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When I looked up, it was to see her eyes wide, and her teeth nibbling worriedly on her lip.
“I forgot,” she said lamely.
“You forgot,” I tried the word on my tongue. “Well how does being raped sound?”
She flinched as if I’d hit her, and suddenly the word choices I’d used didn’t sound like the best idea anymore.
Pushing my hands through my spiked hair, I started explaining. “Listen, I’m sorry if I was too blunt, but I really don’t want anything to happen to you. Today, Varian pointed out that he’d seen us together quite a bit over the time I was undercover. Then he took a plea bargain that’ll only give him twenty-five years. He took it too easily, in my opinion. He’s got something planned, I just don’t know what.”
Pacing now, I continued. “Yesterday, two women were raped and murdered. One was the one who hired me at the construction company. The assailant left a note. For me. Said if I didn’t withdraw my statement, they’d kill two people a day until I did.”
“But...but,” she said confused. “He’s in jail. If he was in jail, how could he threaten you with a note? Does he really have that far of a reach?”
“I have two theories on that, but it’s not good either way it goes. One way, it’s Varian having some sort of hold on the men in his employ. Something he’s doing for them that they can’t get anywhere else. Or he’s blackmailing them, forcing their compliance. The other is that there were two people raping, and both of them were working together. My sole focus had been on Varian. It never even entered my mind that he could be working with someone to accomplish his goals. Either way, I fucked up,” I sighed.
She’d sat quietly throughout my explanation, contemplating her hands, and then an invisible piece of lint on her shirt.
Needing to change the subject and stop dwelling on it until I’d slept on it, I asked, “Did you use your inhaler?”
Her eyebrows raised. “No, but I’m okay now. I don’t like using it when I don’t have to.”
“How did you forget something like that? You always have it with you unless you’re here. In fact, I’ve always seen it in that little pocket in the waistband of your shorts,” I asked with a raised brow.
She walked to the table and sat. “God, I don’t know. I forgot my lunch yesterday. I couldn’t find my keys today. Then I was in the depth of my run before I even realized I didn’t have it.”
I sighed. “Maybe you should be a little more careful next time.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I’ll try to remember that.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “How about you go cook us dinner then?”
She sneered at me. “You have two hands.”
I looked down at my hands. “Look at that, I do.”
A smile kicked up the corner of her mouth. “I’ll bet they can cook, too.”
“I can make French toast, fried eggs, and grill. That’s about the extent of it.”
She stood and walked to the fridge and reached to the top for the bread. “I have a half a loaf of bread,” she said as she dangled the bag from her hands. Then she opened the fridge. “And nine eggs. Is that enough to make eggs and French toast?”
“It’s enough to make eggs, or French toast. But not both,” I told her.
She pursed her lips. Then she started digging through the fridge. “Okay, well I don’t have any syrup. So eggs it is.”
I watched as she shoved everything back in the fridge, closed it, and then stood, holding out the eggs to me.
“Okay, what are you having with the eggs?” I asked as reached for the eggs in her hand.
Turning my back on her, I had to laugh when I heard her curse and yank the fridge door back open, causing the bottles in the door to cling against each other.
“I don’t have any bacon. Or sausage. Or any breakfast meat. I do have sliced baloney and turkey, though,” she said over her shoulder.
“Give me the butter and the turkey. Bread. Cheese too.”
As I cooked egg sandwiches, we spoke in length about what had gone on that day; this was the first time in years I’d actually told somebody about my entire day.
It felt right and freeing somehow.
