five
KADANCE UNLOCKED her apartment door and walked inside.
Lyndon followed her inside and then closed and locked the door. “Why did you decide to bring me here?”
She picked up Mac and cradled him to her chest. He’d been all tough saunter from the car to the door, but she knew he was freaked out from that crazy car ride. He nuzzled into her and took a deep breath. She turned away from Lyndon and whispered against Mac’s fur. “I’m sorry, buddy. You’re safe now.”
Lyndon was quiet while she comforted Mac. She didn’t much care if he thought she was an idiot for being so concerned about a cat. She rested her cheek against the top of his head, and finally Mac started purring.
“Is he all right?” Lyndon asked.
She turned and looked at him, ready with her walls up to defend against stupid jokes about how she wasn’t as tough as she liked to think.
But he didn’t make any jokes. He was looking at Mac with concern. “I’m sorry that all scared him. I didn’t even think about it.”
“He’s fine.” He’d been through a lot worse, and he still liked to be with her. Sometimes she felt selfish for not giving him to some quiet family in the country, but he’d made it clear over the years that he wanted to be with her. Simply because he liked her. She’d never had that before.
Lyndon looked around at the complete lack of furniture or anything else. “This is your apartment?”
“I just moved in.”
“Your stuff is with the moving company still?”
“That’s my stuff.” She nodded toward her duffle on the floor.
He raised his eyebrows. Then he looked from the old duffle to her. “Must be kind of freeing.”
She shrugged. Then she turned and walked around the small room that encompassed the living, bedroom, and kitchen areas. She paused by the window and opened the blinds so Mac could look outside.
“Can I ask why you brought me here?” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Do you have any idea who that was in the black truck?” he asked.
“I assume he was hired by whomever wants you dead.”
He paused. “I’m not sure they were aiming at me.”
She looked over her shoulder at him with an incredulous expression.
“The path of the bullet was closer to you than to me,” he said.
She turned back to the window. She’d noticed that but assumed the guy wasn’t that great of a shot. “Your admirer needs to hire more skilled thugs.”
She felt in his silence that he wasn’t sure it was so simple. He was a scientist—not willing to accept the most obvious answer if he hadn’t fully explored all other options, even if it was by far the most plausible. She let him have his doubts. She didn’t have the freedom for such exercises.
Finally, he spoke again. “Thank you for your trust.”
“My what?”
“You must trust me a little, or else you wouldn’t have brought me here.”
She opened her mouth to point out that she wasn’t exactly tied down to this place. But then a calm voice came out of her mouth. “You’re welcome.”
He didn’t really smile—more like looked at her with a friendly expression.
Mac looked up at her and meowed.
She set him down on the floor, walked over to her duffle, took out a big ziplock bag of cat food, and set it on the floor open for him. She took a small plastic bowl out of the bag, filled it with water, and set it next to the open bag. He crunched at the food.
“How’d you know that’s what he wanted?”
“He likes to eat. Can’t you tell?”
“He’s a big boy, but he looks like mostly muscle.” Then he took a breath and sat down on the floor with his back leaned against the wall.
“Now that you have a minute to think,” Kadance said, “where do you plan on going?”
“Thanks for giving me that minute to think.” When he looked at her with that open honesty, it freaked her out a little. “I really appreciate your help. Not many people would have done what you’ve done.”
She sat down across from him, her back against the kitchen cabinets. Mac was between them crunching away.
“So,” he said, “are you going to tell me anything about who you are?”
“Not much to know.”
“That’s not usually the case when most of a person’s history has been scrubbed. Who did that? The government?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“The options are likely either you were involved with something high-level in the government—probably classified operations of some kind given your skillset—or you have a nefarious past and managed to get it scrubbed yourself.”
She met his gaze for several seconds, ignoring how the color shifted in the light, sometimes more gray and sometimes more green. He didn’t look at her with the intense gaze of an interrogator. His curiosity didn’t seem to come from some drive to find something scandalous but from intellectual curiosity, as if he simply liked to decipher puzzles.
“Why aren’t you more freaked out?” she said—almost demanded.
“I’m concerned. Certainly.” He adjusted his glasses.
“But you’re sitting there all calm. That’s not normal.”
“So are you.”
“We’ve covered that my past is a bit different from yours.”
“We haven’t really covered anything about you.” His manner remained frustratingly placid.
“You’re a scientist with your head buried in research most of the time. You should be more freaked out.”
“How do you know I’m buried in research most of the time?”
“You had a desk where a couch should be and bookshelves where a TV should be.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, though he didn’t actually smile.
She could almost hear his thoughts and answered them. “I don’t have a scientific mind. I have the good sense to be observant.” Then she noticed his arm propped up on his knee, the muscle tone. She crossed her arms and raised her chin.
“What’s that look for?”
