A SEAL in Wolf’s Clothing by Terry Spear Page A

at her or maybe at his Hummer, and then brought out a checkbook.
    She frowned. What was he up to?
    He came back to the vehicle, opened her door for her, and said, “Come on.”
    When she hesitated, he hauled her out of the car, shut the door, and whispered into her ear, “We’ve got some new wheels.”
    “What?” She felt a chill cascade down her spine. Finn must know they were being followed.
    He escorted her inside the dealership where his Hummer had been taken inside, she assumed for an inspection to give him a trade-in price.
    “What? Why are you getting another car?”
    “I like new cars.” He held her hand as if they were married or seriously engaged and pulled her into the finance office where they took seats in front of a desk. An hour later, after Finn paid for the vehicle and transferred his car insurance to the new one, they were back on the road.
    “I don’t understand. The assassin knew what you were driving, right?”
    “Yes.”
    She stared out the window of the new Hummer as he sped further south. “But you got the same kind of vehicle. Same color and everything.”
    “It doesn’t have any of the bugs. The other could very well have had a tracking device in a couple of hidden locations and a couple of listening bugs that would take too damned long to find. Plus the one he stuck in your pocket is now on the visor. This one is bug- and tracker-free.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “You might have let on. I wanted him to think we didn’t know he had planted the devices on the Hummer. Besides, it was time I upgraded my vehicle.”
    “You could have told me. I can act, you know. I thought I’d put on a pretty good show already.” She gave him an irritated look. She might not be one of them, a SEAL, but she could play games like these.
    He wore a silly smirk. “Your acting is top-notch. In fact, I’d say it felt so real that it would have taken a miracle for anyone to know the difference.”
    She stared at him for a minute and then sat back in her fresh leather seat. That’s why he had waited so long to leave the car after their “show.” He probably could hardly walk until the blood that had all run south had finally returned to his brain.
    “Why didn’t you just remove the bugs?” she asked.
    “He could’ve spotted me doing it. While they have my old Hummer inside the building, the man following us will think we had to have it repaired. At least that’s a possibility. He would have been hanging back, not wanting to get too close. He’d think he could track us without any difficulty. And he did for nearly a half hour. Most likely, he’ll suspect that if we got another car, it wouldn’t look anything like the one I already had.”
    “You still could have told me. And you should have let me drive so you could get something to eat.”
    “We’ll stop before long.”
    “But I thought you planned to drive all night.”
    “That’s what I wanted our listener to think. We’ll spend a few days at a furnished, unoccupied home just up the road. It has a garage and is off the main road. Hopefully, one of my friends had time to stock the refrigerator.”
    She could just see them getting arrested. “So now we’re going to be house-sitting illegally?”
    “I called in some favors once I arrived in this part of the country and before you came home. The house is ours for as long as we need it.” He drove for another twenty minutes and then slowed down as they came upon a group of homes overlooking the ocean. Minutes later, he was driving into a walled-in estate with a circular drive, although it had no security gates.
    Knowing how expensive homes on the coast were, and as large and new as this one looked, she figured it had to have cost a fortune. Why would anyone allow perfect strangers to stay here? “Whose place is this?”
    “You don’t need to know.” He drove into the driveway of the whitewashed Cape Cod house. What shocked her next was that he pulled a garage door opener out