Don't Forget Me

by Meg Benjamin

  Fortunately, nobody seemed to be home at Casa Avrogado when they got there. She had a few moments to glimpse a slightly messy but attractive living room and small kitchen, with a large black and gray cat squarely in the middle of the table, before Nando whisked her down the hall.

  He closed the bedroom door behind her, pulling her into his arms immediately, his mouth hot upon her throat. She heard the click of a lock behind him.

  “Are you worried about Esteban coming in?”

  “Not Esteban.”

  Outside the door there was a quick scratch of claws and an unmistakably disgruntled “Mrrowr!”

  Kit managed to swallow her giggle. Moonlight spilled through the open window behind them.

  “Maybe we should pull the blinds shut?” she whispered.

  “Nobody out there. Just a patio.”

  His hands closed on her waist, soft and warm, pushing aside the bottom of her T-shirt. When she glanced up at his face, his eyes had darkened to the color of slate in the moonlight. She raised her hands to his chest, sliding them beneath his shirt to place her palms over his nipples, feeling his shiver of response. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he pulled her tighter against his body. Her legs wrapped around his, her lips parting, then he bent his head to cover her mouth with his own.

  His lips were hard upon hers, slanting slightly to take the kiss deeper, then pressing firm as she opened to him. Her body danced with heat, her pulse thundering in her ears, while his arms tightened, pulling her even closer against him. The hard swell of his arousal pressed into the V of her legs, making her ache with need. She shuddered, her hips arching up, her arms looping around his neck to draw the kiss deeper. His tongue curved around hers, and he sucked relentlessly.

  His thighs pushed against hers, pressing her backward until she felt the bedroom wall against her back. His hands reached down to cup her buttocks, pulling her up until her softness met the hard ridge of his erection. He rubbed against her, groaning deep in his throat.

  Then he was fumbling at the snap on her jeans, jerking them down along with her thong. The wall felt cool against her bare buttocks. She heard a vague ripping sound and hoped it was the thong rather than her jeans. Nando wrapped his arm around her hips, yanking her up so that her thighs fell apart. He jerked his own zipper down, freeing and sheathing his erection, and then guided himself into her depths in a single hard thrust.

  She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, holding on tight as he began to move.

  “Jesus,” he breathed into her ear. “Holy Christ.”

  The sounds that came from her throat had no relation to words, no relation to any sound she could ever remember making before. She caught her breath, her chest aching. “Ah, Nando,” she gasped. “Nando.”

  He was thrusting deep now, long, slow movements that made her shudder with need, each one setting off that starburst of pleasure in her muscles. He grasped her buttocks harder, settling her so that he rubbed against her burning core, opening her folds still further.

  The pleasure seemed to swell inside her, the tension coiling deep down, then spiraling up. Dimly she heard him groaning again as she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. His head dropped forward as he plunged more quickly.

  And then she was shattering, exploding in light, the flood of pleasure taking her up with him. She cried out once and then again, her body shuddering hard against him as he reached his own climax.

  He thrust deep a few more times, then pulled her into his arms, resting his forehead against hers. “God, Kit,” he whispered. “My god. I’ll never recover from you.”

  She brought her hand to his cheek, running her fingers across the soft skin, feeling warm and drowsy and sated. “Do you want to?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not now.”

  She caught her breath. Suddenly she was wide awake. I’ll never recover from you. Was this the right time to push it, to open up the past? Would there ever be a right time? Could she wait until there was? “Not now?”

  Nando grasped her hand, bringing it to his lips. “I mean it.”

  She licked her lips. “What you said?”

  “Yes. I mean it.”

  Her mind raced through all the options, all the words she could say, all the ways they could move forward from this. And she came up absolutely dry. “Okay,” she stammered finally.

  Okay? Okay? Eighteen months and that’s all you can think of? Okay?

  He stared at her for a moment, his lips inching up in a dry smile. “Okay then.” He reached down, gathering her up in his arms, then carried her the few steps to his bed, lowering her onto the mattress and lying down beside her.

  Kit licked her lips, trying desperately to find a way to backtrack. “I mean… I’m trying… I want…” She sighed, shaking her head as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Damn it. I don’t know how to say anything all of a sudden.”

  Nando brushed his fingers across her cheekbone. “It’s okay, Catarina. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got time.”

  Do we? Will we? She closed her eyes again, feeling the faint rasp of his fingertips across her skin. Enough. Just let it go.

  She slid her arms around him, resting her cheek against his chest, then pulled back to look at him again. “Nando?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You still have your clothes on.”

  He narrowed his eyes, glancing down at his open shirt and unzipped jeans. “So I do. I lost track.”

  She ran her fingers down his chest, lightly. “Don’t you think it might be better if you didn’t have them on?”

  She saw his grin flash in the dark as he pulled her back against him again. “Yeah, chica. I’d say it would be a lot better.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nando spent the next few days in a state of sleep deprivation. Not that he minded. He spent his nights with Kit, sometimes at his place and sometimes at hers. They slept only when they couldn’t manage to stay awake any longer. He figured Deirdre’s dark roast was the only thing keeping him from falling into a coma.

