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He opened his mouth and then closed it, eyes narrowing on me in accusation. “It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the reason he approached me.”
I smiled smugly. “I didn’t like seeing you in there.”
He shook his head. “I thought I had years left. I mean, I murdered a supposed innocent man. But you…I was slowly losing my mind in there.”
“The idea of seeing you in there…” I shook my head. “It felt like one of those things that ‘just wasn’t right.’ So I started searching, trying to find some loophole to get you out. Something that your lawyer didn’t think about. Which ended up being a lot, by the way. Your lawyer was incompetent and I got him disbarred shortly after you were put away.”
“Are you the reason that it was suggested to me to do a mistrial?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “When I said I was trying anything to get you out of there, I was really trying anything. I was looking into ways to break you out of that prison—which would’ve been really hard because the damn place was made before the invention of computers—when I ran across a guy named Hunt, a hacker. One late night, we got to talking about some things. And I told him what I was working on—you. And he asked how badly I wanted you out.”
His eyes were really intense when I said, “I wanted you out badly. So I told him that. A few weeks later, he came to me with this Lynnwood guy. Told me that he passed on your information. I started doing some digging into the guy—but let’s just say the hacker known as Hunt really knows how to hide his trail—and by the time I found out that he was a mayor somewhere, I got the message that you were being released.”
He crossed his right leg over his left knee, and though it wasn’t sexual in any way or form, I still felt it deep inside my belly when the muscles in his thigh and forearm rippled as he did it.
“What do we need to do first thing?” he asked, once again changing the subject. “I want you to come home.”
I looked around the remodeled bus.
Though we’d been living in it for nearly six months now since it’d been finished up, it still didn’t feel like home.
No, what felt like home was Accident, where I’d made friends and a best one at that. Been offered a permanent job more often than I could count. And where Kobe lived.
“Find the newest person hired to kill me. Fry the computer that Farrell keeps using to take all these hits out on me…or drain his bank accounts so he can’t pay for what he wants.” I paused. “That’s a new one that I hadn’t quite considered until just now.”
“Right now, you can go ahead and do that,” he pointed out. “Right?”
Just go ahead and drain Lisbeth and Farrell’s bank accounts? At least the ones that were blatantly obvious? Easy.
“Yes,” I answered.
“And how much evidence do you have right now that we can pass along to authorities?” he asked. “Hiring someone to kill another person is illegal.”
“Wouldn’t, normally, the person that had the hit taken out on them have to come forward?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “I’m not that hip with the language of the law. But I do know that whatever they charge you with will be civil court, not criminal court—you can’t kidnap your own child. And technically, you are the biological mother, and they’re not biologically anything if your DNA tracking is correct. So them wanting some sort of visitation where it comes to your daughter would be a civil matter. But, I think even if they did get that civil case pushed through, there’s still the fact that they tried to hire a person to kill you. Multiple times. I’m assuming that you kept evidence of each time?”
I nodded.
“Then finding this person will be my number one priority,” he said. “Do you have a laptop that you won’t be using that I can borrow?”
“I thought you said this was non-computer legwork?” I teased.
He winked at me as I passed him to get to my spare computer. When I got back, it was to find his shoes off and him sitting on the couch in his bare feet and jeans.
Would asking him to get comfortable by taking off his shirt be too suggestive?
• • •
I woke up hours later with the light from my computer screen the only thing lighting up the room.
I peeked open one eye and instantly regretted it when it nearly blinded me.
After shutting my eyes, I blindly leaned forward, placed the now-closed laptop on the floor, and went back to my warm cocoon.
Only after I snuggled in deeper did I realize why my cocoon was much warmer and snugglier than normal—Kobe happened to be part of my cocoon.
Kobe lifted his arm for me to come back, and that was when I realized he was awake.
