“It’s okay,” she whispered.
He managed to force out. “Stay here.” He couldn’t stand to look at anything else, anything he’d have to think about.
“I’m right here.” She touched her fingertips to his cheek.
All of his attention focused on the sensation. His head still seared with pain, but he could almost handle it.
“Stay,” he murmured.
“Try to relax. We’ll think through it together. Take your time.”
His voice barely made sound as he said again, “Stay.”
“I’m here.” And then she pulled him closer. He would’ve done whatever she wanted. She pulled him into a hug, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. Despite the chill in the air, she was warm. All he could feel was her arms around him, one hand in his hair, and the smoothness of her neck, the even beat of her pulse.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Just be in this moment. Just this, nothing else.”
His pulse slowed to normal, and his breathing evened out.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed.
He couldn’t comprehend anything else around them, but he was aware of everything about her. Of how she made him feel. Strong and out of control. Peaceful and chaotic. The beautiful lines of her back under his hands, the scent of her hair, her warmth, what it would feel like to hold her more intimately.
He tried to force those thoughts out of his head, but they wouldn’t go.
Gently, he tried to pull away, but she didn’t let go of him completely. The hand that had been in his hair smoothed down to his neck, thumb brushing his jaw.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
No. No, this was too much. He couldn’t handle being this close. He tried again to pull away.
She wouldn’t let go. “Lyndon.”
He made eye contact.
She smoothed her other hand through his hair.
Before he understood what he was doing, before he could stop himself, he was pulling her closer. She didn’t fight him, didn’t pull away.
He touched his lips to hers.
twenty-nine
IT WAS SOFT. The kiss. The first kiss she’d had in so many years. She’d told herself she’d forgotten what it felt like, but that wasn’t really true. She remembered. But this was nothing like what it was like with James. He’d been gentle, yes, and it’d been enjoyable. But this with Lyndon, this overwhelmed her.
She tilted her head, and he deepened the kiss.
Every sensation sent jolts through her. The slight tickle from his scruff, his strong hands, how one stayed on her back, gently holding on to her, and the other moved up to her hair, the side of her face. He touched her like she was porcelain.
She held on to him and kissed him back. Somewhere in her head, she knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t get that thought to surface enough to do anything about it.
He made her feel like she could be herself, whatever she was at that moment—forceful and demanding or soft and yielding. It didn’t matter with him. He accepted her every facet. No one else had ever understood her, let alone accepted her.
He pulled away abruptly and sat back on his feet, away from her. “I’m sorry.”
She almost reached for him again.
He slid back farther, sat on the concrete with his knees bent in front of him, and leaned against the base of a light pole. He ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes.
She could almost feel how much pain he was in.
And she worried she’d only added to it, rather than comforting him like she’d wanted to.
Mac jumped down out of the still-open passenger door and meowed at her. People passing on the sidewalk stared. She’d made sure they were out of view of any cameras, but they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves like this.
“We should go,” she said.
Lyndon nodded but didn’t move.
Maybe it would be easier if she moved away first. She stood and walked around to the driver’s side. He sat in the passenger side a moment later. He waited for Mac to jump up before closing the door.
She resumed driving.
“You should talk,” she said. “That’ll help.”
He stared at the dash and said nothing.
She waited a few more seconds, but he didn’t talk.
She kept her voice gentle. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t know if it will help this time.”
“You should try.”
He closed his eyes, and his jaw clenched.
She hesitated to push him more. Was she the cause of his pain this time? She opened her mouth to say something but had no idea what to say.
Finally, he said, “I’m sorry.”
She wanted to tell him not to be sorry. The idea of his regretting the kiss bothered her—a lot more than she could’ve imagined. But instead, she asked, “Why would she want to kill your grandfather? He obviously didn’t know anything about Ebola. It was years after your parents died, right?”
He paused so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer.
But then, again staring at the dash, he said, “I was seventeen when my grandfather died.”
“Do you remember anything that might’ve drawn the mastermind’s attention to him?”
“He’d been talking to me about either joining the military or maybe taking an electrician apprenticeship. Earn some money. So I wouldn’t have to think about costs or worry so much about scholarships.”
She wasn’t putting together where he was going.
He looked at her. “The mastermind, she’s told me to focus, get rid of distractions.”
“She wanted you to go to college, not wait.”
“That’s the only thing I can think of. But why would she care? Why would she be paying attention in the first place?”
Things started to click together in her head. “Because you’re brilliant. I bet she watched you and your grandfather at first to make sure he didn’t know anything, that your parents hadn’t told either of you anything. And she realized how advanced you are. She wants to recruit you.”
“Then why did she try to kill me?”
“I’d assumed it was because you were getting too close to understanding her secrets, that she’d created Ebola. But I don’t know why she switched from grooming, to targeting, to recruiting.”