  Caffeine was also the best way to deal with the dozens of hysterical people who kept calling the station. Toleffson had been right about the citizens of Konigsburg seeing Brody behind every bush. So many sightings came in that they started taking them in batches, each patrol covering three or four in a single drive-by. Needless to say, none of them resulted in anything more than several tall, gray-haired, male Konigsburgers delivering colorful obscenities concerning their neighbors’ eyesight.

  Helen had insisted on coming back to work after two days in the hospital and another at home. Even though she still looked a little shaky, she’d been invaluable on the phones. As Nando came in, he heard her sighing. “Maxine are you sure it was Brody and not Harlan Somers? You know Harlan’s over at that garage all the time and they’re about the same size.”

  Nando sighed too, taking another swallow of dark roast. He’d probably be heading to that particular garage sometime during his shift. Wonder’s question about what Brody had left behind in the station still nagged at him. He and Delaney had already been through the building from one end to the other, but they hadn’t found much other than the original portrait of Brody that had been tucked away in the same broom closet where they kept the cleaning supplies. He placed his coffee cup on his desk and carried the portrait into Toleffson’s office.

  The chief squinted at it. “Sort of average-looking, isn’t he?”

  Nando nodded. “I never thought about it while he was here, but yeah, he’s one of those people who’d blend into a crowd. So long as he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”

  “Which we assume he isn’t at the moment,” Toleffson said dryly.

  Nando glanced around the chief’s office again. “How much of this stuff on the walls was here when you came?”

  “Pretty much all of it. Olema had a bunch of his hunting trophies around, but he took those with him. The rest of it was left over.”

  One wall had an engraving of the old Lutheran church downtown, while an
other had somebody’s watercolor of the Guadalupe River.

  “You see anything interesting about this stuff?” the chief asked.

  Nando shook his head. “Nah. But last time the map Brody was after was hanging on the wall at the bookstore.”

  “I don’t think either of these has much value.” Toleffson lifted the engraving down, turning it over and opening the paper covering on the back. “And it looks like this is the only thing in the frame.”

  Nando checked the watercolor. “Same here. Another dead end. Unless the artist is somebody famous.”

  “It wouldn’t be something on the walls anyway,” Toleffson mused. “He could have lifted that down and taken off before Helen came in here. She said he was trying to get into the desk.”

  “So how much of the stuff in the desk did you inherit from Brody?”

  The chief sighed, staring at the contents of the desk they had spread out on the folding table. “I don’t know exactly. Some of it was probably Olema’s, and some of it may even date back to whoever was chief before Brody.” He prodded a calcified stick of gum with his index finger. “I wouldn’t try chewing this, for example. It looks like it belongs in the junk food museum.”

  Nando narrowed his eyes. “Is there a junk food museum?”

  Toleffson shrugged. “If there isn’t, somebody in town will probably start one eventually.”

  “Nobody cleaned out the desk before you moved in?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I added the desk calendar and a couple of legal pads. And some working pens. Most of the ones in here were drained.”

  “What about stuff you took out of the desk?”

  Toleffson frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean stuff you put somewhere else. You said you don’t keep files in the desk, but Olema never struck me as that careful. Maybe Brody wasn’t either. Were there files or log books or something that you took out of the desk and put someplace else when you moved in?”

  The chief rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. “Olema kept the duty rosters in the desk, but I moved them out to the bullpen where people could see them.” He frowned, staring down at his desktop. “There were some case files here too. I remember because it struck me as a damn fool thing to do, keeping current files in a desk drawer instead of the file cabinet. Or better yet on line.”

  “You remember what cases?”

  Toleffson shrugged. “No. It’s too far back. The names didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Could one of them have been Brody’s file?”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then the chief blew out a breath. “I wish I could say yes, but I don’t know for sure. All I can say is maybe.”

  He headed across the hall toward the evidence room where they kept the file cabinets, along with some spare equipment that had been stowed out of the way. The Konigsburg Police Department didn’t have enough spare rooms to devote one to files and evidence alone. Toleffson pulled out one of the drawers, leafing through it until he found the file folder. “I just looked at this yesterday, but I wasn’t thinking of it as anything Brody might want.”

  He brought the file back into the office, dropping it onto the desk. Nando watched as he flipped through the pages. “Docia’s statement, Margaret Hastings’ statement, duplicates of the Rangers’ reports. And the original report on the investigation at the bookstore.” He glanced at the signature on the second page. “Ham?”

  Nando shrugged. “He was the only one left. Brody and the other full-time guy, Clete Morris, were in on the criminal conspiracy. Ham ran the investigation at this end until the sheriff took over temporarily.”

  Toleffson grimaced. “Which probably explains the quality of the work. You see anything in this file that Brody could be after?”

  Nando shook his head. “I suppose it could be something technical. I mean, the forensic accountants tracked down most of his bank accounts, including the ones overseas, and he might be after something in their reports. But I don’t know why since you’d think he’d already have all that information himself.”

  “He might not have had the account numbers with him, but they wouldn’t do him any good now anyway. They’ve been shut down.” The chief sighed. “Back to square one. He left something behind, but we don’t know what and we don’t know where.”

