“So you think someone might have laced something in his bathroom?”
“The toothpaste? Or the mouthwash? Or maybe it was in the air vents? Is that possible?”
Hayden’s eyes landed on my face, filled with something like a new respect.
“I think it’s very possible.”
My heart soared. I wanted to giggle but I pushed it down, holding it in as best as I could.
Hayden moved up beside me, laid his hand on my shoulder. “You’re an asset to this firm, Amelia.”
“Thank you.”
I felt eyes on me as Hayden left the room. McGregor was watching from the living room, a knowing look on his face. I wanted to wipe it away, afraid Hayden would take one look at him and know what he was thinking. It was illogical, but it upset me just the same.
They were finished not long after that and then everyone was gone but McGregor. I didn’t know what to do with him. In the past when I was alone with a client it was usually in the client’s house or a safe house, a neutral location. This was as far as neutral as it could get. This was my home, my space. This was where I let my hair down—so to speak—where I was myself to the very core of who I was. This was not a place where I welcomed strangers.
“Food would be good,” he suggested as I stood in the middle of the living room, probably looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” he said, patting his hard, flat abs.
My mind wandered for a second, comparing those abs to the ones Hayden proudly sported. They were of similar build, Hayden impressively keeping up with his Navy SEAL physique. Why a robotics expert would have a similar physique was curious, but not unheard of, I supposed. Men these days liked to keep themselves in what was considered ideal condition, right? Not a lot of dad bods around the singles’ scene.
But their bodies and their height were about the only thing they had in common. Hayden was blond, a goatee defining the shape of his full mouth. McGregor had dark hair and was clean shaven, his body lacking the tattoos I’d seen hints of under Hayden’s thin button down shirts. McGregor had this sort of smoldering heat, too, this thing about him that made him feel dangerous.
Hayden was standoffish, the kind of guy who seemed like a pillar of strength that would forever be apart from everyone around him. McGregor had this sort of longing about him, a sense that he needed someone at his feet worshipping him in order to make his life make sense.
Two very different men, yet there was this same sort of pull that made me want to have these dark thoughts.
I shook my head, telling myself I was being stupid. McGregor was a killer. The last woman who’d been in his bed hadn’t woken up the next morning.
“Food,” he repeated, walking into my kitchen, yanking open the refrigerator door. “Surely you eat.”
“On occasion.”
He started pulling things out, setting them on the counter as he dug through, making little noises every time he came to something he either didn’t understand or didn’t approve of. He held up a bottle of hot sauce and made a face at me.
“There are better things to drip on your food, my love.”
“I’m not your love. And I only use that on occasion.”
The truth was, I bought it because I saw Hayden use it once. I didn’t particularly like it.
“If you’re going to ruin your food with condiments, you should use quality condiments. That’s just sad.”
He moved to the cupboards, pulling out a box of pasta and giving me a look that suggested I was pitiful for using dried pasta. There was rice, potato flakes … he tossed it all toward the trash, acting as though he’d found nothing but take out menus in my drawers.
“You know, I paid for that stuff. And I’ll just have to buy more when you leave.”
“As long as I’m here, you’re going to eat much better.”
And then he began to cook, doing things with a frying pan I’d never seen before, not even on the cooking shows I sometimes indulged in. I stopped arguing with him and settled at the table, sipping wine as he described the meal he was making.
“Chicken Maine is made with carrot juice that’s been reduced into a thick syrup. And then we have a fresh peach salsa with fine cut peaches mixed with sweet onion and a mild jalapeño. And for dessert, because you always need dessert, we have a lovely blackberry cobbler.”
“You made all that with the stuff in my kitchen?”
“It was a struggle finding fresh ingredients, but yes.”
I couldn’t believe how good it smelled. I moved up behind him to take a better look at the chicken, but he elbowed me out of the way.
“How did you learn to cook?” I asked, managing to get a crumb of skin off one piece of drumstick anyway.
“It’s a good stress reliever.”
“Yeah?”
“I learned in college … this girl …”
“Should have known.”
He shrugged. “The lessons stuck, the girl didn’t.”
“That should tell you something.”
He snorted. “Maybe.”
I watched as he put the food on the table, setting everything up like it was a five star restaurant. No one had ever cooked for me before, let alone done it with so much class. I felt self-conscious as I took a seat across from him, sitting up properly, trying to remember etiquette my mother taught it to me. He smiled politely as he gestured for me to take a bite.
“Bon appetit.”
The first bite was like nirvana. I closed my eyes so that the tastes and textures exploding over my tongue could have my full attention. It was almost a sensual experience. The food was sweet and spicy, warm and cold, bitter and so beautifully sweet. I couldn’t get enough of it, needing another bite once the last was done.
“Is it good?”
