Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gage
I didn’t let her see how sick her reenactment made me. Downright I’m-going-to-throw-up sick. She recovered a lot faster than I did too, sitting on the floor next to Baby, my laptop on her lap, perusing fashion websites and gossip e-zines, like she didn’t just send me to an early grave.
Pop and I settled in and got some work done, but he kept shooting me glances wanting to know how the trip went. I swear to God, if I have to repeat it, I’ll go fucking crazy. When I emailed the video to myself, I CC’d Pop and he can watch it later.
I send bills and updates to clients by rote, my mind on Quiet Meadows. It’s obvious they were testing drugs, and it could be as simple as Black wanting to make sure the drugs they were giving Zarah to blank out her mind were working. They could have been using the music to screw her up more, confuse her, agitate her. All Black wanted to do was fuck her up so terribly she couldn’t remember the men he’d sold her to, and to a degree, it worked. There’s one job she still can’t remember, and he could still be free. I hope not. If he and Black were doing business, chances are good he’s in prison for something else. That’s what Zarah believes, and I don’t want to give her any reason to doubt it.
Pop rolls his chair away from the desk. The sun’s gone down, and it’s dinnertime. “I’m gonna head home and watch the game tonight, see how the Vikes do against Green Bay.”
I resist snorting. “Have fun.”
“Might get in a good laugh. Goodnight, Zarah,” Pop says, shrugging into his jacket.
She wiggles her fingers. “Goodnight, Linc. Be careful.”
He smiles at her, his eyes crinkling. I’m glad he likes her, and if Zarah and I ever get married, he won’t give me a hard time about it. “You too, darlin’.”
Pop steps out the door and into the cold, and I dig through a stack of files on the desk. “Can you look at these pictures? Maybe you’ll recognize someone.”
I sit on the floor next to her and show her pictures of JodiAnne, Marci, and Savannah. Her hands shaking, she studies their faces and focuses on Savannah. “I know her. I saw her in the hallway in the basement.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. But the other two aren’t familiar. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” I mumble, my lips pressed against her forehead. “Thank you.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. At first, I thought Ash was wiping your memory to protect himself. That the torture and the questions were their way of ensuring the drugs were doing their job, but if you saw Savannah in the basement, then what were they doing to her?”
“Maybe her family had something to do with it,” Zarah says, and I frown, a denial fast on my lips. “The doctors said it’s aggressive treatment.”
“Fuck that. Abuse isn’t ‘treatment.’” I pause. “But she was a troublemaker,” I say reluctantly, not wanting to brush aside any theory no matter how disgusting it is. “It could be why when her sister hired Pop and me to look into her death, her parents wouldn’t talk to us. Maybe they’re hiding something.”
“This is the girl who slit her wrists. You told me about her.”
“Yeah. Your memory isn’t as bad as you think it is.”
She beams. “It’s not.” Looking at the pictures again, she asks, “Who are the other two?”
I explain JodiAnne and Marci were also patients at Quiet Meadows, both of them dead. The change of subject is welcome. I can’t talk about Savannah and not think of Troy and Meredith taking their own lives.
“How are they connected?”
I frown. “Only by Quiet Meadows as far as I know. That, and their families are wealthy, but that’s not much of a correlation. You have to be rich to afford Quiet Meadows. Though, JodiAnne’s mother kept saying JodiAnne was insistent someone was after her. That they were going to kill her. We didn’t talk to Marci’s mother for very long, but she let me page through Marci’s diary and she said the same thing. She thought she was being watched—that someone was following her. Savannah’s fiancé said something similar. No one took them seriously because of their mental health.”
“Someone who worked at Quiet Meadows?”
“I don’t know, but that seems the most likely.” I slide the pictures back into their files. They’re dead cases now, pardon the grotesque pun. There’s nothing more we can do for them. Dead and buried. Well, maybe not buried. It’s too cold to dig into the ground, but their deaths are in the past, their families moving forward. I wonder if Marci’s mother would let me have her diary. I doubt it, and I don’t have time to go through it. I still have to pack up Max’s apartment. It’s a surprise my mother hasn’t gotten in touch to set up a time after agreeing to help me. “Do you feel like someone’s following you?”