“There’s more to you and your past than academia.”
He crossed his arms. When he did it, though, it didn’t feel the same. When she crossed her arms, it served as a sort of barrier. When he did it, it seemed more like getting into a thinking position. She pictured him leaned back in his desk chair looking at his computer screen, arms crossed just like that.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Give me your theories,” he said.
It annoyed her how much he was not annoying her. She was too curious and entertained to shut down the conversation like she normally would. She ticked off her observations on her fingers. “Someone tried to kill you.”
“That could simply be related to my research.”
“We’ll get back to that shortly.” She ticked off the next observation. “You keep a hidden thumb drive.”
“There are several reasonable explanations for that.”
“Is there a reasonable explanation for why you didn’t give me a reasonable explanation when I first asked you about it? Instead you avoided the question.”
“Touché.”
She raised her third finger. “You’re sitting here perfectly calm.” Fourth finger. “You’re trained in shooting.” Fifth finger. “You found me when you had almost no information.”
“That was simply having sharp perception.”
“I’ll give you that one.” She kept five fingers up. “And you’re not in the physical condition of someone who sits behind a desk day in and day out.”
He tightened his crossed arms, and his muscles flexed. “Because I’m a nerd I have to be fat and lazy? Or maybe a skinny weakling?”
“You don’t have to be either of those extremes, but it’s not typical for an academic to be well-built. And I don’t think it’s out of vanity, either.” If he were vain, he’d probably wear contacts, but then his thin-rimmed rectangular glasse
s enhanced the structure of his face, his strong jaw, straight nose, and even the shape of his eyes. He had that squint like male models, but it definitely wasn’t intentional or fake—more like it was related to his perpetual keen awareness.
“So, you don’t think I’m vain. I suppose that’s a positive.”
“You’re too logical to be vain.”
“Vanity doesn’t serve a purpose,” he agreed. “Another way we’re not so different.”
“And you presume to know this about me how?” She regretted asking the moment she said it.
“You’d at least let your hair down and wear tight shirts to show off your figure. I assume part of the reason you wear large shirts is to help hide your Glock, but I wonder if you ever use your figure to get your way. It can be very useful on some men.”
She tilted her head. “But not on you.”
His voice lowered slightly. “I don’t get involved with people.” Then he added, voice still quiet, “Another way we’re not so different.”
Quiet.
Mac walked over and plopped down with his shoulder leaned on her thigh. He gave her an excuse to look away from Lyndon. She stroked her hand slowly down his soft fur, and he rested his head against her. She was surprised he was being so relaxed with Lyndon here.
“He’s your connection to your humanity.”
She looked up at Lyndon’s words. He was watching her pet Mac. Then he met her gaze, more intently. “You have a lot in your past. I posit you were some kind of elite military or probably more likely CIA black ops or similar. Then something happened to make you walk away from your life. You’re running. He’s the only relationship you let yourself have.”
She looked away.
“I’m not asking you to confirm any of that,” he said. “I know it’s true.”
Several seconds passed.
Finally, she looked over at him. “You seem to have me figured out. What’s your story?”
six
LYNDON HESITATED, considering how much to say. He’d prefer to say nothing—no, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He felt a strong impulse to keep talking to her, and just as strong an impulse to keep looking at her. This was his first opportunity to really look at her. He did his best to keep his gaze from wandering down to her figure, but he had the excuse of basic manners to look at her face. Her cheekbones were high but not in a harsh way, less like Angelina Jolie and more like Keira Knightly. Similar lips too—soft but not overly full, delicate. But her eyes, those were uniquely hers. As they’d been talking, another part of his brain had been trying to find the words to describe her eyes. They were large and dark, not really a chocolatey brown, darker than that. Shadowed. Her shockingly beautiful lashes seemed to pull you in, but then you stop in fear at the shadows. Stuck in kind of a limbo.
He realized she was waiting for him to talk, and he tried to figure out what to say. He hadn’t felt distracted like this in years, not since that time he saw a girl from across the quad back at Johns Hopkins. He’d seen just her profile from a distance, partially obscured by her shining dark hair blowing in the breeze, but he’d stopped in his tracks and forgotten what he was doing. This time, the distraction frustrated him.
“The thumb drive,” he finally said. “It’s a combination of factors. I started being obsessively secure back while studying for my first doctorate.”
“First doctorate?”
“I have three: microbiology, pathology, epidemiology. Plus a master’s in cybersecurity.”
“You are a nerd.”
“I suppose.”
“I interrupted. So, why the obsession with security?”
“A friend of my roommate stole a paper from my computer and turned it in as his own. That got him into medical school.”
“You couldn’t prove it was yours?”
“He said it was on my computer because I stole it from him. While working on my microbiology PhD, I earned my master’s in cybersecurity so that wouldn’t happen again.”
