by Misty Evans
He held on to the shoe a few seconds longer than necessary, willing her to look at him. When she finally lifted her gaze, he saw that she wasn’t scared or even all that shook up. If anything, she looked excited.
Exhilarated.
The same way he was feeling. Alive.
A brush with death could do that to you.
Or maybe the weird light and the adrenaline still coursing through his veins were playing tricks on him. “It was damn stupid.”
Indignation flashed in her eyes. Her hair was sticking out on the left side. “Guess what?”
He released the shoe. “What?”
She braced herself against him for balance as she tugged the shoe back on. “I didn’t find a pothole.”
His fingers itched to fix her hair. Strangers don’t touch strangers. “Good for you.”
“Conflicting stories.” She stood upright again, but swayed a little as if dizzy. The hand on his arm gripped him a little tighter. “You know what that means.”
“Yeah, no one in the department of transportation actually knows what’s going on.”
“At least on this bridge, they didn’t today. The day the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was accidentally killed.” Her hand intentionally squeezed his arm. “Suspicious, don’t you think?”
More blood ran down her leg. He glanced away from her excited eyes and listened to the soft swoosh of traffic on the other side of the divider.
There was a lot that didn’t add up, and a nagging voice in the back of his head kept insisting that tonight’s drive-by might not be an accident. Not a drunk driver.
But he still didn’t have anything more concrete than Lodestone’s original tip. His journalist here wanted a story. A story they didn’t have yet. “What I think,” he said, peeling her hand from his arm and guiding her to his truck, “is that we should get you patched up.”
“I’m fine.” Against her protests, he hauled her up into the truck cab. “What are you doing?”
His better judgment said he should take her to her place and let her clean up her wounds on her own. When do I ever listen to my better judgment?
He shut the door without answering, jogged to her car, moved it off the bridge to the emergency parking area on the D.C. side, locked it up and hauled ass back to his truck. They’d come back for the car tomorrow, when he could check the bridge, and the lack of potholes, in the light of day.
On his way back to the truck, he passed the busted flashlight. Bending down, he ran his fingers through the broken plastic. What if he hadn’t shown up when he did? What if Hope was now lying injured or dead on this bridge?
He looked up and saw her watching him through the windshield of the truck. From her expression, he could see she was thinking the same thing.
When he climbed into the cab and started the truck, she was still staring at him. “That was very Bruce Willis of you back there. Thank you. But I can drive myself home.”
She smiled and it was genuine, but he could see her hands were still shaking in her lap. So damn naïve.
For a moment, he wanted to share everything with her. All the stuff he’d learned through the years. All the wrongs he had yet to right.
But she was a cheerleader. A believer. A hopeless idealist who thought the world was just and fair.
This time, he gave in, reaching over to smooth down her tousled hair. She didn’t move away, but he could see the uneasiness in her eyes.
The aftermath of what she’d just been through would catch up with her in short order. As an adrenaline junkie himself, he knew from experience, the rush would drain off and she’d be depleted, totally wiped. She might even go into shock.
“You shouldn’t drive. We’ll pick up the car tomorrow.”
“I’m fine, Mr. Hawkeye,” she said again.
He had to tread lightly. Forcing her to come home with him—what was he thinking?—would only push her away.
“Of course you are.” He started the truck and put it in gear. “I have something I’d like to show you, though. Something I think you’ll find interesting.”
As he pulled onto the road, he sensed her hesitation in the tense silence filling the space between them. “The car will be fine until morning. I have some new info to share with you. Unless you’re too tired, Miss Denby. It has been a rough day for a Public Information Officer.”
Throwing down a challenge did the trick. The indignation inserted itself in her voice again. “I could go all night, Mr. Hawkeye, and for your information, it’s not an issue.”
Bingo. He had her.
“So where is this thing you want to show me?” Hope asked.
Taking the off ramp, he kept an eye on the rearview. No cars on his tail. “My office.”
Which was stupid beyond stupid, but he had no other choice if he was going to keep an eye on her.
“You have an office?”
Sort of. “Why is that hard to believe? You think all lowlife bloggers blog from their mother’s basements?”
Sarcasm laced her voice. “Don’t they?”
At least she wasn’t freaking out about the car gunning for her. No tears, no rehashing of what happened or endless chatter. Hope seemed to live in the moment. Something he wished he could do.
He changed lanes, taking a roundabout way to his house. “Hackers, yes. Maybe a few bloggers here and there, but the majority of us are upstanding citizens. We own property, pay our taxes, and—”
“Quote Thomas Paine?” she interrupted.
“I was going to say, vote.”
“Ah.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. His neighborhood was dark, his house as well. His gaze automatically scanned the vehicles parked in driveways and on the street. Nothing out of place.
He parked and they both got out. Hope stopped on the sidewalk. “Your office looks suspiciously like a house.”
“I hide in plain sight.”
“Good to know.”
Once inside, he flipped on lights and armed his security system. Hope stood unmoving, her gaze sweeping over his shabby, but comfortable furnishings. “Let me guess, your office is in the basement and your mother lives in the attic.”