He resumed staring at the dash. She could see on his face he was still in pain, but he didn’t close his eyes or press his hands to his temples.
They were quiet while she drove and he thought. She tried to think through things as well, but she had a hard time concentrating, which frustrated her. She’d never had a hard time concentrating before. Her thoughts kept returning to how he’d held her, what his kiss had felt like, gentle but passionate . . .
He finally spoke again. “I think there’s more.”
She glanced at him, waiting.
He paused, as if still sorting a thousand pieces and parts. “I’m trying to think of any times in my life when I haven’t been perfectly focused.”
“I doubt there are many.”
“No. At least not since my grandfather died. I didn’t have anyone, and I didn’t let myself build connections with people.”
“Because the connection always ends.”
“Because people always leave.” His gaze flickered but didn’t quite make it to her. He focused on the dash again. “But there was an exception. I met her at Johns Hopkins. She was a nice girl, smart, ray-of-sunshine kind of person. My roommate said she kept coming around because she was flirting with me. I asked her out on a date. I had this wild idea that maybe I could have something like my parents had.”
The attraction of opposites like his parents had had. But that kind of girl wasn’t quite his opposite. He had more of his father in him than he seemed to realize. Kadance knew enough about people to know that those who draw others toward them, like his father had, are usually more than simply happy—they’re kind and accepting; they help other
s see their own strengths. Like Lyndon. But he’d buried himself so thoroughly for so long that no one saw that part of him. Except her.
“You cared about her?” She’d intended for it to come out as a statement rather than a question.
“Not as much as I should have.”
She waited for him to explain.
“We dated for a while,” he said. “Several months. We had good conversations. She didn’t always understand everything I talked about, but enough. And she didn’t talk about silly things. She was a literature major. She thought deeply, just differently than me. I thought maybe that would help balance me.”
She stopped herself from asking if they’d been intimate. She wasn’t sure why that question came to mind at all. “Did she distract you?”
“She pulled me away from my books and studying, made me interact with the world. My GPA didn’t suffer, but perhaps I could have had a few more insights in my papers. There were a couple of tests where I didn’t earn my usual perfect score. But still the top grade.”
“What happened?”
“Everything. All in one day. Something happened that made me realize I didn’t feel strongly enough about her. I liked her, but I wasn’t going to fall in love with her. She deserved better.”
“What happened to make you realize that?” She immediately regretted the question, or at least part of her did.
“It was nothing. I saw some girl from a distance, across the quad. Just a beautiful figure and black hair blowing in the wind. Not unlike Angela, though this girl’s skin was darker. I didn’t even see her face. But my reaction to that girl made me face the fact that I didn’t have a reaction to Angela like that. Never had. Angela was pretty. I liked her dark hair, how it contrasted with her skin tone, and she had a nice figure. But I saw her as more of a friend.”
“So you broke up with her.”
“I tried so hard to be kind, to convey that I thought too highly of her to keep her trapped with me. But I’m not good at that kind of thing. She cried. A lot. I didn’t know how to help her. The next morning . . . I found out she’d killed herself. Shot herself in the head.” He continued staring at the dash.
She tried to make her voice gentle. “But now you don’t know if that’s what really happened?”
“There wasn’t much of an investigation. Everything pointed to suicide.” Finally, he looked over at Kadance. “But I focused after that. I’ve never let myself consider another woman. I couldn’t let that happen again.”
He leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair. And now he’d let himself care for another woman.
She touched his arm. “It’s not the same. I’m not going to commit suicide.”
He sat straight and met Kadance’s eyes. “The mastermind killed her. Because she was distracting me. Just like she thinks you’re distracting me.”
“We don’t know that for sure. And it’s not the same.” She lifted her chin. “I’m very different from Angela.”
He ran his hands over his face and focused on the dash. “She already admitted to trying to kill you once. Please, Kadance. Please let this go and walk away. If anything happens to you, I . . .”
There was absolutely no chance of her walking away. This mastermind woman would have to attack her from six directions with the most powerful forces on Earth to get her to stop protecting Lyndon. Instead of voicing her thoughts, she asked, “How did it happen? If we understand her tactics, it’ll help us better understand her.”
Lyndon paused but then finally took a breath. “They deemed that she’d shot herself in the head at her desk. She’d laid her head down as if to sleep. There was no sign of struggle. Her roommate said everything appeared to be in order.”
“Maybe she was asleep and someone snuck in.”
“She was a light sleeper. Her roommate used to jokingly complain about it.” Then he added, “I did see a picture from the scene—”
“Why would you want to look at that?”
He shook his head. “I felt the need to see for myself. My guilt made me doubt what’d happened.”
“I don’t think it was your guilt. I think you knew something wasn’t right.”
“Maybe. I couldn’t think as clearly as I’m used to.”