  “And we don’t know where he is either. A trifecta.”

  Toleffson snorted. “Go patrol, Nando. Maybe you’ll get lucky and arrest him for jaywalking.”

  Kit was dividing her time between the wedding and her job at the Rose. And Nando, but at least she was with him after hours. She rubbed a hand across her face. The combination of the three was wearing her to a frazzle, but at least the wedding would be over after the weekend. The Nando part would last longer than that. Or so she devoutly hoped.

  They were still treading carefully around talking about the past, but there didn’t seem to be any question about how they felt in the present. Of course, neither of them had said anything specific about that either.

  Kit sighed. Thinking about it gave her a headache.

  The wedding rehearsal would be tonight, the wedding itself tomorrow night. She’d already shifted her hours around to cover the wedding, although she’d probably have to run back and forth between the event center and the party room to get set up for the rehearsal dinner tonight. Theoretically, Wonder was handling everything, but these days Wonder seemed to be operating at less than peak efficiency.

  She and Joe together had finally browbeaten Mabel into hiring a new server since Philip was apparently gone for good. Kit had driven by his apartment one morning to see if he’d come back, but nobody had seen him for several days. His landlord was on the verge of clearing out what remained of his stuff and renting the place to someone else. She wondered if she should be worried about what had become of him but decided after a while to let it go. She had enough to worry about as it was.

  Now Joe leaned against the hostess desk, flipping through the thin stack of waiter applications. After a moment he paused, staring at one. “This guy works at Brenner’s?”

  Kit nodded. “Bryson Mitchell. I talked to him this morning. He’s my top pick.”

  Joe shook his head. “He’ll never come here. He’s got to be making more at Brenner’s than we’d pay him.”

  “I thought about that.” She stared down at the application. “I told him the job was for a head waiter. And I boosted the pay by a buck fifty an hour.”

  The corners of his mouth quirked up. “Did Mabel okay that?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll make sure she does.” Actually Kit wasn’t all that sure about how Mabel would react, but it was the best idea she’d come up with.

  His jaw tightened. “You tell her I okayed it. I’m in charge of the goddamn restaurant, not her. If she doesn’t stop screwing around with this place, I’ll string that bitch up by her toenails.”

  Kit put a hand on his arm. “You can do whatever you want to her—she probably deserves it. Only please, please, please wait until after the wedding. I’ve got too much on my plate right now. I can’t deal with another crisis.” She managed to keep the panic out of her voice, but it wasn’t easy.

  Joe glanced at her, then shrugged, grimacing. “Okay, darlin’, I’ll leave her alone until after you’re done. But you tell me what she says. If she doesn’t come through on this, we’re gonna have words, her and me.”

  “Oh good,” she muttered as she watched him stalk back to his kitchen. “Something else to look forward to.” She checked the dining room, confirming that the last few customers were getting ready to go, then headed up the hall toward the office.

  Mabel didn’t look particularly delighted to see her, but that wasn’t any surprise. She shuffled a stack of papers on her desk. “What is it, dear? I’m really swamped this afternoon.”

  Kit gave her a slightly rigid smile. “I just wanted to let you know I’ve found another waiter. He’s very experienced, currently with Brenner’s. He’ll be just what we need in the
dining room.”

  Mabel shrugged. “Fine. Have him fill out the paperwork and drop it off whenever he starts.”

  Kit licked her lips. Now for the fun part. “Since he’s experienced, I offered him a slightly higher salary than the one we were paying Phillip. He can serve as head waiter, which means he could double on the hostess stand in an emergency.”

  Mabel narrowed her eyes, all pretense of a smile sliding away. “How much higher?”

  “A dollar fifty an hour. It’s on par with what the other fine dining restaurants in town are paying.” She felt like crossing her fingers since she had no way to prove that was true. But it didn’t sound unreasonable.

  Mabel drummed her fingers on her desk for a moment, her gaze remarkably flinty. “I suppose that will be acceptable for the time being. We’ll review it when we review the Rose’s operation next month.”

  “Review?” Kit felt the familiar drip of ice water down her spine. “Review what exactly?”

  “Expenses.” Mabel shrugged. “I’ve already mentioned the Rose’s high operating expenses. I believe it’s dragging the rest of the inn’s earnings down. We’ll need to find ways to economize if we’re to keep the Rose open at all.”

  Kit blinked, her chest tightening. “You’d really close the Rose?”

  Mabel shrugged again. “It may not come to that. It probably won’t. But it’s a possibility I’ll explore with the inn’s management. Now, if that’s all?”

  Kit managed to push her lips into a tight smile, then turned and headed for the event center. At least she could make sure the wedding went smoothly, even if her own job was apparently hanging by a thread.

  She spent the afternoon checking with the florist and decorator to see that the event center was set up for the rehearsal, while keeping tabs on tomorrow’s reservations with call forwarding and frequent checks on her laptop. Sooner or later she’d have to tell Joe what Mabel had said, but given her choice, she’d opt for later. She had a feeling the battle would be long, bloody and loud. And she wasn’t sure who’d win in the end.