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“OK. Great. Sounds interesting.” He sounded bemused. There was an uncomfortable silence that Cindy wanted desperately to fill, but she didn’t dare push her luck. Then Jared spoke again.
“I get the impression that you’re not happy to be here,” he said.
Duh.“Look at it from my point of view,” she said. “I’m a girl all alone with a guy I just met, going to a place I’ve only heard of on the internet. Anybody would tell me I’m brain dead.”Yeah, like her entire family.
“You’re not,” Jared said. “I know you’ve had bad experiences.”
She had? Shit! She hadn’t read the transcripts of Mina and Jared’s chats, so she didn’t even know her own back story. Yikes!
But Jared was talking earnestly on. She tried to concentrate.
“…wanted to tell you that I understand where you’re coming from,” he said. “I’m an orphan, too. In foster care since I was seven.”
“Really?” She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Get out.”
“I did high school at Deer Creek.”
She blinked. “You mean the reformatory?”
“Drugs,” he confessed. “I set up a meth lab in my foster father’s barn, all by myself, when I was in the ninth grade. Dr. O heard about it. He came to meet me. He thought any kid who could get into that much trouble at age thirteen had to have potential.”
“Wow. That’s totally wild,” Cindy said weakly.
“When I got out, he invited me to the Haven.” He paused for a moment, and added “It’s the only real home I’ve ever had.”
“Wow,” she said again, feeling totally inane.
“Maybe it could be, you know. A home for you, too.”
She tried to smile. He seemed like a genuinely sweet guy. But the corners of her mouth felt like they had weights attached to them.
“So where is the Haven, anyhow?” she asked.
Jared chuckled. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
He must have heard the thud as her stomach froze into a solid chunk and hit bottom. His gaze darted to her face. “That was a joke,” he said. “You know, jokes? Hah, hah? Very funny? Irony, and all that?”
“Hah, hah, hah,” she echoed thinly. “Very funny, Jared.”
“I didn’t mean to freak you out. We never tell new recruits where the Haven is until we get there. It’s part of our mystique. You’ll see.”
“Oh. Yeah,” she muttered. “I can hardly wait.”
A six-foot-threeblond guy in a Versace suit with a black eye attracted more attention than he wanted today, he reflected as he strolled through the library. Con and Davy agreed that only one of them should go in, and they’d opted for Miles, but this moment was a turning point in his life. He was goddamn well going to be present for it.
The two librarians were checking him out. The older one, an iron-gray lady shaped like a pigeon, was giving him a disapproving look over her bifocals. The cute younger one, with the bobbed strawberry red hair, was blatantly scoping him whenever the older one’s back was turned.
He heaved an internal sigh. No quick in-and-out, then. He had to do the leisurely browsing masquerade for Strawberry Red’s benefit.
He made a big show of wending his way through the library, with leisurely stops at the magazine racks and the local newspaper, moseying with elaborate casualness toward the Historic Collection Room.
Through the glass doors, into the paneled room full of cracked leather sofas, brass reading lamps, hidden alcoves. This was where he’d had his historic tryst with Liv. The first time he’d made her come.
A feeling of foreboding took him by surprise, twined together as it was with the surge of lust and longing that came over him whenever he thought of Liv. Prickling his face, his balls. An urgent,go go gofeeling.
This wasn’t about Kev. Something was up with Liv. The certainty buzzed in his head. He had to finish up here, and check on her. Quick.
He snapped open the clasp on Davy’s briefcase, scanning shelves for the reference number. The distinctive smell of old books was heavy in his nostrils. Anxiety pricked him, harder. Hurry. Hurry.Go go go.
