Donovan(35)
“Do we have to?”
“If we don’t want them coming down here to retrieve us.”
She groaned, but she flipped over on her back as though she was going to get up. But she didn’t. She stared up at the ceiling as though there was something fascinating stuck up there.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends,” I said, propping myself up on my elbow and using the very tip of a fingernail to trace a pattern around her nipple. It immediately puckered, turning her flesh into this dark pink field of lines and dots.
She pushed my finger away. “How did David end up in the wheelchair? Was he military, too?”
“No.” I lay back down, turning onto my back and staring up at the ceiling, too. “He was FBI. But that has nothing to do with his injury.”
“How was he hurt?”
“Car accident. He was in Austin, Texas, celebrating his father’s election to Congress when they crashed their car after slipping on some black ice.”
“Was he driving?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “That’s too bad.”
“What’s really too bad is that the paralysis might be reversible. The doctors say it’s caused by bone fragments pressing on the cord. If he had them removed, he could walk again.”
“Then why doesn’t he?”
“Guilt, I think.” I rolled over to look at her again. “He feels guilty for what happened to his parents, so he figures life in a wheelchair is proper punishment.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you wrongly accept responsibility for something that was out of your control.”
Her eyes darkened a little and her jaw tightened. She climbed off the bed, reaching down to grab her panties from off the floor.
I reached for her, and she looked back at me. No smile. But no hatred beaming from her eyes either.
“What’s the deal with Kirkland?” she asked.
I shrugged, laying back to enjoy the show of her getting dressed. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have at my side when there’s trouble,” I said. “He and Ash and Joss are the best at what they do. And he’s a charmer.”
“I caught that.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to remember that show this morning. “It comes in handy when we have a female target who’s falling apart. But it’s sort of like the wrap party of a porn movie having breakfast with him.”
Kate started to laugh. But then she stopped in the middle of sliding her sweater over her head, her eyes wide when she finally tugged it over her head.
“What?”
“I think I just remembered something.”
I sat up as she settled back down on the edge of the bed. I knew not to push her, but I was anxious to hear what she had to say. The sooner we got her out of danger, the better.
“When you said porn…” She tilted her head slightly. “I remember I was thinking about a loan application that had come in over the weekend. A business loan.”
“For a porn site? Does your bank do that?”
She shook her head, raising a finger to silence me. “Brothel,” she said slowly, and then she smiled brightly. “It was an older gentleman who wanted to open a social club for men his age. But what he proposed was basically a brothel for senior citizens.”
I laughed. “Well, I suppose equal treatment…”
She glanced at me and smiled. “Would you go to something like that?”
“When I’m seventy and my wife is dead? Hell, yeah!”
She slapped my arm. But then that look came into her eyes again.
“I was thinking about it as I walked to the parking lot. And then…”
I waited a minute. And then two. Then three.
“And then?”
She sort of stretched her neck, doing this little thing that made it clear she was struggling with her thoughts.
“I saw something.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Someone was in the alley. I thought it was just the security lights glinting off of something, but then it moved. And I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t see who it was or what he was doing, but I knew something was off.”
I slid my arm around her so that she knew she wasn’t alone. That she was safe. She shivered as she nestled against me, burying her head against my shoulder for a second.
“I was scared. I remember that. But I don’t know why.”
“Had something else happened?”
She didn’t answer me right away, but I had this feeling deep in my gut that there was more to this story than anyone had bothered to find out. Even me.
“Somebody broke into my car a couple of weeks ago.”