“Did you notice something in the picture?”
“Her gun was close to her hand, but it also could’ve fallen out of her purse rather than out of her hand. She was never careful with her purse. She always just dumped it, and half the time some of the contents would fall out. And I thought she seemed off-balance. Like she’d shifted to the side somehow.”
A thought overwhelmed Kadance’s mind. Completely took her over. Lyndon said something, but she didn’t hear.
She blinked.
No, it couldn’t be.
No.
Please no.
“Kadance.”
She finally heard him, wiped her face of all emotion, and looked over at him.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
All she could comprehend was the sorrow on his face, how much it had all hurt him, how it made him block all people out of his life. His loneliness.
She heard his words from earlier echo through her mind, I’m in love with you, Kadance. He’d finally opened up to someone.
The completely wrong someone.
thirty
SOMETHING ABOUT KADANCE SEEMED OFF. But then Lyndon reminded himself of everything he’d thrown at her in the last twelve hours. God, love, a kiss. Of course she seemed off.
Perhaps all of it would be too much, and she’d leave. A part of him begged God to take her away from this, protect her, but another part clung to her. The memory of the kiss threatened to cloud his mind. It kept replaying in his head. Over and over. Automatically. Always there. He could barely think around it. How she’d felt in his arms, how she’d held him too, kissed him back. Why had she kissed him back? Because she felt bad for him? Because she felt responsible for his pain? Because she wanted to?
Regret overwhelmed him. He had to do better, had to hide how he felt. Surely, she didn’t understand how deep it went for him. He knew this was it, just like how it’d been for his parents. There was no one else he would ever want. She was his forever.
But he couldn’t let her see that.
He glanced in the side mirror again, as he’d become accustomed to doing. “Three cars back,” he said.
“I see,” Kadance said.
“If we lose him, he’ll just find us again with the cameras all over this city.”
“I have a different thought.” She made deliberate turns—she’d apparently already memorized much of the city.
“It might be useful to talk to him.”
“Exactly. And we’ll use you as bait.”
While she drove, they discussed.
Eventually, they found a place to park and got out of the car. Mac trotted alongside Kadance and looked around at all the people, the trees, and the field that stretched out ahead of them. Thankfully, the most recent snowfall had almost entirely melted.
At first, they walked quietly.
They browsed slowly by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Lyndon wanted to stop, read each name.
“Did your grandfather fight in this war?” Kadance asked.
“Yes. My father told me it changed him. He was different when he came home.” A name caught his eye, and Lyndon brushed his fingers over it, one of the friends his grandfather had mentioned, one of the two times he’d ever shared anything about that experience. “He didn’t talk much about it.”
Kadance nodded.
“Probably for the same reasons you don’t talk about your service.”
“Probably.”
A part of him wanted to ask her about it, but he’d learned not to ask his grandfather about Vietnam, and he figured the same reasons applied here. She had to talk about it in her own time. He wished he could be there for her when she was finally ready, but he knew she’d be long gone by then.
Kadance spoke under her breath, lips
barely moving. “About two hundred yards, seven o’clock.”
He continued his casual pace. “I see. Do you think he realizes we see him?”
She looked to the right across the field, to the trees, beyond which was the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. “I don’t think so.” She started walking across the field. “I’d like to play with him for a bit.”
Get him nice and frustrated. He had a feeling Kadance was a master at that.
Mac meowed up at Kadance.
“Sorry, buddy. Not yet,” she said.
“He wants to run around?”
“I don’t want him out of my sight right now.”
Probably wise.
Mac kept trotting along beside her. It fascinated Lyndon that the cat seemed to understand what she said. Maybe he understood her tone and body language.
They meandered through the trees, not a straight line. She pretended to look around at the limbs, as if fascinated by the different shapes, but Lyndon knew she was watching the FBI agent. He didn’t try to keep an eye on the agent himself. He wouldn’t be nearly as slick as her, and he trusted her to lead.
They walked around the west end of the reflecting pool, out in the open again. Lyndon couldn’t help but look across the street to the Lincoln Memorial.
“So, were you named after Lyndon B. Johnson?” she asked.
“My father liked it because my mother’s middle name is Lyn. He said I got his surname, and he wanted some part of my mother in my name as well. My mother agreed to it because she was a fan of Roger Lyndon.” He looked over at her and added, “Mathematician.”
A smile tweaked her lips but didn’t make it to her eyes. “Of course.”
He was starting to realize something more was wrong with her. Something had changed with her since their conversation about his grandfather’s and Angela’s deaths. But now wasn’t the time to ask her.
She looked out across the reflecting pool.
“He’s still there?” Lyndon murmured.
“Mm-hm.”
“Where are we going?”
“I want to see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial,” she said in what would sound to anyone else like a normal tone. “I think he’s my favorite historical figure.”
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