Zarah shakes her head. “No, but I don’t go anywhere alone.”
“That’s true. JodiAnne didn’t, either. She had her . . . nurse.” I stop. “We questioned him, though. Except . . .”
“What?”
I dig through JodiAnne’s file. “He worked at Quiet Meadows before it closed. Fuck.”
“You think that’s more than a coincidence?”
“We didn’t, not back then.” I scan my notes and the conclusions Pop and I drew after we spoke to Jason Bellamy. “But since we talked to him, two more girls are dead. Speaking of nurses, any news about Ingrid?”
I feel like shit I told Zane I would look into her disappearance and haven’t started yet. My brain is zooming in a hundred different directions and I can’t focus on anything or get anything done. As much as I hate to admit it, Pop’s right. I need to let Zarah do her own thing for a few days.
“No. It’s like she dropped off the planet.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Yeah. I thought we were friends, but she left and didn’t look back.”
I wrap my arms around her. “I’m sorry.”
Shrugging, she says, “It’s okay. She was only hired help, right? Zane was paying her to be my companion. I guess that’s all she wanted, and after that dried up, she took off.”
“Yeah, but it still sucks. Come on, let’s grab some food. You still want to spend the night?” Our argument about Zane and the video comes back to me, and a pit hollows out my stomach. Out of anything we could break up over, her choosing Zane over me seems like a situation that could very well become a reality. I thought maybe Rourke would shove a wedge between us, or her money, or when she’s finally off the drugs she’d decide I’m not good enough, but her choosing her brother could be the realest scenario of them all. She’d never hurt Zane because hurting her brother means hurting Stella. Zarah would gnaw her arm off her body before she hurt Stella.
That leaves me shit outta luck.
“Yes. If you still want me to.”
I could use the break to catch up, but she’s frail in my arms, a tiny bird, and the thought of us being separated, no matter the length of time, breaks my heart wide open. When I say I’m in love with Zarah Maddox, it’s not just lip service. It’s not me saying the words. She’s all I can think about, she’s everything I want, and that doesn’t change simply because I don’t see this working out for us. Helping her get her life back will be my greatest achievement, but watching her move on with someone else will ruin me.
All I want is for her to be happy, finally living the life she deserves, but I know deep down where I don’t like to go, that if she finds happiness with another man, I’ll never recover.
I brush the hair out of her eyes, my fingers lingering around her temple.
“What is it?” she asks softly, pressing my hand against her cheek.
“I’m scared, Zarah. I’m scared of what’s going to happen next.”
She launches herself against my chest, nearly knocking me backward onto the floor.
Baby yelps in surprise, then hops to her feet, thinking we’re playing a game.
Zarah hugs me, her breath warm against my neck. “I am too, Gage. I am, too.”
I wake up buried deep inside her, her legs and arms encasing me to the point I can barely move. I hope I’m covered because my brain is swamped with sleep and I can’t remember tearing the packet open or sheathing myself. I don’t pause to check, and I pump, long, steady glides.
She whimpers in my ear. “Don’t stop.”
I wouldn’t be able to stop even if I wanted to. Fire burns in my gut, my balls heavy, needing release. My skin is sweaty, and so is hers, my fingers slicking down her back and to her ass, pulling her close.
Eight inches inside her isn’t enough.
The air smells like sex, and I suck in big gulps of it trying to keep control.
I don’t know how close she is.
I’m going to explode any second, and I reach between our bodies to quicken her along.
She sinks her teeth into my shoulder. “Yes, please, yes.”
Her clit is huge and slippery, and I swirl my fingers over the nub. Moaning, she lifts her hips and grinds into my hand. I thrust, sharp, hard jerks, and she tenses as she comes, clinging to me. Her cum gushes out of her, coating my pubic hair and the base of my cock. Her pussy pulses around me, and I finish off, pounding into her.
