AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, nothing special.” Other than their trips to Bora Bora, Sam had never been out of the country.
“Get me some dates, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Kiss me again and make it a good one to hold me over.”
“All my kisses are good ones.”
“Mmm,” he said against her lips. “They’re the best kisses in the whole world.”
Sam saw Scotty,Alden and Aubrey through breakfast and sent them to school with their Secret Service details. Then she went downstairs to meet her agents, Vernon and Jimmy, for the ride to Metro PD headquarters. Her fractured hip was now considered fully healed, and she’d been cleared to drive. But a funny thing had happened on the way to recovery—she’d discovered she liked being driven around the famously congested capital city, and she enjoyed the time she spent with her agents.
Who would’ve thought it? Not her, that was for sure. However, she’d come to see there were many perks to having the extra time to make calls, review her messages and plan her day before she got to work. Since she’d been so annoyed about having to be driven, she hadn’t bothered to mention to anyone that she’d been cleared to drive, even Nick.
Never let it be said that she couldn’t change her mind or adapt to new ways of doing things.Haha, she thought. She sucked at change, but in this case, she was making an exception to her usual rules.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cappuano,” Jimmy, the younger of the two agents, said as he held the back door to a black SUV for her. He was young, blond and handsome.
“Morning.” She got into the car, holding the travel coffee cup she’d filled upstairs, while continuing to mourn the diet cola she’d been forced to give up thanks to her cantankerous stomach. Coffee was no substitute for what she really wanted, but she drank the coffee because it kept her from being feral. With hindsight, she should’ve chosen a job that required little to no interaction with people. That thought made her chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Vernon asked as he drove the car toward the gate. In his late fifties, he was Black, with graying hair that he wore in a close-cropped style.
“I was thinking I should’ve chosen a career that required no interaction with other people.”
After a pause spent probably trying not to laugh, Vernon said, “And what brought this on?”
“I was pondering my need for caffeine to prevent me from ripping the heads off the people I might encounter on any given workday.”
“Ah, I see.”
Jimmy cleared his throat to cover a laugh.
“You’re a character, ma’am,” Vernon said with a chuckle.
“So I’ve been told. A few times, in fact.”
“That’s shocking to hear.” Vernon’s sarcasm had won her over. That and the way he looked out for her with almost a fatherly concern had earned him a permanent place in her notoriously picky heart. After losing her beloved dad last October, she found herself looking for him in others and had found a hint of him in the least likely of places.
Vernon was a good guy. He and Jimmy both were, and she believed they would take a bullet to protect her. She prayed it never came to that.
Her phone rang with a call from Darren Tabor from theWashington Star, the one reporter she ever spoke to willingly—and even then it wasn’t like she relished having to talk to him. “Don’t ask me about Nick’s mother. I know nothing about it.”
“It hurts me that you think so little of me.”
And he cracked her up. Sometimes. “What can I do for you on this fine day?”
“I’m filling in a few more things from our recent interview and wondered if you have a minute to confirm some details.” She’d given him exactly two hours last week while she and her team were working on Stahl’s cold cases and told him to make the most of it.
“I have about two minutes.”
“I’ll be quick. Double-checking that you’re a graduate of Wilson High.”
“Yes, but we should note that it’s now known as Jackson-Reed.” Former President Woodrow Wilson’s racist legacy had sparked the name change. The new name represented two important people in the school’s history: Edna B. Jackson, the school’s first Black teacher, and Vincent E. Reed, who’d served as the school’s first Black principal.
“Right, got it. Our policy is to refer to the name of the school when the person graduated.”
“Maybe you could say the former Wilson High School in my case, since I fully support the name change.”
“I’ll do that.”
