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“Huh.”
Luke glanced at her. “Now what?”
“I’m the one who finds stuff, remember?”
“So?”
“So it occurs to me that I found Keever’s body within a few yards of your cabin.”
“Yeah, that occurred to me, too,” Luke said.
“Probably a coincidence. If he was leaving the conservatory he would have passed by the back of your cabin.”
“Where a killer with psychic talents just happened to be hanging around, spotted Keever, and decided to get rid of him?”
“When you put it like that, probablynota coincidence,” Talia admitted.
“I’m going to set up the cot,” Luke said.
“I thought you wanted to study those papers you took from the file drawer in the office.”
“Tomorrow,” Luke said. “Paperwork always takes a lot of time. We both need sleep.”
He unlatched the folding cot and opened it. There was barely room for it to fit between the bed and the front door.
Talia eyed the thin mattress and the worn bedding. “It doesn’t look very comfortable.”
“I’ve slept in worse. If I dream, wake me.”
“Same.”
A short time later she crawled into bed wearing the flannel pajamas she had packed to deal with the chill she had expected to encounter on the island. The pajamas were, she reflected, the least sexy nightwear in her wardrobe. For some reason she regretted the sartorial choice.
Luke emerged from the bathroom wearing a T-shirt and his cargo trousers. He went to where his holster hung on the wall hook and took out the pistol. She watched him carry the gun across the room and slide it under the cot.
He glanced at her. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she said quickly.
He turned out the light. She listened as he unzipped and removed his trousers and got into bed.
Silence fell.
She had known about the gun, she reminded herself. But for somereason it came as a shock to realize he had been carrying it all day and was now sleeping with it under his cot. Within easy reach.
“Do all history professors carry guns?” she asked.
“Can’t speak for all of them, but I started carrying one after someone grabbed me and made me Subject A in an experiment that gave me a potentially lethal talent.”
“But you carried a gun before that, didn’t you?”
“I told you I was in the military and later in the intelligence world, Talia. The kind of work I did can’t be done with a computer or a phone. I have to hear the voices I’m trying to read in person. That means I spent a lot of time in some dangerous places.”
“Makes sense.”
“Do all podcasters carry pepper spray?”
“They do if they’ve got a history of being kidnapped, drugged, and used as a subject in an illegal experiment.”
