Chapter 16
Brett drove along in silence after that, the dotted yellow line flashing in his peripheral vision as his thoughts veered horribly off course. Grace had never experienced that spark, the electrical energy of physical attraction. Not with her minister boyfriend. Not with anyone but him.
He shifted in his seat, the blood flow that had been diverted to his groin in the wake of her revelation making him decidedly uncomfortable.
He’d been attracted to her for a long time.
That he could have dealt with, easily. He was dealing with it.
But the idea of being her most intense sexual desire to date was fucking with his imagination.
It’s not like she’s a virgin.
God, that would have pushed him over the edge, lighting up his brain like it was on fire. Not that he would do anything about it if she were. He’d have to be one hell of a jackass to take a woman’s virginity when he wasn’t planning to stay in her life.
No. After all this was over and the twins were living with their grandmother, