Page 31 of The Hero
“Over here,” Bob said, well familiar by now with her reluctance to sleep on anyone else’s bed. He steered her over to the wall, eased the backpack off her shoulders, then sat, pulling her down with him.
To his satisfaction, she sat right next to him, so close her thigh touched his own and their shoulders brushed. He dug through the backpack and brought out a protein bar and handed it to her.
“Are we safe here?” Marlowe asked after taking a bite.
Bob’s first inclination was to say yes. To reassure her so she wouldn’t worry. But she wasn’t stupid. She’d never asked that question at any of the other places they’d stopped. Something about the couple’s greeting had struck her as wrong, just as it had with him.
“We should be,” he settled on saying.
She stared at him with big brown eyes for a long moment before nodding.
“I should’ve done this before now, but I need you to do something for me,” Bob said, keeping his voice low.
“Anything.”
God, this woman. The longer he was around her, the more he wanted to keep her for himself. “I need you to memorize this phone number. If anything happens, you call it. Tell my friends who you are and that you were with me. They’ll help you.”
“Chappy, Cal, and JJ, right?” she said softly.
Relieved she wasn’t going to argue with him, Bob nodded. “Yeah. Chappy’s real name is Riggs. Riggs Chapman. Cal is Callum Redmon, he’s the Liechtenstein prince, and JJ is Jackson Justice. We all work at Jack’s Lumber, named after JJ. The number is 555-824-8733. The last four numbers spell the wordtree—555-824-8733. Repeat it back to me.”
She did.
“Again,” Bob insisted.
She recited the numbers again without hesitation.
“Good. If anything happens, find a phone and call. During business hours, someone will answer. Probably April. But even on nights and weekends, a service forwards any emergency calls to her cell. My friends will help you.” It was important to Bob that Marlowe understand she had someone else to turn to, should anything happen to him.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said earnestly. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for me. I couldn’t bear it if you got caught making sure I got away.”
Bob wasn’t going to promise anything. Somehow in the last week, he’d fallen hard for this woman. He believed in her innocence, and nothing was going to stop him from getting her across the border. There was no guarantee the Thai authorities wouldn’t come after her even when they were in Cambodia, but he was pretty sure with Willis’s connections, they’d be able to get out of the country before the two governments could work together to stop them.
When he didn’t respond, Marlowe sighed. “Fine.I’lljust have to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”
Bob couldn’t help but smirk at that.
“Here,” she said, holding out the half-eaten protein bar. “I’ve had enough. You finish that up. I’m going to nap. But Kendric?”
“Yeah, Punky?”
“Maybe we can head out a little early? Would it matter if we left when it was still light outside? Now that we’re so close, I can’t wait to get out of Thailand.”
Yup. She was definitely as uneasy as he was. They just had to hope their hosts didn’t sell them out. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”
“Good.” She reached up and scratched her head. “I hate this wig,” she mumbled, but didn’t move to take it off. “I know it’s super important, but I still hate it. There’s a reason I keep my hair short.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She snuggled in immediately, wrapping an arm around his chest and pushing the other behind his back and holding on tight.
He turned his head and kissed her forehead. “Sleep, Marlowe.”
She nodded and sighed. A minute or two went by before she said, “You slept today.”
Bob frowned. “What?”
“At the woman’s house. You slept. I woke up and you were out. Like,reallyout. I was worried for a moment, but then I realized what was different. You were sleeping hard. You really needed it.”
“It’s you,” he whispered.
