ONE
Eight weekslater
“Lookslike I’m not the only one with nothing to do tonight.”
Maddie glanced away from the inside of her gym locker and toward the room’s newest occupant. Actually, Lisa was the only other person in the locker room, which wasn’t a big surprise, considering it was a Friday night. Most people had better things to do on a Friday night than go to the gym and run on a treadmill.
“Hey, Lisa. How’s it going?”
“Could be better. Teddy canceled on me at the last minute tonight. We were supposed to go to Moonshiner’s Bar, where his friend’s band is performing, but his parents needed a ride home from the airport. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to get in a workout. What’s your excuse for being here?”
Although Elite Force Security’s headquarters housed a state-of-the-art gym complete with a lap pool, Maddie belonged to one close to her house. While she loved the people she worked with—truthfully, her coworkers were more like family—sometimes she needed a break from the testosterone-filled gym and the rest of the team. Coming here once a week or so gave her that. It also gave her a chance to meet new people and make friends. Jasmine and Cassidy, two of her closest friends—well, closest nonwork friends—she’d met there not long after accepting the job with Elite Force three years ago. The fourth person in their little group, Kayleen, she’d met through the other two.
Lisa, though, she’d met a few weeks ago. Maddie had been less than half a mile into her run when Lisa hopped on the treadmill next to her. They’d finished at the same time, and then, on the walk back to the locker room, Lisa had started a conversation. Although Maddie wouldn’t put Lisa in the same category as Jasmine or Cassidy, she considered her more than just an acquaintance. They’d even met up for dinner one night after leaving the gym.
“I haven’t worked out all week and had some time to kill tonight,” Maddie answered. How much time was anyone’s guess. She hadn’t heard from Keith, which meant he and Spike were still sitting inside a run-down apartment in an unsavory neighborhood, listening to Neil’s wire in case he needed backup. But, of course, she couldn’t tell Lisa that.
While everyone knew the forty-plus-year-old firm provided private security to anyone who could afford it, Elite Force did a hell of a lot more, especially the Hostile Response Team. The past summer alone, the team had tracked down a computer scientist who’d stolen top-secret technology, rescued a mom and her young daughter who were being held in Mexico against their will, and safely extracted Salty’s girlfriend and her mom from a criminal bent on revenge.
Opening her locker, Lisa tossed her keys and sweatshirt inside before removing her water bottle from her duffel bag and setting it down on the bench. “Is your boyfriend working late again?”
They’d been together for roughly eight weeks, yet Maddie still found it difficult to associate the term “boyfriend” with Keith. But she hadn’t come up with a better word to describe him, either.
“Yep.” After adding her wet towels to her bag, Maddie grabbed her boots and sat down.
“Speaking of boyfriends, were you and Keith at Murphy’s Tavern on Monday night?”
Monday night, she’d just safely delivered Lady Haverston, President Sherbrooke’s mother-in-law, and her granddaughter to their hotel when Keith called asking if she wanted to meet him and Connor at Murphy’s for a late dinner and a few drinks.
“Yeah, I met him and a friend after work. You should’ve come over and said hello.” Besides Keith and Connor, she had seen no one she recognized that night, but the place had been crowded.
“I wasn’t positive it was you,” Lisa answered with a slight shrug. “But damn, he’s cute. Does he have any brothers?”
“Sorry, no. Just two younger sisters.”
“What about the friend that was with you? The guy’s like walking sex in jeans.”
Well, Lisa wasn’t wrong. “Connor has a girlfriend.”
“That figures,” Lisa said as she pulled her dark hair up. “So Keith is working late again. He seems to do that a lot. Doesn’t it bother you?”
Maddie worked late and odd hours just as often as Keith, including over the past several weeks. Both went with the job. “No, not really.”
“Really? I’d always wonder if he was at work or with someone else,” Lisa said as she changed into a cropped workout T-shirt that read “Witness my Fitness.”
Maddie had known both men and women who would screw around behind their significant other’s back without a second thought. In fact, about three months ago, she’d caught Patrick, Cassidy’s fiancé, with another woman. Talk about an awkward conversation with both parties. Patrick had even gone so far as to offer her money in exchange for not telling Cassidy. Not surprisingly, he was now Cassidy’s ex-fiancé, hence the need for their girls-only weekend to Myrtle Beach two and half months ago.
“Keith wouldn’t do that.”
All his many faults aside, Keith valued honesty and loyalty, two words cheaters didn’t know the meaning of. Even when he’d been taking a different woman out every weekend, he’d been upfront with them that he wasn’t looking for anything long-term.
Shaking her head, Lisa sat down on the bench. “That’s what I thought about my ex-husband. It turned out that when Ralph said he was working late, he was screwing his administrative assistant. Something similar happened to my cousin. Take it from me: you just never know what someone else is really doing when you’re not with them.”
In Maddie’s opinion, it sounded like Lisa had some major trust issues, which didn’t bode well for any future relationships. But maybe she would too, in Lisa’s shoes. She’d had relationships end, but she’d never had a boyfriend cheat on her.
“What are you up to this weekend?” Maddie asked, as a way to change the subject. It was better to avoid discussing relationships with some people. Unfortunately, based on what Lisa just said, she was one of them.
“Nothing at the moment. You?”