I come, one of the best orgasms of my life, and I hide my face in her hair. Sucking in a staggering breath, I mumble, “Please tell me I have a condom on.”
Her fingers wiggle between us. “You have a condom on.”
“Good. Knocking you up is the last thing I want to worry about.” I shudder, pull out, and flop onto my back, hot and exhausted.
She brushes a kiss over my lips. “Another week or so and we won’t have to worry about it.”
“That will be nice. This took me by surprise.”
“You were having a nightmare. I don’t know what you were dreaming about, though...you didn’t say anything. I started kissing you, hoping you would wake up, and all of a sudden I was flat on my back and you were inside me.”
I force my eyes open. “Jesus. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” That’s always a worry I’m going to have whenever we make love. Am I going too fast? Am I trying something she won’t like? Am I too rough?
“No. You’ll never hurt me, Gage.”
“Yes, I will, but I hope I never do in bed. I need to clean up. Go back to sleep, sweetheart. It’s too early to be awake.” I kiss her, our tongues tangling. Reluctantly, I lean away.
She sighs. “Okay. I love you.”
I pull the comforter up around her shoulders. “I love you, too.”
She rolls over and in seconds, her delicate breathing drifts to me.
I wipe off, take a leak, and put on boxers and a t-shirt. My heart is hammering too painfully to go back to sleep. I’m still scared shitless that she might not have wanted to make love just then. I need to be more careful. I’m exhausted, but that’s no excuse. I’m lucky she was in the mood. I don’t ever want her to have to tell me no or fight me off in any way. Every time we’re intimate, I need her full consent.
It’s four in the morning, and maybe I can get a couple hours of work in before Zarah wakes up. I have so much to do, I need a few days to myself whether I want them or not. She’ll invite me out to eat dinner, but I’ll find a backbone and decline. I still haven’t processed what I saw her go through yesterday, and I need to find my cool so I don’t shove that video into Zane’s face.
There’s a load of crap I could do, but first I let Baby out for an unexpected pee break that she’s thankful for and then make coffee. There’s no way I could do any kind of work without it.
When I have a full mug and Baby’s in bed snuggling on Zarah, I scribble out a list of the things I need to get done.
Find out what happened to Ingrid.
Pack up Max’s apartment.
Read more of his journal.
At the office, Zarah mentioned her suspicion that Max was spying on them. I chewed on it, gave it fair consideration, but in the end, I said he wouldn’t have done something like that. She hasn’t read any of his journal, didn’t know that even if maybe he’d had intentions of reporting to Rourke, him meeting her and falling in love would have put an end to it. I told her if anyone knew anything they shouldn’t have we could blame Nathalie Barton, and her expression cleared. She didn’t want Max guilty of something like that anymore than I do. Besides, he wouldn’t have left me instructions to protect Zarah, his journal, and those CDs. He must have thought they were important if he wanted me to see them, and I shouldn’t have put it off for so long.
I should look into my truck exploding, but Jesus Christ. That seems like a dead end. They could have planted that bomb anywhere, anytime. I’m all over King’s Crossing working on jobs. I’ve been lax checking out this truck, and I should be doing a sweep every time I get inside. I was an easy mark once, and I’m proving to be an easy mark again.
I want to see Willow. I wonder if she knew Rourke owned Quiet Meadows when she pointed us in that direction. She was fucking the guy, it’s a sure bet she knew. Not quite sure what we would have done with the information back then. Not sure what to do with it now. Rourke owning the sanatorium doesn’t have to mean anything but that he saw it as a good business investment, and that’s not me trying to find an explanation to excuse him. If I get a chance to pin the guy’s ass to the wall, I will, I don’t care for what. Zarah might owe allegiance to Zane, and I completely understand that, but nothing is keeping me loyal to Rourke, not even my mother.
Visiting Black is still on my list, but I’ll need a day to travel to the state pen, and that seems like a crazy amount of time to throw away right now.
