Chapter 4 #2
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She stepped outside into the parking lot, red shade trees around the perimeter.
Well, at least she wasn’t here in order to stalk him.
He didn’t want to stare at her, but all that long, dark hair reflected different shades of red and brown in the overhead light. She wore a slim white blouse with no sleeves, tucked into high-waisted black pants. Tall red heels on her feet. Makeup understated. Fancy purse.
He was suddenly very glad he had worn a suit today and not his usual jeans and shirt. Even if he shopped from the higher-end section of the Western wear store, he still drove an older-model truck. Not the kind of thing a woman like her rode in.
“When I decided to live here, I had no idea where you were.” He softened his tone. “I didn’t even know that you’d survived what happened.” His gaze drifted to the scar.
“Thank you for drawing attention to it. Again.” She turned to the street and stepped off the curb.
Luca followed her, unwilling to let her get away another time.
“I’m sure whatever overlap there is between us on this job, we can be professionals about it.
” She lifted her chin and headed for the center of the lot.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to point out that you have a scar.” He touched the outside of her arm with the hand holding the hot cup of coffee, keeping it careful and gentle. “I have one as well from the same day.”
“Then you know what it’s like to be constantly reminded of something you would rather forget.”
“Was it so bad?” He’d thought there were some sparks between them, but once she’d taken the flash drive from his pocket, all that had gone out the window in the face of mission security.
“Like I said, I’d rather not be reminded of it.” She beeped the locks on a gray compact and walked away.
Kira didn’t look back at him or that long hair he had pulled back in a ponytail. No longer the military soldier, now he was a handsome man in a suit. But she wasn’t sure if that change was a good or a bad thing.
She pulled her three-year-old Mazda out of the court parking lot and onto the street, between an SUV and a mom van. Whatever she might’ve thought about Luca Saxon and the hero he had seemed to be on the day she met him, he wasn’t that man anymore.
If he’d ever been.
The first thing he’d mentioned was money. As if getting paid was his only reason for being there, and not helping the Marshals with a high-profile operation. She was more intrigued by the patient’s condition and the treatment he was going to receive than how big the offer in her envelope might be.
At the first stoplight, she used the dash screen to call an old contact. Jordan Witherspoon had worked for the CIA for more than twenty years, and in the short time Kira had been one of their assets, Jordan had become a friend. Someone she was determined not to lose contact with.
“Hello?” Jordan answered.
Kira gripped the steering wheel, trying to squeeze her frustration out on the hard plastic. “It’s me. Can you talk?”
There was a faint click, and she said, “The line is secure.”
Kira let out a big sigh.
“What happened?” Jordan asked. “I haven’t heard any chatter in your neck of the Colorado woods.”
“Good, because that’s exactly how I want things to stay.” Kira turned onto Broadway toward the high-rise where she lived. “Maybe this is all based on the fact I worked all night and then went to a meeting instead of going home and going to bed, but my brain is spinning right now.”
“We can talk after you get some sleep.”
Kira slowed for a parcel truck to pull out in front of her. “I just need to know what exactly the Marshals know about the work I’ve done in the past. They mentioned my security clearance, so I know they ran a check on me.”
“Let me see.” Jordan went quiet for a second.
It wasn’t as if Kira was going to bring up her previous work for any government agency to that judge and a marshal.
It was enough that they knew she had been a doctor in all kinds of conditions, under a whole lot of hair-raising situations.
That was probably enough to make her qualified for this particular assignment.
But she still needed to talk to her bosses at the hospital, just to make sure they knew she had taken on additional duties for a short period of time.
Jordan came back on the line. “It looks like they just did an in-depth background check. Which wouldn’t have given them more than what’s on your résumé, at least officially. Unofficially, the CIA didn’t divulge anything, and neither did any other agency.”
“Thanks.”
“Were you really worried about some of your secrets being leaked?”
Kira pulled into the underground parking lot in the basement of her building and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head when the area around her plunged into dim light.
Her numbered space was down one level, in the corner.
Far enough from the elevator that she always walked with her keys between her fingers, just in case someone came up behind her with ill intentions.
“I just ran into someone I met a long time ago, and it kind of threw me. All of it colliding in the same conversation where they are mentioning my clearance.”
“Right.” Jordan paused. “Do I need to run a background check on someone?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. My plan is to steer clear of him as much as possible during this job. Besides, he’ll be on security, and I’ll be taking care of the patient.” That meant they didn’t necessarily have to see each other, right?
Kira didn’t need the constant reminder that she might have been completely wrong about Luca Saxon.
That the person she had built up in her mind as a hero could be far from it.
It seemed more likely, from the stories Mack had told her, that Hammer—the team leader—was the heroic one.
He was the guy who’d saved his family from a burning house.
Luca had settled into civilian life, and now he was trying to build his nest egg.
That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering everyone needed money to live.
But it definitely rubbed her the wrong way.
Which meant it was high time that she set aside those fantastical daydreams about being swept off her feet by a hero, and let go of the idea that a man could be everything she dreamed he was.
“That may be so,” Jordan said. “But I still want his information so I can do some checks of my own. Just in case something happens to you, I’d like to be prepared.”
“You’re so sweet.” Kira gave her friend Luca’s name. “He spent the last couple of years fighting wildfires, I guess—”
“Oh.” Jordan paused. “I know who he is.”
