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he didn’t insist, and she finally shifted sideways in her seat, pulled up one knee, and propped her elbow on the seat back. Her hair blew into her face when she turned to face him, and she gathered up the wavy brown strands in one hand. “Listen. I’m sorry Charlie involved you in this. Once we get to Dallas, I can rent a car and you can get back to your life. Just please don’t go to the cops. Not yet. Not until this is over. I don’t want anything to happen to Finn.”
    Harry nodded, pretended to consider her offer when what he was most interested in was the self-confidence implied in her willingness to write off his help. “So the guy you were with is your brother.”
    “Yeah,” she said, her voice breaking softly. “My baby brother. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him.”
    An ace to store up his sleeve. “Then we’ll have to make sure nothing does.”
    “Listen—” she started again, paused, shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.”
    “Harry.”
    “Harry, thanks. I’m Georgia, which obviously you know.” She waved a hand. “That Mr. van Zandt thing sounded too much like you’re somebody’s grandfather.”
    “Nah.” He liked her attitude. “I just drive somebody’s grandfather’s car.”
    “Yeah, Finn noticed it earlier when we passed you.” She turned her attention back to the road ahead. “I cannot believe this is happening. I told him we should eat before we left Waco so we wouldn’t have to stop once we were on the road.”
    “If this Castro was following you, he would’ve caught up with you sooner or later. Right?” Something else to look into. Where had Castro come from? How had he found Georgia? Who was he working for? “At least this way there wasn’t a crowd around to suffer a lot of collateral damage.”
    She glanced over. He caught her frown from the corner of his eye. “Collateral damage. That’s something I’d expect to hear from a news junkie or military type.”
    Point to the lady. “How ’bout both?”
    “In this situation?” She blew out a heavy breath. “The latter would do me a lot more good than the first.”
    “Then you might not want to cut me loose when we get to Dallas.”
    “Why not?” she asked, looking back.
    He leaned across the seat to open the glove box, brushing her knee when he straightened, his own auction invitation in hand. “I hesitated saying anything in case we had some friendly competition happening here, but we’re going the same way.”
    “You’re kidding me, right?” She grabbed the card from his hand. “You’re not kidding me.”
    “Not kidding at all. There’s a ’48 Jaguar Roadster I’ve got my eye on.”
    “I know that car. I know the money that car’s going to bring.” She snorted. “Charlie should’ve sent you after the file he wants. I sure don’t have the money it’ll take to walk out of the auction with it.”
    Meaning she had never intended to bid on the file in the first place. “You have an alternative solution in mind?”
    A humorless snort. “Nothing I want to share with a military type.”
    “Ex-military.”
    “Semantics.”
    He let that go, thought about her father’s history in the service before going to work for TotalSky, wondered if she was doing the same. “So, these documents. They’re important to you personally?”
    She slouched down in the seat, thought about propping her feet on the dash. He could tell that because he could tell when she changed her mind. She made a fidgety movement before planting her boots flat on the floorboard.
    Head back, she cast a quick glance to the side. And just when he’d decided she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “More important than you can possibly know.”

 
     
    2:20 P.M.
     
    They stopped for gas on the outskirts of Dallas. Georgia hadn’t eaten a thing all day and was starving. After using the station’s facilities, she trolled the minimart’s aisles and picked up a Coke and a bag of peanuts