The moment George moved down the bar to talk to another customer, she let her thoughts drift back to the same person who’d been stuck in her mind for three days. No. Make that since the day she met him. Jed Calhoun.
Nothing had been right, nothing had been normal in her life since that man had walked into it. In the three days since Hadley Richards had been taken into custody, she hadn’t seen Jed even once. She’d filled a whole notebook with her thoughts and feelings about him. A whole notebook in three days! That was a record even for her. And it hadn’t worked. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
But he had no business intruding on her thoughts right now. Not while she was supposed to be enjoying a girls’ night out. Sierra had come to her office at five o’clock and insisted that she join them at the Blue Pepper.
“Is that wine good?”
Zoë turned to see Bailey Montgomery take the chair next to hers. Gage Sinclair was right behind her.
“It’s excellent,” Zoë said.
Bailey waved a hand at George and signaled to him that she’d like a glass of the same thing. Then she leaned close to Zoë. “Would you mind telling Mr. Sinclair that he has to leave?”
Zoë sent Gage a startled look.
He grinned at her. “She says it’s a girls-only night. No men allowed.”
“That’s right,” Sierra said, leaning around from the stool on the other side of Zoë. She pointed to a table in the corner of the bar where Ryder was seated with the husbands, fiancés, and significant others of her sisters and their friends. “They probably saved a place for you over there.”
Gage looked at Bailey. “I much prefer my present company.”
“Go,” she said.
As Gage walked away, Zoë said, “I think he likes you.”
“He’s besotted with her,” Sierra said.
“It will pass,” Bailey assured them. “It always does. I thought he had a thing for me when he first recruited me for the CIA, but it was all in my imagination.”
Zoë’s heart clutched. Was that what was going to happen to her and Jed? Given her record with men, it was entirely possible that she was feeling more than he was. And despite that it was supposed to be a girls’ night out, all of the women who were now gathered in the Blue Pepper’s bar had a man seated at the table Gage was headed for. Except for her.
Was Jed even coming? The question had her shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She hadn’t seen Jed Calhoun since the scene at the Lincoln Memorial three days ago. He hadn’t called her, and there’d been no way for her to contact him. According to Ryder, who’d kept her updated, there’d been enough red tape to require a machete. Jed had pretty much been in meetings with both the CIA and members of Congress 24/7.
There were all kinds of reasons why he couldn’t call her. Including the possibility that he didn’t want to. After all, he was Lucifer. It was only natural now that his name was cleared that he would return to the life of a superspy.
“Bailey, now that you’re here,” Sierra said, “we can make a toast. Why don’t you do the honors?”
“To Zoë McNamara, one of the best data analysts at the CIA.” Bailey leaned close to Zoë. “The director wants you back. He listened to that tape, and he was very impressed. He thinks you have real potential for fieldwork. I’m supposed to talk you into it.”
“To Zoë. To Zoë,” the other women echoed as they began to clink glasses.
Zoë barely had a chance to absorb what Bailey had said, let alone take a sip of her wine, before Rad nudged his way to her chair and handed her an engraved card.
“For your eyes only,” he murmured in a voice only she could hear.
All that appeared on the card were three initials intertwined: LJE.
LJE. Even as Zoë frowned down at the letters, her heart began to beat a little faster. After turning the card over, she saw that it was blank. That’s all? A card with three initials?
Suddenly, she knew exactly what the initials stood for. Lucifer, Jed and Ethan. Her heart leaped with joy just before the panic bubbled up.
“If you’ll follow me,” Rad said in a soft voice. “The gentleman is waiting in the private dining room.”
“In a minute.” The panic was now threatening to explode through her system. She wasn’t ready for this.
She could leave. No one would stop her. But she didn’t want to leave. Hadn’t she decided that the running away part of her life was over? Hadn’t she decided that if Jed had it in his mind to walk away from her, she’d just follow him and wear him down?
Zoë set down her wineglass with a little snap and looked at the women gathered around her. “I’ll be right back.”