She sighed. “That’s not true… It is now. But it wasn’t before.”

Her forceful rebuttal dissolved with a drop of her shoulders. What was her inflection? Unease or… Sadness? Whatever she felt it made him uncomfortable. He was out of practice with souped-up emotional interactions. She didn’t even make sense. Nothing but a carnival ride of crazy. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But we can work something out, if you stop being so cryptic.”

He flexed his grip on the steering wheel. What the hell did he care anyway? He had the package. For the time being, that was his only objective, and he’d accomplished it. But his curiosity was another thing. Why did a sweater-set-wearing, librarian-look-alike want anything of Titan’s?

As if reading his thoughts, she piped up in a hoarse whisper. “The person who owned that package told me to get it.”

She wasn’t giving him a lot, and the vagueness did nada to pacify his interest.

“You’re wrong. I was tasked with the pickup.” He didn’t want to scare her and summoned any empathy he might have squirreled away. “The owner hired my company to retrieve that package.”

“Well, Mr. Winters, that’s the difference. Owned versus owns.”

Mia didn’t elaborate, and he tried to decipher her meaning. What was she talking about—owned versus owns?

He ran his hand through his hair. It was too shaggy and unkempt. He needed a haircut and a shave. The scruff on his face was a scant thicker than usual, though he liked to keep a menacing shadow. Men backed off, and danger-junkie women gravitated toward him. Win-win.

He adjusted the sunglasses and focused more at her than at the road while he drove. “Why don’t we start from the beginning?”

“Why don’t you?” Her smirk was still defiant. She didn’t carry herself like a professional operative and didn’t act like someone on a job. But her challenging attitude took some major cojones.

Given the last hour or so, she had reason to act that way, but it was still unfamiliar. Not a lot of people gave him shit. Not a lot of people questioned him. Never a petite woman dressed like an Easter egg. But Mia doled out the brashness by the bucketful.

“Answering my questions with questions isn’t going to get us anywhere. Though you entertain me to no end.”

She scrunched up her face. “What do you want to know?”

“For starters, where are you from?”

“Alexandria, Virginia. Right outside DC,” she said.

“Well, so am I. How about that?”

Her eyes flashed.

His sarcastic quip was too much. He still needed to calm it down. Why couldn’t he handle this simple interrogation? “What sent you to Louisville?”

“A client needed me to help him with something.”

“And your client is…?” He let the question trail, hoping she would answer. But she didn’t. Instead, she focused on smoothing her shoulder-length hair, which stuck out in various directions. Her messed hair was his fault, after he grabbed her like a bag of tactical gear. “Doesn’t seem like a good client, sending you to do his dirty work. It’s actually a jackass move.”