“I’m just going to have water,” she told me as she brought the plates and salad bowls over to the table, placing mine in front of me with what actually looked like a shy smile.
“Duchess, grab that file for me,” I demanded after she’d gotten her water. “It has our plans in it,” I added when she gave me that odd look of hers again. “So, just because Rodrigo Cortez is such a ruthless sonofabitch,” I started, flipping open her file to his mugshot. I’d known a lot of shitheads in my life, and they always had this common hollowness in their eyes. Cortez might have had them all beat. “We need to do a few stops.”
“Stops?” she asked from where she was picking at her salad.
“Hotels. Just to make sure. Quin and the team, we lock this shit down tight, but we don’t want to take any chances. So we will hit a few places before we permanently settle you.”
“Will I be staying in the country?” she asked carefully, making me realize I wasn’t giving her nearly enough information. Usually, clients were grilling me endlessly about every small detail. It was exhausting, irritating. There was so much that it was important they not know sometimes. But she was right, I wasn’t giving her much of anything.
“I think we can keep you here,” I said, taking my first bite of the potatoes. A low, groaning sound that I didn’t intend to make escaped me. “Maybe I will set you up as a cook somewhere,” I complimented her, watching as she did that shy smile again, the one that seemed so at odds with her usual calm, confident, collectedness.
“If I have any say in the matter, I would just as soon not.”
“I already have you all set up. Name and resumes and everything. I hope you like warm weather,” I added. And, for once, I actually meant it. It wasn’t some bullshit pleasantry I was throwing out there.
I wanted her to like the new life I had set up for her. Hell, maybe she could even unwind there a bit. Let her hair down. Literally and figuratively.
She paid a fortune to start over.
I could only hope it was for the better.
Even if she couldn’t see it right now.
“We’re here for another day. Then we are starting out west,” I told her. “Hopefully, giving your stomach a day off will help seal you up better for the next leg of the journey. They’re gonna be long days in the car.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured me, still only poking at her food even though I’d heard her stomach rumbling before.
I guess having a murderer after you, and losing everything that mattered, had a way of fucking with your appetite, no matter what your stomach wanted.
“How many of those pills did your doctor give you?”
“Sixty.”
Damn. No one ever gave that many out anymore. Not in a single prescription anyway. I guess money talked in a lot of ways.
“That will get you through. It will just be the first week that is bad. Especially with the driving. But you should be in the clear then.”
“What about them?” she asked, making my head shoot up. “The stitches,” she explained. “I would be on the record somewhere if I went to get them taken out, right?”
Right.
Unfortunately.
Which left her with one choice.
“I’ll take them out. Don’t worry; I have everything I’d need. No pain. Just weird to watch. No big deal.”
“Okay,” she agreed, exhaling slowly. “I don’t do well with medical stuff. I think I half blacked out after getting, ah…”
“Stabbed,” I supplied bluntly.
“Yeah. I never saw Heiro’s man scare him off. The only thing I remember after the pain was him putting a towel around me, then carrying me to the car. And then,” she went on, seeming to need to share the information. Given that she had seemed to go right from the hospital, to her apartment to pack up, to our office, she’d likely never gotten the chance to talk this out to anyone in more than a clinical way. “At the hospital, I was just…”
“Freaking out,” I supplied.
“On the inside,” she agreed, a distinction she oddly needed me to hear. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was the sort who lost her cool… on the outside.
“So, then you don’t look when I take them out. No big deal. Won’t think less of you. This food is the shit,” I told her after I had tasted – maybe hoovered – everything on my plate. “Do you have any other questions tonight?”
“Um… sleeping arrangements?” she asked, looking almost worried.
Like I’d insist we’d share a bed or some shit. “You can take the bedroom. I’ll take the couch. Unless you don’t want to be alone. I can drag a cot in there,” I added, and strangely, something inside made me sort of hope it was the latter.