“Not a hacker, remember?” He took her coat and motioned for her to sit on the recliner. “Would you like a drink?”
“I don’t suppose you have a decent chardonnay?”
He went to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water. On his way back, he ducked into the bathroom to snag a washcloth and some bandages.
Returning to the living room, he set up his collection on the coffee table, handing her the water. “Any dizziness?”
She turned up a lip at the water, but took a swig. “What is this thing you’re going to show me?”
Dizziness confirmed. He covertly checked her pupils as she tipped her head up for another drink. He thought he’d protected her head on the roll, but everything had happened so fast, she might have smacked it at some point.
Pupils normal. A bit dilated, but they were equal in size.
Handing her the washcloth, he sat on the coffee table facing her. “Your office isn’t above scandal.”
“Meaning?”
“The woman who had your job before you. Did you ever meet her?”
“Sally Hernandez?” She washed the blood off of her leg. “She was gone before I started.”
“Do you know why?”
Hope tilted her head and sized him up. “She got another job in Minnesota or some place.”
He took the washcloth from her and wiped at some dried blood near her ankle. “She was sleeping with Justice Robinson.”
“What?” Her outrage seemed to override her nervousness about his touch. “You’re kidding.”
“She was sleeping with a lobbyist with the NRA at the same time.”
“No.”
Tossing the washcloth aside, he peeled the paper off the bandage and handed it to her. Nosy journalist types always loved a good scoop. “I have evidence if you want to see it. One of my sources is
inside the FBI. She showed me phone records and a transcript of some pillow talk. They believe Hernandez fed court information to the lobbyist for nearly two years before the Feds caught on.”
She held the bandage, her eyes alight with excitement again. Her body practically vibrated. “And you didn’t break the story?”
He knew that feeling. God help him, she was turned on because of a scoop. Welcome to my world. “When they confirmed her involvement, they made her quit. She was shipped off to Minnesota.”
“Why didn’t the Justice Department make a stink?”
“Think about it. This was going on for two years. Every ruling Justice Robinson made during that timeframe could be called into question. The scandal would have been embarrassing, but any of the rulings he sat on could have been overturned. The fallout would have been catastrophic.”
She still held the bandage, totally ignoring her wound. “So they cut a deal. Her silence for a new job and a new life.”
“All Robinson got was a slap on the hand. And a divorce.”
“What happened to the lobbyist?”
“Committed suicide.”
She scooted to the edge of the seat. “Seriously?”
“There was a note saying he was depressed and couldn’t go on, but it was typed.”
“It wasn’t a suicide, was it?”
Her assumption was accurate in his book. He took the bandage from her hand and carefully positioned it over the cut on the outside of her knee. “What do you think?”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and tapped her chin with a finger. “Who would have killed him?”
Brice shrugged indifference even though he was anything but. He’d kept a lid on this story for a host of reasons, and now he finally had someone to talk it out with, keeping Hope around at the same time.
And whoa, why did his lower body get inordinately happy at that thought? He was only making sure she was alright and didn’t go into shock.
Right, and Elvis was alive and the Pope was his father.
He ran a thumb over the bandage edges to make sure they adhered properly to her skin. Her calf flexed. Nice skin. Smooth, soft…
She cleared her throat and he snatched his hand back. Got busy crunching up the paper. “Who killed the lobbyist? I don’t know, but it would be fun to look into.”
“I don’t think Ms. Hernandez, or this killer, if there is one, should get away with what they did.” Her face was still close to his. Too close. She smelled like fresh air and some kind of floral perfume.
He shrugged. “I agree. But there’s not enough evidence to risk the fallout that would occur if I released the story. That’s why I’m telling you this.” He met her gaze. “I want you to know I take this seriously. I understand the responsibility and I’m sure as hell not going to release a story until it’s ready to be told.”
“Wow.”
“Wow?”
Her face split into an all-teeth smile. “That totally just turned me on.”
Holy shit. Keeping his distance, he held up his hands. “Great. Good to know.”
She snorted. “I’m a freak. A good scoop makes me giddy. And I love that you have a sense of integrity about it. A lot of people don’t. They want the drama and the scandal, no matter the cost. The Hernandez story? Plenty of bloggers and reporters would have let that baby fly.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Maybe after we clear up Turner’s investigation, we should, you know, look into it. Together.”
She wanted to work with him to expose a scandal that could rock her employer?
Her big, blue eyes swallowed him up; the offer of help nearly undid him. “Um, sure.” He stood and headed for his computer. Safe harbor from the onslaught of Hope Denby. “If you want. We can look into it.”
He prayed she’d want.
“Cool. I’d have to stay the silent partner though.” The recliner creaked and Hope came to stand behind him as he checked his website’s hit counter. Her hand brushed his shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of me even though I didn’t need it.”
Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Forty-eight hundred hits on his FBI hacker story. Not bad. The story was being spread around social media as well. “Yeah, no problem.”
She leaned over his shoulder, reading the blog post. “So what do your blogger instincts tell you about today?”