“Good is not the word for it!”
He laughed, picking up his own fork for the first time. I found myself watching him moving the food around his plate with his fork, not really tasting any of it.
“You should eat. You made it.”
“I know, I just …” He looked up at me. There was pain in his eyes, and it wasn’t all physical pain. But then it disappeared and he took a large bite of his chicken, holding it between his fingers. “Fucking fantastic.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then curiosity filled his eyes as he studied my face.
“So, how long have you been in love with Dubois?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, now,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “You and I both know what’s going on here. Why deny it?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“I’m stuck here for the next few days. It’s better than focusing on my situation.”
“I don’t think talking about my private business—”
“Was your father a cruel man? Is that why you feel the need to love from a distance? I bet you’ve never had a real lover, a man you could feel an equal with.”
I don’t know what shocked me more about his words: the fact that he was right, or the fact that he had the nerve to judge me at all.
“What would you know about it? I bet you’ve always had exactly what you wanted.”
He laughed even as I got up, carried my plate to the sink and tossed it in, like breaking my own dishes would punish him in some way.
“You know nothing about me.”
“And you know nothing about me!”
He got up and came toward me, but then moved around me like he’d never intended to even acknowledge me. He set his own plate in the sink quite nicely, undermining what I’d done.
“We are all the sum of our experiences,” he said, that Irish brogue heavier and his voice lower by a few octaves. “But that doesn’t mean we have to always suffer the darkness our parents dumped on us.”
“Now you’re trying to bond with me because you think we both had bad parents?” I c
rossed my arms over my chest. “Again, you know nothing about me.”
“But don’t I?” He looked me over, his eyes lingering on my chest, my hips, before coming back up to my face. “You work for a security firm, which suggests that you were in the military. The haircut, too, and the obsessive way in which you tuck in that shirt—you do realize that fitted blouses were never really meant to be tucked in, right?—all say military. And, going on what I know about Hayden Dubois, I’d guess you were in the navy. Am I right?”
He smiled as my eyes narrowed.
“I would guess that you were stationed to a ship where you felt under-utilized. Maybe you wanted to be a SEAL, but they didn’t allow it until after you were discharged, which was just your luck. That’s why you went to work for Dubois and are so devoted to him. Because he’s everything you admire in men, and he’s safe. You can love him from afar without ever risking the chance that he’ll actually love you back.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“Am I right?”
I started to brush past him, the need to flee one that had been planted inside of me from the time I was a very small child. But he wouldn’t let me go. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back around in front of him, forcing me to look him in the eye.
“Am I right?”
“Does it matter? Why do you need to know about me?”
“Because you’re the woman who stands between me and whoever is out to set me up for this murder. I want to know I can trust you.”
“Humiliating me helps you build trust?”
“Why is it humiliating?” He seemed genuinely confused. “You should be pleased I want to know you.”
“Why? Because you think you’re someone special?”
“No. Because so few people try to reach out to others anymore, trying to get to know one another anymore. Because one-on-one interaction is becoming archaic.”
I pulled away from his touch, stepping back enough that I didn’t feel the heat from his body radiating toward mine. I didn’t want to feel the intimacy of touch while all these things were raging through me: anger, fear, disgust, humiliation. I didn’t want to have to admit that a little of what he was saying was true.
“I spend my days locked in an office working on a computer, writing code and imagining the robots that will come to life because of my code. There is no human interaction in that and, after a while, it becomes a burden to me, a weight that makes me crave a simple conversation.” He smiled softly, a smile he must have thought was intensely charming. “Maybe I’m getting rusty at it.”
“You’re an asshole.”
I started toward the living room again. Once again he grabbed my arm. I immediately spun around to slap him, my hand raised, palm out, ready to make contact with that smug expression of his. But then his lips were on mine and he was turning me, pressing me back against the kitchen counter.
I was so caught off guard that I didn’t know what to do. I think I might have stiffened slightly, but then he was asking my lips to part and let him inside. And that … my brain simply short-circuited. I responded and I wasn’t sure why. His lips were just so soft, and he tasted of carrots and peaches with just the right bite of heat.
How long had it been since I’d been kissed that way? How long had it been since a man even saw me clearly enough to want to kiss me?
My palm found its way to his face, but not with the painful recrimination I had originally intended. I touched him, running my hand along his jaw, loving the heat of his skin, the roughness of his stubble. I moved my hand around the back of his skull, loving the contrast between the short hairs low on his head and the longer silky strands at the top. And his hands were exploring, too, moving over my narrow hips, tugging me so close to him that I could feel every hard line of his tight, fit body.
So hot … so very hot!
Just as his hand began to tug at my shirt, just as he made it pretty clear that he craved some sort of skin on skin contact, just as my nerves all came alive and ached for his every touch, the windows behind him suddenly imploded.
