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"How come?"
"We barely know each other."
He dismissed that. "We'll get to know each other. If you're afraid I'll cross a line--"
"I'm not."
"Well, good. But if you are, you can always call Jimmy Gonzales. If I laid a hand on you, he'd have my ass."
"I could go to ... to ... a friend's house."
"Doesn't Roger know who your friends are? You don't think he'll look for you among them? I'll bet you haven't shared with them that he hits. You'd have to explain your bruises. Besides, you know the downside of that plan or you would have already called a friend, and you wouldn't have stammered when you suggested it."
"An extended-stay motel then."
He folded his arms across his chest, considering it. "I've made plenty of arrests at those places. They're for shiftless transients. Whores. Drug dealers. Fences."
"Not all of them are disreputable. Some are actually very nice."
"Okay. Say you got into a good one with a decent clientele. It would require a lot of wear and tear."
"Wear and tear?"
"On me. I'd be going back and forth, checking on you several times a day, making sure you were all right."
"I wouldn't require that."
"I would. And who's to say Campton wouldn't hunt you down until he found you?"
"He could find me at your place."
"Yeah, but he'd have to kill me to get to you. Now," he said,"we've wasted enough time arguing over it. Go get your things."
He lived in a condo, one of a unit of four, in a complex made up of ten identical units. These were connected by landscaped grounds and lighted walkways. There was a common swimming pool, a tennis court, and a clubhouse for owners' use. It was a place where single professionals resided, not people who were investing their time, labor, and money creating a lasting home.
Before leaving for the hospital, Dodge had cleared out two bureau drawers and half his closet for her, much more space than she required. "I won't need any work clothes," she'd told him when he commented on how little she was taking from her house.
"Yeah, what about that?"
"I talked to Mr. Malone from my hospital bed the day after the incident. I hinted that I'd suffered some minor female ailment that required surgery. He didn't ask for details, which I knew he wouldn't. I asked for a month off to give myself time to recover and regain my strength. He told me to take all the time I needed."
"You need a month? Your injuries must be more serious than you've led me to believe."
"I won't need that long to recover. As I told you before, I bruise easily and deeply. This," she said, pointing to her eye, "will take weeks to fade. It'll go through a spectrum of colors. To avoid questions from clients and co-workers, I don't want to go back until it's completely gone."
Her explanation relieved his alarm, but he was a little jealous of the glowing terms in which she referred to her mentor, Jim Malone. At the same time, he was glad she wasn't working for a demanding, impatient asshole who was stingy with sick leave.
After her things had been put away, he forced her to eat some mashed potatoes, which he made himself from scratch. He admitted that he wasn't a gourmet but told her he hadn't starved, and he wasn't going to let her starve, either, even though she was already well on her way to emaciation.
After she'd eaten all she could hold, she took one of her pain pills, and he tucked her into bed. She slept for sixteen hours, waking the following morning barely in time to see him off to the tire plant.
"Marvin?" she asked, squinting at the embroidered patch on his shirt.
He frowned. "Believe me, you don't want to know."
He told her to keep the doors locked, not to leave, to stay in bed all day if she felt like it, and she promised she would. He told her to keep his pager number handy and to page him if she needed anything. He said he would avoid calling for fear of disturbing her rest, but if he did, he would call and let it ring once, then call back. That way she would know it was him.
Despite these safety precautions, he left her reluctantly.