Her breath tickled his ear, messing with his thought processes. “Today?”
“You still think Chief Justice Turner was murdered over the Kenton Labs deal?”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“We have a lot of smoke.”
At that moment, he had some fire, too, a few inches below his belt.
Fidgeting, he checked his Twitter feed. Lots of retweets and comments. His eyes scanned them, but his brain wouldn’t engage. All he kept seeing was that car’s lights coming on, hearing the engine gun, that funny tick-tick-tick. Hope standing frozen like a petrified deer. “Did you notice anyone following you today? Any suspicious cars or people hanging around? Any unusual activity around your house tonight?”
She straightened. “No, why?”
“When you went to the bridge, did you notice any cars following you, staying close? Maybe too close?”
She hesitated for a second. “You don’t really believe it was a drunk driver on the bridge, do you?”
Swiveling in his chair, he faced her. He hated the guarded look in her eyes, but he gave it to her straight. “No, Hope, I don’t. My blogger instincts and every other instinct honed by the military and ATF tells me that was no drunk driver. I think someone was purposely trying to run you down.”
Hope flopped back onto the couch, stared right at Hawk whose gaze was on her, steady and unsettling. He had a way of not just looking, but dissecting—analyzing—a person. Almost as if he were digging for the underlying truth. As a journalist, she understood. But this? This was something else. Something deep and intense and probing. He must have been awesome at questioning suspects.
Particularly female ones because he had those panty-dropper eyes that totally made her hormones come alive.
Which was saying something since he’d just told her someone had tried to kill her, or at the very least maim her—wasn’t that just oodles of fun—and all she could think about was her hormones.
Eight hours ago all she’d wanted was to keep Hawk from releasing an unconfirmed story and now suddenly she was a target?
“You don’t believe me.” Hawk said, obviously referring to his assertion that someone intentionally tried to make her road kill.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
She rested her head back against the soft cushion, closed her eyes a second and fought the fatigue slowing her brain functions. “I guess I don’t see it yet.”
“That someone tried to run your ass over? What’s not to see?”
Great. Combative. Perfect. She could tangle with the best of them. Fast-talking wasn’t a problem. At least when she wasn’t bone tired. In her current state, after the day she’d had and well, the whole almost-road-kill incident, the words circling her brain wouldn’t string together into a rational argument.
“No,” she said. “I mean, obviously I get that. What I don’t see is how the fact that someone almost hit me equals someone coming after me because I’m asking questions about the Chief Justice. It’s late and like you said, maybe I was careless to be walking on the bridge like that. It could have been a drunk driver. Or someone messing with their phone because traffic was so light. Maybe they just flat out didn’t see me.”
“Hope! Are you kidding me right now? Jeez.”
She tossed her hands up, not really frustrated but feeling a bit of drama might be necessary to back this boy off. Paranoid or not, concerned or not, he didn’t get to yell at her. Find the upshot. ”Hey. I just want to make sure we’re on the right track here. That’s all. I’m not dismissing it. I just want to be sure.” She curled her le
gs up under her, fiddled with the bandage on her leg. “We’re a funny pair. You’re Mr. Paranoid and I’m…”
“Miss Rah-Rah.”
She stretched her mouth wide. The nerve! ”You did not just say that to me.”
“Yeah, I did. You want everything nice and tidy. My guess is you see the world as a beautiful place. All flowers and sunshine. You’re young and idealistic. You can overcome any issues.” He swung a fist in the air. “If we all stick together, we can make a difference. Rah, rah. Go, team!”
Seriously. The blogger was mocking her? She liked to stay positive and upbeat. So what? It was a whole lot better than living life his way. Miserable and paranoid. “Listen, old man—that’s what I’m going to call you from now on because you keep reminding me that I’m young and you’re too darned crabby for a man your age. Well fine. Whatever. Are you done making fun of me? Because if you are, I will tell you that yes, I like to see the world a certain way. When I wake up in the morning, I expect it to be a good day. In this crazy, sadistic world, what’s wrong with wanting to feel happy instead of...instead of...”
“Cynical?”
“Yes! Cynical. I mean you walk around telling people your name is Hawkeye for God’s sake.”
“I’m dealing with crackpots. One of them could come to my door and blow my ass away.”
“And you enjoy your life like that?” She waved her hand around the living room where thick, heavy drapes covered every window. By the dust on the top, she guessed those suckers hadn’t budged in months. The entire place felt like a cave. One he obviously hid in all day long. “You like living with your blinds and drapes closed like this?”
His lips rolled in and pressed into a thin line before he tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling a minute. Thinking about it.
Some life you got there, sport. “I can’t believe it takes you this long to decide if you like your life.”
“It doesn’t. I do like my life. I like it better now than when I was an agent with ATF. Now, I at least feel like I’m doing some good.”
“Careful there, you’re starting to sound like an idealist. Before we know it you’ll be opening these drapes and letting the sun in while shouting ‘Go team!’ and toasting me with the Hope Denby happy juice.”