I dig through Ingrid’s file—the information Zane had a courier drop off at the office. I find her sister’s email address and introduce myself, ask what the police have told her in regard to her sister’s disappearance and if she has any new information, and add that I would be looking into the case on Zane Maddox’s behalf. That might be a little presumptuous, but it could be she’ll appreciate it. After living with the Maddoxes for a year and a half, I’m sure Ingrid considered them family, and I know Zarah returned the sentiment. I want Ingrid’s sister to know they care and they’re taking initiative in finding her.
I click Send and rummage through more of the information Zane sent over. I email Ingrid’s employment agency and ask if she’s contacted them. Zane gave her a nice severance package, so maybe she decided to go on a vacation and didn’t check in. Simple as that.
I wonder if she did go on a vacation without telling anybody. For all intents and purposes, Zane and Zarah fired her, and it’s possible she ran off to avoid humiliation. Or maybe she was attached to Zarah and needed to get away. Ending relationships is always tough, even if they’re professional friendships. No one will know the truth until we can talk to her. I call the airport, throw my weight around, and I’m transferred to a sleepy desk agent who’s willing to look up Ingrid’s name to hurry me off the phone.
No one by that name has flown in the past two weeks, and I thank him for his time. Flying isn’t the only way out of King’s Crossing, so I don’t scratch a vacation off the list just yet. We have the train, and she could have ridden the bus. She could have driven herself out of town.
I call the train station, but no one answers their customer service line until seven and it’s only five o’clock. I’ll have to wait and hope I don’t forget to call later. The first bus out of King’s Crossing leaves at five, and I call the bus depot hoping someone will be in the office. An irritated woman picks up the phone. I explain my situation, that I’m looking for someone who’s missing, and the woman slurps coffee, interrupting every other word.
She doesn’t give a shit about helping me, and the sharp tap tap tap of the keys on the keyboard broadcasts her annoyance loud and clear.
“There’s been no Ingrid Flannigan on the buses in the past two weeks,” she says, her voice muffled. She’s eating a doughnut now and doesn’t care I know it.
“Thank you for looking that up. I appreciate it.”
“Yeah. You could try the other bus company.”
I straighten. “There’s another bus company?”
“Do you live here?” she asks, sneering. “Yeah. Unity Bus Line? Smaller than us, but still manages to steal half our business.”
I bite back a retort. I don’t need an explanation as to why. “Thanks.”
“Have a good day and thanks for calling Aero Bussing.” She hangs up.
The old guy who answers Unity’s toll-free customer service number sounds just as crotchety and uncooperative as the woman who answered at Aero, and I have to repeat my request several times before he understands what I’m asking.
“Ingrid O’Flannigan?”
“No. There’s no O.”
“What?”
I huff a sigh and run up to my loft. If I yell any louder, I’ll wake Zarah. “Flannigan. No O. It’s just Flannigan.”
“All right, all right, you don’t have to holler. It’s too early in the morning and the coffeemaker’s broken. Let me look, hold your horses.”
I pace my office while he clacks on a computer, his heavy breathing scratching over the phone line like static or a creeper who made naughty phone calls before Caller ID ruined their fun.
“She bought a ticket four days ago.”
I perk up. “She did?”
“Says so right here. Ingrid Flannigan. Bought an 8 AM ticket out of King’s Crossing.”
“Where was she going?”
“Eh. Looks like Chicago.”
Christ. My knees buckle in relief, and I sink into my desk chair. “Did she board?”
“The driver scanned her ticket.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Ah-huh.” He hangs up.
I let out a sigh and trot downstairs to the kitchen. Later, when everyone else in the world is awake, I’ll contact Ingrid’s sister and find out what there is in Chicago and why she thinks Ingrid didn’t tell anyone she was leaving town.
Sitting at the table, I ruffle through the notes I took the day we interviewed Jason Bellamy. I didn’t ask him who his employment agency was, and I wonder if he uses one that specializes in the medical field and if Ingrid’s employment agency is the same one. That kind of coincidence would be crazy, since King’s Crossing has a population of over three million people, but it would be just the kind of coincidence we need to break this case apart.
