“Eden will be fine. You, on the other hand . . .”
“Is that a threat, pimple-butt?”
“Pimple-butt?” Webb asked, interrupting their moment. If you could call it a moment. Sometimes it felt like they were two bulls facing off in a pen.
Zander turned to Webb. “She thinks she is funny. And I thought it was big pimple-butt”
“I decided to shorten it. And I am funny. Plus, I didn’t start it.” Right. Now she sounded like a child.
“Keira? Can I check you over now?” Webb asked. The fact that he asked rather than demanded had her moving towards him.
“I really think this is unnecessary,” she still complained as she gingerly sat on the side of the bed.
“It’s unnecessary to have you checked over when you’ve been beaten and tied up for hours?” Webb asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Webb, just do it. I want to get out of here. I’m going to go make a couple of calls. Don’t leave her on her own.”
She glowered at his back as he disappeared.
Definitely a pimple-butt.
5
“Everything okay, boss?” Honey asked, coming up next to him, chewing her gum. When he’d first met her, that chewing used to drive him insane. But now, she wouldn’t be Honey if she wasn’t chewing on gum.
Sometimes he wondered if she did it in her sleep.
“Miles hasn’t found any trace of Kansas buying a car,” he replied.
“Not a lot of places to buy a car around here, he might have gone further afield.”
Exactly what he’d thought. “I’ve had him checking out everything within a fifty-mile radius. It could take a while. Especially as he’s likely to be using false identity. I need to get any known aliases from Keira.”
“You really think she’s telling the truth about what happened to her?”
“About him beating her up, knocking her unconscious, tying her up, then disappearing? Pretty hard to fake any of that.”
Fucking bastard. As soon as Zander had seen her, he’d been flooded with anger, followed by a surprising surge of protectiveness. Not something he should feel toward the woman he’d been tasked with tracking down because she’d stolen money and blackmail material.
No, he shouldn’t feel protective, but he did. And he couldn’t hand her over to Reyes. There were no guarantees that Reyes wouldn’t give her to Bartolli.
But Zander wasn’t about to let that happen. That sadistic bastard wasn’t getting his hands on her.
So until he figured out what it was about her that itched at his insides, that spoke to him, he was going to keep her.
“Why would he leave her like that? Do you think he planned to come back?” Honey asked.
That was his best guess. The bastard must have caught sight of him.
“Did she say why he beat her?” Honey asked.
He turned on her. “There’s no excuse for what he did to her.”
Honey stared at him knowingly. “She’s not Charlene, you know. She’s not an innocent.”
“I know she’s not Charlene. I’m not a fucking nutcase. I don’t look at her and see Charlene.”