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teller she’d signed her fate. She stared at the camera nestled in her lap. Worst forty-‐-nine cents she’d ever spent in her life.
    “Joan, stay with me, now. No one is going to kill you. I’m not ready to go quite that far. I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances. I prefer to be wise and get out of town. We’ll find a place where we can deal with the authorities on our own terms.”
    Joan nodded, but kept her eyes on the camera. “It’s not like we don’t have proof what really went on in there, right?”
    Tom smiled. “Exactly.”
    “Once we’re out of the bank’s reach, we’ll go to the authorities, turn over the memory card, and they can protect us.”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s all so simple.” Joan relaxed her hands and stretched her legs out in front of her. Yes, simple. Wasn’t it?

Chapter Five
    Simple. That was what Joan had said hours ago. However, it was becoming anything but. She fell asleep once they hit a stretch of highway free from bumper to bumper traffic. They cleared the vast metropolis of Los Angeles County and he began to look for a place where they could rest overnight. While he was searching the GPS in his phone for suitable lodging, the traffic slowed again.
    Trying to ascertain the reason for the slowdown, he was dismayed to note it was due to an alert posted on the huge amber signs above the freeway. His heart clenched a bit to note that the license plate displayed was his.
    He checked out the drivers surrounding him and was relieved to note they didn’t seem to be in the least interested in him. Instead of sticking around, he decided their best course of action would be to keep going. He wasn’t about to let Joan fall into the hands of the authorities before they had a leg to stand on. True, she had the footage, but it was just the original copy. He knew they would grill her and disbelieve her until it was verified.
    Even then, there were many little ‘accidents’ it could sustain, rendering it useless before corroborating her story. If that happened, she’d be in for the fight of her life and on her own. Even though he had diplomatic immunity, he would be deported and the full brunt of this mess would fall on Joan’s shoulders. All because she tried to help him. The only honorable thing for him to do would be to stick around and help her out of this mess.
    Not to mention the fact that Joan’s videotape was solid proof he hadn’t embarrassed his country by exhibiting poor personal financial management skills. The backbone of his nation’s economy was based on the loans they made to other nations around the world. If they got wind of a chink in his armor, so to speak, all of those deals could be put in serious jeopardy.

    However, remaining in the United States put a bit of a crimp in his plans. He needed to return to Rafferstonia where a million and one things awaited his attention before his marriage and coronation. He needed to act upon the investment opportunities he’d developed during his year away. Hearing about Marlachina’s upcoming nuptials took a bit of the urgency out of his need to enact the plans right away. He no longer feared she was out to upstage him. However, his coronation was only a short time away and he had no less than seventy-‐-eight new business partnerships he intended to enter into before then. There was the little matter of his finding a bride within that same time span. Delaying his return home would impact the task more than any of his other concerns.
    According to the last email he received from his mother, she had no less than thirty-‐-three suitable young ladies for him to interview upon his return. The thought of it made him cringe. Still, there was no one to blame except himself. Tom’d known almost from birth he’d need a wife before his coronation during his thirty-‐-
    fifth year. Instead of wasting his time with women unfit to meet even his staff, he should have been focusing on meeting the ‘nice women of substance’