I’m musing over the chances of that happening when Zarah stumbles into the kitchen. I’m sitting in the dark, but my laptop gives off enough light to reflect the little packet she’s holding in her hand. I’m instantly hard, and I’m insanely pleased she’s relaxed enough to initiate sex, especially since two hours ago I did nothing less than attack her in her sleep.
“Hey, you shouldn’t be awake,” I whisper.
She pads closer, rubbing her eyes. Sexy as sin, her black negligee wrinkled, her hair tousled.
“Were you talking to someone?”
I wince. Yelling at the dude at Unity woke her up after all. “Yeah. Sorry. I was making a couple of phone calls. I didn’t mean to be so loud. The guy was half deaf.”
She straddles my lap, wraps her arms around my neck, and settles onto my thighs. “Who were you calling?”
“Checking into some information about Ingrid.”
“Did you find anything?”
“A couple of things, but I don’t want to say what until I dig a little more.”
I cup her face in my hands. She’s so beautiful, the laptop casting her skin in a weird blue glow, but it doesn’t matter. Her eyelids are droopy with sleep, and her lips are swollen from our lovemaking session earlier. I run my hands up her thighs and to her hips. She’s not wearing panties and I hiss in appreciation, gripping her ass, grinding my cock into her cleft.
“Hmm,” she hums against my lips. “Do you want me?”
Pressing my hand against her lower back, I say, “In all the ways that means.”
She leans away and tugs my cock out of my boxers. The tip is shiny, and she runs her fingertips through the pre-cum. “I used to be scared of semen,” she says, almost idly as she caresses me. “I used to hate the sticky feeling, how it smells, how it tastes, but you’re showing me sex can mean love, that it doesn’t have to be full of violence and anger.”
“A real man doesn’t have to hurt a woman to feel powerful,” I say, trying to stay still and not buck against her hand.
“You’re teaching me that, and it’s something I didn’t understand I was grappling with. When I was in Quiet Meadows, Zane started sleeping with Nathalie. He said he used her for sex for a long time. She couldn’t say no and he liked that she couldn’t. He did whatever he wanted to her.” She swallows.
I don’t know if she wants me to reply, so I don’t, and I wait for her to say what she needs to say.
“I realize now he was using her because he felt powerless. He took control over her to have control over something, someone. Our parents were dead, I was locked up, Ash was leading him around, he thought Stella abandoned him, so he took power where he could.”
“Maybe, but that was wrong, and you know that, right?” Zane used Ash’s prostitution service, and I won’t sit here and listen to her defend him. I’ve seen Zane angry, and I don’t need to be told Nathalie Barton had been on the receiving end of it many, many times.
“Yes. Ash’s jobs were the same. They liked to have power over me because they lacked power elsewhere in their lives. Their businesses, or at home with their wives. Raping me made them feel like men.”
“It made them cowards, Zarah. They didn’t fight for what they needed.”
“I know.”
She scrubs her fingers through my beard, and I lean into her touch. I love the way she accepts me for what I am, how I look. Maybe even enjoys my beard, the tats. I look one way, rough, dangerous, but act the opposite. I’ll protect her with everything I have.
“You don’t need that kind of control to feel like a man. You don’t need to mistreat anyone to feel powerful.”
I capture her wrist. Rourke’s mocking words haunt me, and I can’t let her think I’m perfect. “I haven’t been an angel, either, and I’m no saint. I’ve fucked a woman too hard, kicked the crap out of a druggie or an abusive asshole because I could. Pain and power are on different sides of the same coin, Zarah, and I’ve spent my fair share of change.”
She smiles faintly. “You’d never hurt me.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never hurt anyone at all.”
She nods, but her thoughts have moved on. Only the here and now concerns her, the gentleness in my touch as I hold her in my lap. Her fingers tease my cock and a little spurt of cum drips down the tip. She’s got me heavy and wanting, but she’s on top and she’s calling the shots.
