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“Hey yourself.”
“You’re not dead.”
“That’s not how it feels when I first wake up in the morning.” He gestures down to my bandaged limb. “How’s the leg?”
“Not amputated. Does this mean you shot me?”
“Or you ran into a shotgun pellet.”
“Fair enough.” I grab a very uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chair and drag it closer. “So. I’m sorry your turtle tattoo didn’t make it.”
“Looks like a horror movie. But as casualties go, I’ll take it.”
“I hear Marilee is recovering.”
“I assume from Charlie the fed who is fully vertical and making the rounds?”
“Yes. Plus Trudy and Ann have been by every day. Those two know everything.”
“I hear a rumor they’re going to open a restaurant with Chef Kiki.”
“No!”
“Stranger things have happened,” Vaughn observes. “I mean, once you’ve survived a serial killer, most anything seems possible.”
“True.” I fold my arms on the edge of his bed, rest my head on top of them. “Where do you go from here?”
“Most likely, my parents’ place in Washington. Figure I’ll take a month or two to get my bearings, then find the next project.”
“Back to work?”
“I’m not one meant to idle. You?”
“I don’t idle well either.”
“Already got the next case in mind?”
“I did. I should. I could.”
“But…”
“I don’t like to stay in one place too long,” I say abruptly, my gaze on his. There’s something about him. It takes me a second, then I get it. I straighten back up, reach out an arm, and rake a hand through his hair till it stands on end. It feels soft against my fingertips. I fluff the strands a few extra times, more for my own sake than his, then sit back. “Better.”
“Better?”
“Now you look like you.”
His gaze goes up and down my johnny-clad form. “You look different, too. Still trying to put my finger on it.”
“I’m not pissing you off,” I supply. “Yet.”
“Ahh, that’s gotta be it. So, you were saying.”
“Yeah, that. I’m not a permanent address kind of gal.”
“Many people aren’t.”
“I always thought there was something wrong with me. I mean, you look around at everyone else living everyone else’s lives and it’s always one job, one house, one kind of day. It feels like some kind of secret society, where I’ve never known the magic password to get in.”
