear him out before you shut him out.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I don’t shut people out.”

“Mom. Dad. Me when I went to undergrad in New York. Every man you’ve ever dated. Should I go on?” Wyatt asked.

She disconnected. And then blew out a breath as she looked around. Out the side wall of windows she could see Devon preparing the Lear for flight. He must have caught a flight she hadn’t heard about.

Biting her lower lip, she stared at the door for a beat before deciding she needed one more peek. She unlocked the door and stuck her head out.

The door at the other end of the hallway opened, only the man who came inside wasn’t Parker.

It was Tripp Carver. He was over six feet tall, midthirties, and built like he’d once been a football star and had let himself go a little soft.

But there was nothing soft about his face. His expression was dark and mean. He eyed the row of three metal chairs against the wall between the men’s and women’s restroom, snatched one, and jammed it under the door handle.

Zoe gasped and he turned to her. A gun had materialized in his hand. “Get over here.”

Could he see her knees knocking together? She hoped not. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, I’m not fucking around. I’ve got a scheduled flight in five minutes, and now Parker James is here, breathing down my neck. So you’re my leverage out of here.”

“Me?” she squeaked, finding her voice. “Why me?”

“I saw him with his tongue halfway down your throat. You mean something to him. So get your sweet ass over here or I start shooting.”

Well, hell. Next time Parker said stay, she would absolutely do just that.

Twenty-six

Parker had followed Carver down both legs of the hallway and out the side door.

Nothing.

He moved around the side of the hangar toward the front and scanned the lot.

More nothing.

Hearing running footsteps back the way he came, he followed, retracing his steps, past the door he’d used, where he came face to face with a fence lining the tarmac. No one could have climbed that fence; it had barbed wire across the top and was electrified.

He moved back to the door leading inside the hangar. The handle readily turned beneath his hand but the door wouldn’t open.

Something was blocking it from the inside.

Shit. Whipping around, he went running back toward the lot and the front door, forcing himself to slow to a casual walk as he entered the front reception area of the hangar. There was a small crowd still milling around, a group that had just come in on a private charter. Devon was inside looking for his next charter client, calling out for a . . .

John Smith.

The confident asshole Carver had chartered a jet and used the most common alias in the world to do so.

Parker stopped at Joe, who was at the front computer looking distracted. “Where’s Zoe?”

“Shit, man, I can’t keep eyes on everyone,” Joe said. “She’s probably in the can; give her a minute.”

Parker’s gut was screaming now and he strode down the hall, making the turn to the end, to the door he hadn’t been able to get back into from the outside. It had a folding chair shoved under the handle, blocking it from being opened.

Fuck.

He whipped around. No way had Carver jammed that chair beneath the door and then just vanished into thin air.

And where the hell was Zoe? Certainly not where he’d left her . . .

He didn’t want to put a name to the emotion trying to choke out his common sense. An emotion shockingly close to panic.

He never panicked.

He strode back down the hallway and right into the women’s restroom. He pulled the gun from the small of his back as he entered, hoping like hell he wasn’t about to scare some woman to an early grave.

Zoe was in the corner between the sink and a bathroom stall, hands up, facing . . .

Carver, who had a gun on her.

“About time,” Carver said. “What did you do, take a nap?”

“Let her go,” Parker said. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“Too late for that,” Carver said. “Get in here, shut the door quietly behind you, and lock it. Now.”

Parker looked into Zoe’s eyes and felt his heart seize when he saw something besides terror.

Regret.

He stepped into the bathroom and, with his gun still trained on Carver, shut and locked the door. “What do you want, Carver?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Carver asked. “I want what was promised. A life free of looking over my shoulder for you, asshole. Thanks to you nosing around, people got jittery. My people. They found out about my deal.”

“You mean they discovered you ratted them out,” Parker said, gun still on Carver.

“I had no choice,” Carver said, voice hard. “But you do. You’re going to choose to let me walk out of here without a fuss. I’m going to get on that plane I chartered in good faith, or your cutie pie here is going to pay the price. Not today, maybe not tomorrow. She won’t see it coming, but you can count on me to make it happen.”

“Parker, don’t do it,” Zoe said. “Don’t let him go.”

Carver smiled grimly. “A tough cutie pie. I should’ve hired you instead of Devon for today. Three seconds to decide,” he said to Parker. “And take your gun out of my face.”

Deep down, Parker knew that Carver wouldn’t risk taking a shot in here. He didn’t have a silencer on his gun and the report would make a huge noise that people wouldn’t mistake. It would bring a lot of unwanted attention to Carver. And this might be a small airport, but it was an airport with rules and regulations. If a gunshot was heard, no planes would be landing or taking off for a good long time. Carver would be grounded and quickly arrested. This was logic, and it went through Parker’s head in a nanosecond.

But so did something else: the knowledge that Carver was a desperate man, and desperate men did stupid things.