“Can I taste you?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know, but I think it could help me. If you don’t want—”
“I said I would do whatever you needed me to to do, no matter what that is. If you need to explore, then explore. I’m a big boy, I can handle it.”
She wiggles off my lap and kneels between my legs. She wants to give me a blowjob, and my cock sings with pleasure. It’s been a while since I had a woman’s lips around my dick, and more cum seeps out in anticipation.
I rein it in.
She looks up at me, her big brown eyes full of trust. “I might not be able to do it for a long time.”
“You don’t have to do it at all.”
“I think if I want to push my progress, I have to, and I feel safe with you.”
“I hope that never changes, sweetheart.” I tense, waiting for the heat of her mouth, but she starts slow, licking up and down my shaft, tucking her fingers between my sac and the elastic of my boxers, lightly fingering my balls. Her slow and steady is going to give me a heart attack. I reach for her hair, and she lifts her head.
“Don’t, okay? Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry.” I swallow hard, imagining just how difficult this must be for her. To willingly do something she’d been made to do without her consent. I grip the edge of the chair.
“It’s okay. I like it when you twist your fingers in my hair and one day while I’m doing this I think I’d like it if you did, but right now I need one step at a time.”
She goes back to licking my cock like a lollipop, and I swear to God I should win an award for acting like I’m doing nothing but watching paint dry. This is for her, not for me, and I need to give that to her. All along I’ve been saying I want, no, I need , to be part of her recovery, in whatever way that entails. If that means her giving me a blowjob without me touching her, then that’s what it means.
Her little mouth closes over the tip of my cock, and I have to summon every ounce of willpower I have not to move. Her tongue nudges the tiny divot there, and my dick surges. I hiss out a breath. “Sorry, I can’t help it.”
Pulling her mouth away, she says, “It’s okay. That means you like it, right?”
“Fuck, I more than like it.”
She giggles, and it warms my heart she can in the middle of doing something she despises.
Licking me, she sucks me into her mouth with a light pressure. Maybe it’s natural, maybe Stella gave her some tips, but holy fuck, she knows what she’s doing and I’m not even halfway in her mouth and I want to come.
“Zarah.” Urgently, I say her name. I don’t want to push her away. She said not to touch her, and I won’t.
Without releasing my cock from her mouth, she looks up at me, and the look in her eyes, the absolute love there, knocks me sideways. I jerk my hips, and my cock slips out of her mouth with a wet pop . “I’m going to come.”
She licks my cock and says, “You’re supposed to.”
“I know, but I don’t want to. I’ve never liked coming in a woman’s mouth. It’s not you, I promise. I want to be inside you.”
That’s only half a lie. I prefer being inside a woman when I come, but if a woman’s enthusiastic and says she doesn’t mind, I’m usually not one to say no. Some women like swallowing cum, but I already know Zarah isn’t one of those women and more than likely never will be.
“Are you sure?”
I wrap her hand around my cock and stroke up and down. “Yes. I’m pretty damned sure.”
“Okay.” She stands, lifts the packet off the table where she dropped it, and hands it to me.
I give it back. “You started it.”
“I did.” She smiles, proud of herself.
She rips it open and wiggles the sticky condom out of the foil. I have to show her which way is the right side up, and when she rolls it down my cock, it’s almost as painful as her lips wrapped around my head. Her touch is feather-light, and more cum oozes out the tip.
Straddling my thighs, she lowers herself on top of me, using my shoulders to steady herself.
I grip her waist, but she’s the one in control. Pushing down, then easing up, pushing down, then easing up, getting used to me. I didn’t think to touch her, see how wet she is, but she’s doing fine on her own and maybe that’s the point.
Finally, she settles onto my lap, angling her hips to take me all the way.
She traces my lips with her tongue, and I detect the faint flavor of my cock. Painfully, I stiffen even more, and shifting on the chair, I encourage her to move up and down, straightening and bending her knees.
“This is some good morning,” I say, grunting. My heart is going to burst letting her have control. I have to stop myself from grabbing her ass and going to town the way my cock wants.