“So, the computer they stole from your apartment . . .”
“The files are highly encrypted. It’ll be very difficult to get anything off it.”
“Having a secured backup wasn’t the only reason for hiding the thumb drive. You’d have just said that up front.”
“I have personal files on it.” It wasn’t anything she’d care about—scans of letters from his parents, pictures, even a video of his grandfather from his last Christmas—but he simply didn’t share those things.
She paused, surely wanting to ask what kind of personal files, but then she moved on. “What’s the book you took from your apartment? There can’t have been something hidden in it. Whoever tossed the apartment would’ve found it.”
“It’s something my parents used to read to me.” He’d thrown his bag with the book in her back seat when he’d jumped in her car. He had to remember to get it back before they parted ways.
“It didn’t look like a kids’ book.”
“It’s not. Our choices of family reading were unique.”
“Can I ask what it is?” Her tone wasn’t what he would call sweet—sweet was not the right word for her in general—but there was a subdued kindness, something most people probably wouldn’t catch.
“O. Henry short stories,” he said. “Have you read O. Henry?”
“The classics weren’t part of my particular education.” Then she added, “But I like to read.”
He felt a smile tweak the corner of his mouth. More evidence of how she fought to keep a grip on her humanity. He wouldn’t say it to her, but he guessed she read things like comedies and romances, stories that reminded her the world wasn’t so bad.
“I think you would like O. Henry, at least some of the short stories,” he said.
“Because you know me so well.”
“They’re circular and ironic. I just have a feeling you’d appreciate them.”
She tilted her head as she looked at him. “I think I know why you’re not freaked out.”
“I’m certainly concerned and feeling a bit lost.”
“Good. Otherwise, I’d be worried about you,” she said. “I think you’re not actively freaking out because you intellectualize. You focus so much on the problem and possible solutions that your emotional state is reasonably under control.”
“Reasonably.” At least on the outside. Inside, his thoughts were buzzing—he was trying to understand the problem, think of the best way to take action, desperately trying not to look at her too much, and also trying to understand her. There was, admittedly, an underlying current of confusion and frustration. He sighed.
“I hear that,” she said. “There’s a little freaking out in there.”
He ran a hand through his hair.
“What’s your next move?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I need to process more.”
“Should I leave you alone?”
“No. Talking helps.”
“We’re not talking about anything related to your problem.”
“That’s what’s helping.”
“So, you’re thinking through everything while having a completely unrelated conversation?”
He nodded.
She raised her eyebrows and smirked. He wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Can I ask you one thing?” he said. “One thing you might actually answer?”
“You can try.”
“Are you Native American?”
She hesitated. But then she answered, “On my mother’s side. She was full-blooded Shoshoni.”
“And your dad’s white?”
She nodded. “My father says I look like my mother, but I got his skin tone. Mostly.”
“But you tan easily when you’re out in the sun a lot?”
“Yeah. That’s been helpful in the past.” She moved on. “What about you?”
“You mean my familial background? Just a white mutt, I suppose. I don’t really know.”
“Your family hasn’t told you about your
ancestors?”
He bent his knees and draped his arms across them. “Not much. I think I have some Irish in me.”
“That’s all you know?”
“My parents died when I was a kid. My grandfather raised me, but he died before I finished high school.”
“Oh.”
He rather liked how she didn’t always follow social norms—no obligatory apology for the loss of his family.
They were quiet for a good minute. He looked at the blank wall across the room. Mac’s purrs calmed into sleep.
Finally, she asked, “Any theories about what’s going on?”
He continued looking at the wall. “I’m formulating possibilities, but I need more information.”
“But you’re going to get out of town, right?”
He turned his head to look at her. “I won’t go back home, of course. But I’m going to figure out what’s going on. For that, I need to stay in this area, at least for another day.”
“I really don’t think that’s smart.”
“I don’t know enough about the situation to decide what action is smart at this point. I have to have more information.”
“You can do that remotely.”
“This task, I think, needs to be in person.”
“What task?”
“An old professor.”
“You think he has something to do with what’s going on?”
“I have a hard time believing that. He has a lot of contacts and relationships with the scientific community, specifically medical research. Maybe he knows something.”
“You say you don’t think he has anything to do with it, but you feel you need to talk to him in person. I think you have your doubts.”
He didn’t respond.
“Well, I don’t agree with it, but it’s your life,” she said. “You can stay here for tonight if you want. You look like you could use some more time to think.”
“Are you sure you’re all right with that?”
“There’s no reasonable way to connect you to me or this apartment. They might eventually track down my plates, but I’ll get them switched out.”
He didn’t ask how she could do that so easily. “I’ll buy you dinner. We can have something delivered.”
“No credit or debit cards.”
Mac yawned and stretched his back legs. Then he got up and went over to his water bowl.
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