It took me a second to realize what was happening.
I yanked McGregor down with a handful of his shirt, pulling him out of the line of fire just as the door to the oven behind us exploded. Wood and glass and debris showered over us as we huddled on the floor. The noise came, after the debris, filling the small room with the exploding sound of a semi-automatic gun firing not far from the kitchen window. I briefly wondered if my neighbors were home, if they were in the line of fire because of my job.
“Stay here,” I barked, untangling myself from McGregor as I made my way on my knees to the living room. There was a gun in a drawer there. I got up and ran to it, checking the clip as I made my way to the front door. The instant I opened it I spotted the shooter sitting in the front seat of a nondescript SUV. I fired, drawing his attention away from the kitchen. He turned that gun on me, narrowly missing as I dove sideways. And then he was gone, the vehicle rushing away in a cloud of dust.
Back in the condo, I grabbed McGregor by the collar of his shirt.
“We have to get out of here.”
“You’re fucking insane!”
I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to the back of the condo. We slipped into my tiny yard. I made him stop while I checked the blind corners, making sure our unwanted visitors hadn’t left someone behind. Then out the back gate and down the narrow alley. We needed to get somewhere with people, somewhere with witnesses. There was a coffee shop down on the corner that was always packed. It would be perfect.
I slipped my phone out of my back pocket, almost afraid it wasn’t there when my fingers came away empty on the first try. But it was there. Speed dial one and a female voice answered.
“Gorgon,” I barked into the phone, alerting Dragon instantly to the change in our situation. The line went dead, but then the phone vibrated against my hand a moment later, just as we turned the corner and moved onto a public sidewalk that was crowded with college students grabbing their daily caffeine requirement.
I gestured for McGregor to take a seat at an outside table. I slipped into a seat across from him, searching his face for signs of damage. There were none, but his eyes were wide with fear, his breath coming in quick little puffs like he’d just run a marathon instead of walking twenty feet.
“You need to act normally,” I hissed as I leaned across the table, pretending to brush his hair back into place.
Then I sat back and turned my attention to the phone.
“We’ve been compromised.”
“Is the client still healthy?” Hayden’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Find a vehicle. Get your asses out of there.” There was a brief pause. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to help you. If you were compromised … our leak must go deeper than I imagined.”
“How will I contact you?”
“Lose your phone. Don’t use anything that can be connected back to you or to us. Disappear. Wait twenty-four hours and then get a burner phone. We’ll give you further instructions then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be careful, Amelia.”
I bit my lip, a rush of guilt washing over me even as pleasure bloomed in my chest.
“Yes, sir.”
The call disconnected. I gestured for McGregor to stay put as I casually headed into the store. Sirens could be heard in the distance, coming closer as the seconds passed. There were people everywhere, college kids scattered among the tables, their laptops open in front of them, women dressed in workout clothes huddled near the counter, men in business attire distracted by cellphones. I dropped my own cellphone into a trashcan and spun around, slamming into a tall man whose forward motion made my head spin.
“Sorry,” I muttered, ducking under his arm as I headed back out the door.
“Let’s go,” I hissed to McGregor, brushing past him as I headed to the small shopping center next door. This part would be the most complicated. I surveyed the parking lot, watching a
s people came and went from the little shops. The ice cream place on the corner was my best bet.
Just as the thought slipped through my head, a woman climbed out of a red minivan, yelling toward a small child who was struggling to extricate himself from his seatbelt. I waited until she was headed to the back of the van before I climbed behind the wheel, gesturing for McGregor to do the same. The distracted mother left her keys in the ignition, but didn’t seem to realize it as she continued to berate her kid as they walked into the ice cream shop. We were out of the parking lot before they’d even noticed that something might be wrong.
“You steal cars?”
“I do what I have to do.”
We hit the interstate not five minutes later, speeding at over eighty miles an hour toward Louisiana. I had no idea where we were going. It had to be somewhere no one would associate me with—not that there were a lot of places I would be associated with—but somewhere public that we could hide in plain sight. Somewhere Hayden could find us quickly and easily, but not the bad guys.
“Who’s after you?”
McGregor shook his head. “I have no clue.”
“Who would do this? Who would go to these lengths to get rid of you?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked over at him. He was sitting up straight, his hands clutched in his lap. It was obvious to me that he knew something he wasn’t sharing, but it was also pretty obvious that he was shaken by what had happened. And my gun, discarded in the console, was clearly making him nervous.
“You know much about guns?”
He nodded. “I can use one if I have to. But I’d prefer not to.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t, too. But we don’t know what we’re up against and we’re not going to get any help for a while.” I reached up and rubbed at a spot on my forehead that had begun to sting a little. My fingers came away covered in partially dried blood.
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