“It’s something I could get used to,” she says, settling down on my lap again. “I love how deep you feel, how you fill me up. I was so lonely for such a long time, Gage. Have you ever been lonely?”
“No. Yes. When my girlfriend left me. I didn’t think I would get over her.”
“You’ll have to tell me about her someday.”
“Why?”
“I want to meet her so I can tell her that her loss is my gain.” She grabs my hair at the back of my head and shoves her tongue into my mouth.
Several minutes later she lets me up for air, and I say, “She’s probably married and lives in California.”
“I won’t have competition then.”
“Lady, you are a class act. You don’t have any competition.”
“Good. Take me to bed,” she murmurs against my lips.
“Is Baby still in there?”
“Yeah.”
I sigh.
Zarah wiggles in my lap. “Hurry.”
Without breaking our connection, I stand, and she wraps her legs around my waist.
I carry her into the bedroom, and we make love as the sun comes up. Satisfied with both Zarah’s initiative and the progress I made finding Ingrid, I fall asleep and wake up two hours late.
Wrapping my body around hers as I watch the sun streak across my wall, I don’t care.
Zarah orders a car, and I clutch her shoulders asking her to look at me. Letting her out of my sight isn’t as hard now that I know Ingrid didn’t disappear, only neglected to tell anyone where she was going, but it’s still difficult to let Zarah leave without me and I ask her to promise she’ll go straight home.
“That’s a great idea,” she says, pushing her arms into the sleeves of her coat. “I need a shower and a nap, but I have an appointment with Jerricka this morning first. I’ll go to my session and then home. I promise.”
I frown. “I thought you weren’t seeing her anymore.”
“She closed her office for the holidays. She’s back now, and I have to tell her I stopped taking the new medicine she prescribed. I haven’t been as forgetful, and I’m going to tell her I don’t think it’s a good fit. I was doing fine, really, before she put me on it, and I need to ask Zane why he okayed another medication.”
I don’t like her going to her appointment alone, and I don’t like that she’s seeing Jerricka Solis in the first place. I’ve already told Zane my opinion, and Zarah, too, and while Zane didn’t brush me off, Zarah did, and I have to respect that’s her choice. “Will you text me when your session’s over, and then again when you get home?”
“I will. Do you want to come over tonight? We can eat dinner and let the dogs run in the woods.” She grabs her purse off a hook in my closet.
“I want to, but I can’t. I need to go through all of Max’s things, and I still have to clean out his apartment. I can’t avoid it any longer.”
Opening the door, she leans out and listens for a car idling outside. “Do you want help?”
Does she want me to give her a chance to miss him, she means, and that answer is a flat-out no. I could be sitting on our porch, twenty grandkids gnawing on my ankles, Zarah sitting by my side and holding my hand, and I would never give her the opportunity to miss my brother. Call me a jealous freak and I wouldn’t deny it.
“I asked my mom if she would. I think she needs the closure.”
A car pulls into the parking lot and stops in front of the building’s doors. Her cell chimes, and the driver texts he’s waiting outside, adding my address as proof he’s really here.
Meeting my eyes, she blows out a breath. “Okay.”
Her lips tremble. She wants to make plans, but I owe Pop some time, I owe Max a helluva lot of time, and I’m going to talk to Savannah and Meredith’s mother—if she doesn’t chop my head off for trying.
“Let me catch up on some stuff. Okay?”
“Yeah,” she agrees reluctantly, and I know how she feels.
I don’t let Zarah go downstairs alone, and I hold the door open and check out the driver myself. It’s a sleek black town car, one of many I’ve seen her ride in, and nothing about it looks suspicious. Shivering in the freezing wind, I cuddle her to me and kiss her. “I’ll text you later.”
“Have a good day,” she says, and steals another kiss.
The driver opens the back door, and she slides into the seat.
“Tell me when you’re done at your appointment,” I remind her.
She lifts a hand and the car glides away.
Uneasy, I stare long after it disappears.