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Rosa glanced from Lola to Jack and back to Lola. "Nothing yet, but I'll whip up some banana nut pancakes for the two of you."
Lola yawned. "You don't have to do that."
"I want to." Rosa tapped the side of her neck. "Where did that bruise come from?"
"Where?" Lola raised her hand to her throat, covering the bruise, so she must have felt some soreness.
"Lola was attacked yesterday at the hospital."
Rosa gasped and dropped a raw egg on the counter. "Dios mio."
"Thanks, Jack." Lola narrowed her eyes, clear of all drowsiness now. "There's no need to worry, Rosa."
Jack ripped a paper towel from the rack and swept the broken egg into the sink. "She should know. She lives here, too."
"Que paso?"
Lola folded her arms across her stomach, hugging herself. "It was in the basement of the hospital. It was deserted, someone attacked me, he escaped and we called the cops."
"Did he hurt you, Miss Lola?" Rosa rubbed Lola's upper arms.
"No. Jack came to the rescue."
She wagged a finger in Lola's face. "That's why you need a big, strong man around...like Mr. Jack."
After Lola convinced Rosa to her satisfaction that she'd suffered nothing more than that bruise to the neck, Rosa shooed them out of the kitchen to work magic with flour and bananas.
Lola slumped at the kitchen table and powered on her laptop. "Rosa, when did that mail come?"
The muscles at the back of Rosa's arms worked as she mashed bananas. "Over the course of a few months. Mostly junk."
"There was a letter from Gabe." Lola's voice snagged on her brother's name, but Rosa, humming to herself, didn't seem to notice.
"Yes, I saw his doctor's chickenscratch on the envelope. He thought you were going to stay here while he traipsed off to his outlandish places." She turned with a bowl of batter in the crook of one arm. "So did I."
"Do you remember when that letter came?"
"Not long after Mr. Gabe left. I'm sorry I didn't get it to you before. I kept expecting you to show up, so I thought I'd just collect the mail and hold it for you. Was it important?"
Lola traced the edge of the envelope and shot a glance at Jack. "Not really."
"Hold off for a while," Jack murmured and jerked his head toward the laptop, the cursor blinking and ready. Rosa already knew too much. He didn't need any more amateur spies trolling around for his past.
Lola nodded and pulled up a local news website instead. "I wonder if there's any news about Hector Villagrande, Elena Hidalgo's boyfriend, and his case. Maybe he was the one who attacked me yesterday."
Jack leaned over her shoulder as she searched and then dropped back into his chair. She smelled like musky, intoxicating sex. Neither one of them had showered yet this morning, but the scent of their night together only increased his desire for her.
A desire that smacked of selfishness.
Rosa clicked her tongue and placed a plate stacked with steaming pancakes on the table between them. "I know you two are just waiting for me to leave so you can discuss important business. Just don't let anything happen to her, Mr. Jack."
"I won't, Senora Rosa." Jack followed Rosa to the front door and reset the alarm. He rubbed his hands together as he returned to the kitchen table. "Where do you want to start?"
"Let's search for U.S. military records first." She accessed a U.S. government website and entered Jack's name. "You're not eighty-nine years old, are you?"
"When I woke up on that cliff in Afghanistan I felt about eighty-nine years old, but I don't think so."
"I can't find any possible matches for you in this database."
"We already figured a Green Beret picked for a covert ops team wouldn't pop up on a public website."
"Should we try Stanford?" Lola tugged on her earlobe, looking as dubious as he felt.
"Let's see. I don't know my date of graduation, my birth date, my Social Security number. I don't think they're going to give me anything, Lola."
A pretty pout claimed her lips. "I thought we'd gotten so much information from Lars last night, and it's turning out to be useless."
He rubbed her arm despite his vow to back off. "Lars did give us some good info, more than we had. It'll be useful to Lesley when she administers the truth serum. It'll provide her a starting point for questioning me."
