Six shrugged. "I don't know about that. I think you're way braver than I am. I can't imagine what it must be like living in the shadow of such a debilitating disease."
Louisa let go of his hand and stood. She wandered to the railing that overlooked the water and turned back to face him. "It's not debilitating. It's deadly. Usually within fifteen to twenty years of the onset. But my dad didn't die directly from the disease." She pulled an elastic band from her wrist and pulled her hair up into a ponytail.
He stood. "What happened?" he asked, and followed to lean on the railing next to her.
"The most characteristic symptom of Huntington's is the chorea, the jerky movements. My dad had already started to show some neuropsychiatric manifestations, but the medication he took for the chorea exacerbated it." Her nose twitched and she looked upward, blinking tears away. "He went from anxiety and depression to suicide in a matter of months. I was the one who found him hanging in the garage."
"Oh, Lou," he said as he stood. He scooped her into his arms and pulled her close to his chest. He kissed the top of her head.
Once more she took a step back as she swallowed deeply, but thankfully she didn't pull away from his arms, where, of course she shouldn't be in the first place. But he didn't give a damn.
"He'd killed himself shortly after I left for school and my mom had gone to LA to visit a friend. By the time I found him, he'd been dead in our baking hot garage for nine hours."
Six thought about the way bodies decomposed in hot temperatures. The smell alone would have been enough to make her ill. And hanging. Christ. People occasionally lost their shit. Literally. Violent death was not something anyone should have to witness.
"I'm sorry. That's a horrible thing."
"Yeah. Well. Now you understand why it means so much to me. The meds that were supposed to help with his symptoms pushed him over the edge. That's why I need to find something to help with this while others race for a cure for the disease as a whole. That might take a really long time because it doesn't get the kind of funding that cancer does. So this feels like something I can do."
Unable to resist, he pulled her close again, and she went willingly. "We're going to figure this out, Lou. I promise you. I don't know how long it is going to take, but I promise you we will. And hopefully the CIA route will come through today so I don't need to circumvent the police. They have due process, and warrants, and fewer means of making people talk. This contract will give us a different kind of latitude to get things done quickly. We'll keep the police and the feebs, the FBI, posted every step, but we'll do it our way."
"What happens now that some of the dust has settled?"
He brushed the wisps of her bangs away from her face with his thumb. "We go back home and see what we've got. Line up all the pieces. And I'm going to put a tracker on your phone and one in your shoe. If for whatever reason they are able to get past us all-if they do get to you-I'll be able to find you. They might take your phone, but they aren't going to take your shoes."
Louisa nodded. "Agreed. Put as many as you want on me. It'll make me feel safer. What about … never mind."
"No, go ahead. What about what?"
"Nothing. Honestly," she said. She slipped out of his arms, and he hated the loss of her. "I'm anxious to get home and get started."
She set off down the path they'd walked up without so much as a look backward.
He had a feeling she had been about to ask about his own demons.
And if she had, he might have told her.
CHAPTER TEN
Victor Lemtov wasn't a part of the Russian Mafia, which according to Six was a brilliant thing because organized crime had arms and legs and relationships with other families. So the threat's reach wasn't as far as it could have been, but this, too, was a double-edged sword. Lemtov was flying below the radar. Minor transgressions, usually involving shoddily organized henchmen, had set him back, but the localized dealing and death of minor dealers couldn't be pinned on him, no matter how hard law enforcement tried. Kidnapping and abduction of non-drug-related targets seemed to be a bigger playing field than he was used to, and the FBI were interested in his ramped-up operations which was apparently causing a little pushy-shovey between Six's CIA and feeb contacts over Eagle Securities' involvement. But as Six had promised, his contact had come through, and now Eagle was officially acting with their consent.
After their walk, they'd returned to Six's house and he'd shown her how to load and fire one of his guns. He'd told her what make it was, but she couldn't remember, only that it had felt cold and heavy in her hand. Then he'd resumed the protective-bodyguard thing, putting the distance back between them. It was driving her crazy because she could totally tell he'd checked her out occasionally during their time on the beach. And when he'd pulled her into his arms, she could have sworn his breath caught a little. Or maybe that was because she'd hugged him a touch too aggressively.