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“Some job you’ve got,” Ben Kalinsky says.
“I’d rather do labradoodle surgery any day of the week,” I tell him.
Another smile. The guy’s killing me with smiles.
“Sounds as if I like my patients a lot better than you like your client.”
“One hundred percent,” I say.
The dinner crowd has thinned out by the time we’re having coffee. He seems in no rush to leave the restaurant. Neither am I. When he does drive me home, he is out his door at the same time I’m out mine and walking me to the front door.
“I don’t hear anything from your guy Rip. Doesn’t sound like he’s much of a guard dog.”
“He thinks he can snore intruders away.”
“Is that what I am? An intruder?”
And then he’s kissing me before I can come up with a snappy comeback. No awkward moment with both of us wondering if it’s going to happen, because it’s already happening.
It turns out he’s a very good kisser, the bastard.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been kissed like this. Or the last time I kissed back like this. But I’m giving as good as I’m getting until we both pull back, out of breath, like a couple of horny teenagers.
He starts to come in again. I gently put two hands on his chest.
“To be continued.”
“We could continue inside.”
“Not in front of the dog.”
Thirty-Seven
Jimmy
ONE OTHER TIME INhis life Jimmy has felt the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of his neck. His partner, Mickey Dunne, blew the guy’s head off before the guy did the same to Jimmy.
Not a sensation you forget, though.
“Gun holstered in back, correct?” the voice behind him says.
“Why even ask if you already know the answer?” Jimmy says.
They are in the middle of the living room. Jimmy has always joked that he has alienlike hearing. Not tonight. He didn’t hear the guy coming up behind him, didn’t feel the air in the room changing, even as the alarm inside his headwasgoing off.
Rookie mistake.
“Doesn’t matter, either way. You go for it again, you’re dead.”
“How come I’m not dead already?”
“Because I used to do what you used to do. And because I have decided to give you a reprieve. But just this one time.”
“Where’s McCall?” Jimmy says.
The guy chuckles. “He decided, spur of the moment, to take a trip.”
“His car is outside.”
