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The redness on her face showed she remembered it, and I could see her pulse skitter with desire, but when I reached for her, she shook her head, pulling back.
“We’re not done talking,” she said. “This is serious.”
“You were the one who said you didn’t trust it if the money wasn’t in your account.”
“Yes, but it didn’t mean I want you to send me money. I wanted to make it myself.”
I sighed. “Look, the money was just sitting in my account anyway. It wasn’t like I was going to use it for anything, and I would rather you be protected if anything happened to me.”
She frowned as if she hadn’t considered that possibility. “What would happen to you?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. But in my line of work, it’s not uncommon for casualties to occur.”
She gaped, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at me. “Wait, you’re not thinking about continuing as a PI, right?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it, but I nodded. “Well, yes.”
She continued to gape at me as if I had just willingly admitted to going to cut my hand off. In her defense, it was my fault. One evening, while we were lounging on the couch, she asked what I did for a living, and I told her about being a PI, regaling her with stories of some of the funniest situations I had ever been in. Except sometimes, the funniest stuff also happened to be the most dangerous.
“You know how risky your job is, and you have enough money. Why would you keep doing it then?”
I sighed. “I don’t do it for the money. I do it for—” A distraction. A reason to live. Recompense for all the people I couldn’t save in the past. “I can’t just do nothing. I need to remain active in some type of way.”
“Then why not pick up a hobby?” she asked, and I smiled.
“I dunno, honey,” I said, caressing her cheek. She averted her face in annoyance while I smiled at her. It warmed my heart that she cared about me enough that the thought of me doing something dangerous made her mad.
“Tell me why,” she said in a lower tone, and I shook my head. I couldn’t explain to her the demons that drove me and how I needed to keep doing what I did to keep the nightmares at bay. Although I hadn’t had one in a quick minute, not since the last time we slept together. I didn’t know if it was because my body was so exhausted at the end of the night that I couldn’t do anything else or the fact that I felt safe.
Either way, it was a good thing.
But like all good things, it soon came to an end later that night.
The night started on a good note.
We drove to Vinny’s home to pick Hunter up and bring him home after a day of babysitting. The little tyke was excited to see us, gurgling and chattering all over the place. Then, we went home to enjoy our breakfast for dinner. That evening, Faith told me that she was sitting down to try to write something. I was happy, and I encouraged her as she set up at her desk. A few minutes later, she came out, huffing in frustration.
I immediately pulled her into a hug.
“God, I’m terrible,” she said as I held her in my arms and led her to the couch. “Like everything I wrote today just sounded like mush.”
“Hmm,” I said, trying to think of words of comfort. “You know I don’t know much about writing, but I remember my high school English teacher used to say that the first draft of anything is trash.” I rubbed her hands comfortingly. “Just keep at it.”
“I guess.” We both sat in silence for a few minutes as I rubbed her back, and it took me a while to realize she had fallen asleep on the couch. I watched her, the way the moonlight fell over her face and her chest rose up and down. A feeling of peace filled me. I didn’t know if I had ever felt like this before.
And then, slowly, I fell asleep too.
That was when the nightmare came.
I was tied up in a dirty cottage—enemy territory. A hostage was kneeling in front of me with her captors holding a gun to her head. They wanted me to give away the location of my fellow soldiers and the other hostages they had rescued. I shook my head. I couldn’t do it. So they pressed the gun against her head.
“Stop,”I croaked, but they ignored me, barking at me for the location.
Shit. Desperation crept in, and I tried to temper it enough to think quickly. I had to save her. I struggled with the ties around my wrist, everything in me fighting to be free. I had to save her before they killed her. I couldn’t give away the location because they would kill her anyway, and me too, but I cared less for my life. If they had pointed the gun at me instead, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but now they pointed it at her, and I wanted to die in her place.
One of the guerillas who had captured me finally noticed my struggling, so he cocked the gun. I screamed as he squeezed the trigger,the ties around my wrist finally snapping at the sheer pressure of my hands.
But by then, it was too late.
There was a body on me when I came to, stopping me from moving, oppressive.
“Get off,” I shouted, pushing it off as I leaped off the couch. I heard a scream and a crash of glass, and that was when sense and awareness cleared my vision.
Kayla was sitting stunned on the floor, looking shocked with a trail of blood on her temples.