“You do?” Kira frowned. She only knew about the wildfire thing because Mack had been telling her stories of his brother and the rest of the team. Everything that’d happened during their summer in Montana, then in Alaska, and all about people in some place called Last Chance County.
If she didn’t think Mack was more honest than a lot of people she’d met, she might not believe him. She might think he’d been making it up. Or at least embellishing stories.
Jordan said, “Those guys were all over the papers for a while. They made national news after they took down some conspiracy to poison the food supply last year, or something like that. But I know about it because there was a CIA agent involved. One of my assets, though she dropped off the radar a few years ago and no one knew what had happened to her.”
“Really?”
“I figured she’d been killed, and honestly, it bothered me for a long time. Thinking that maybe I could’ve done something to save her life.”
Kira swallowed against the lump in her throat. “But she’s okay now?”
“We connected recently, and she’s doing great,” Jordan said. “I keep my people safe. That’s the deal, isn’t it?”
As far as friendship with Jordan went, that was pretty much a declaration of undying devotion. Kira smiled to herself. “Love you too, girlie.”
It was also a measure of Jordan’s dedication to her job at the CIA that she worked so hard to keep people safe.
Jordan was going to work for the agency for her entire career because she believed that much in the work they did.
In keeping assets safe and ensuring missions were completed with as little loss of life as possible.
Kira said, “Now I have an appointment with half a chapter of a sweet romance novel and a pile of blankets. Otherwise, when my shift rolls around tonight, I’ll be exhausted.”
Jordan said, “Falling asleep thinking about some guy might not be a bad thing.”
“I’ve done way too much thinking about this guy. It’s time to find a new hobby.” She hung up the phone and headed from her car to the elevator and up to her apartment.
The lobby between the elevator doors and her front door echoed, the temperature lower than necessary so that it raised goosebumps on her forearms. She ducked into her apartment and toed off her heels by the front door.
Her feet, in her nylons, pressed against the warm tile where she had underfloor heating.
Kira turned on the kettle to heat water for decaf tea and changed into her comfiest pajamas.
Yesterday’s mail sat on the counter in a stack she hadn’t gone through yet, but she would do that while she ate breakfast this afternoon, before her shift.
When most people were waking up and getting ready for the day, Kira was lowering her blinds and darkening the apartment so she could get a few hours of sleep.
This was what she’d needed for so many years, working overseas.
Quiet space that she controlled. Minimal decoration, because too many things cluttering a room didn’t allow her mind to relax.
In the hospital, she was constantly overwhelmed by sights and sounds and movement.
Here, in her personal space, she found a sense of peace, enough that she could rest.
First, she would check her email for the patient’s file and do some research on the condition they had. Then maybe after that, she would turn on the audio Bible instead of reading the sweet romance she’d mentioned to Jordan.
Her friend was the one who had suggested that Kira exit the covert ops world and the contract work she had been doing.
Go back to just practicing medicine and nothing else.
Jordan had seen how that life was starting to affect Kira and cautioned her that things wouldn’t get better unless she made a change. Took a break.
It was like being given a new lease on life.
Probably a lot like Luca and his journey, being declared dead and then coming back to life. Getting a second chance to make a life for himself. That would take money, wouldn’t it? Especially if a person hadn’t built up a nest egg.
Maybe she shouldn’t judge him too harshly, considering the things she had done. The Bible was pretty clear about not condemning another person when she had plenty in her life that would condemn her, but for the blood of Jesus.
She used her iPad to do some research on the doctor who would be administering the procedure. She’d never heard of Dr. Torres, but recognized some of the research he had conducted from medical journals she had read. Turned out he was local to Renegade and well known for his cutting-edge ideas.
This was certainly going to be an interesting job.
Once it was done, her life would go back to its normal, steady state.
Peace and quiet—something she had desperately needed after spending years in a war zone—was now a given.
She’d eventually realized that her heart and soul had been battered by the constant conflict and ever-present fear, and that Jordan was right. She’d needed a change.
She’d clung to her faith as best she could, but that had felt thin as well when she finally walked away from the work she’d been doing.
The last few years working in Renegade, seeing the mountains every day and helping people who lived in this city, some of them for their whole lives, had been a kind of therapy for her. She had spent so much time just trying to rebuild who she was and sort of put herself back together.
Seeing Luca wasn’t going to set back the progress she’d made. It wasn’t going to interfere with her peace or her carefully ordered world.
At least, not if she could help it.
Her iPad pinged with a new message. Sent to her hospital email account from Saxon Investigations. She frowned and tapped the notification.
I’m sorry for how our conversation ended this morning. The answer to your question is yes, we can be professionals about this. Working together doesn’t have to mean being at odds with each other. I’m sure we can find a way to get along.
She’d been so thrown by his mentioning money that early in the conversation that when he’d asked her out for coffee, she’d immediately shut him down. How on earth was she supposed to understand his intentions?
But apparently, she didn’t need to worry about that.
He was there to do his job, just like her.
Which meant she’d have to stick to her word about being a professional.
As long as Jordan didn’t come up with something that Kira needed to worry about, everything would be fine.
They would do the job, and as soon as it was over, he would be out of her life again.
A good way to test the efficacy of everything she had been building the last few years.
Otherwise, how else would she know that she was who she needed to be now?
And not the woman who had failed to save so many people’s lives.