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“Warm,” they said together.
He laughed. “And you chose to be a flight paramedic. In the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. Where it gets really cold.”
Raina rolled her eyes. “It’s where God planted me, so it’s where I’m blooming.”
She walked into the kitchen and he followed. “Sarcasm?”
“It was a meme I saw on social media when I first moved here. Bloom where you’re planted. Or something like that. At the time, I took it to heart.”
“And now?”
She opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of sweet tea and a water. She passed him the tea and opened the water to take a long swig. “I don’t think I should have ever let myself grow roots.” The quiet words echoed around them. “Because,” she said, her voice still low and soft, “it’s going to hurt beyond belief when I have to yank them up.”
Vince had no idea how to respond to that. So, he settled for reaching out and pulling her into his arms. She rested her cheek against his chest, and they stood there, drinks still in hand, the wall clock audibly ticking off the seconds behind him. “I wish I could help more,” he finally whispered against her temple.
She sighed. “You are. Just by forcing me to allow you to stay.”
He frowned. “Huh?”
A silent chuckle shook her shoulders and she stepped back. “I’m just kidding. Mostly. I know that if I sent you away, you would park yourself outside my door.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
He reached out to stroke her cheek and she swallowed. “Raina, I have a confession.”
She raised a brow, but he was grateful that she didn’t seem to be too worried. “What is it?”
“In the effort to find Kevin Anderson—who isn’t Kevin Anderson—I looked into your case.”
“Oh, okay. And?”
“There are a lot of things about your attack that are very similar to four other unsolved cases out there. Granted, there are a few outliers, but there are enough things that are the same that make it worth looking into.”
Raina gaped. “What? You mean he’s done this before?”
“And since, but there’s one thing that stands out more clearly than anything else.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re the only one who survived.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Simon looked at the man on the large television screen used as a monitor for the FaceTime call. “Please tell me that this wasn’t your doing.”
“It wasn’t.”
“And yet the man is dead.”
“Not by my hand. I may be willing to skirt the edge of the law occasionally, but even I draw the line at murder.” Freddy turned from the screen and threw something into the suitcase on the bed behind him.
“I’m serious,” Simon said. “I didn’t hire you to...” Why was he bothering? He didn’t have saints on his payroll and shouldn’t get his britches in a twist when they occasionally went rogue—and lied about it. He shook his head. “The authorities had better not connect this back to me.”
The man frowned. “Why would they?Howwould they? You have no connection to the man. I don’t either. And like I said, I didn’t kill him. He was dead when I got there, so there’s absolutely no way to trace it back to either of us. Right now, the detectives are digging into Carter’s background, looking for anything that might give them a clue as to who would want him dead—assuming they don’t just decide it was a junkielooking for some quick cash—and neither of us are in that background, so relax.”
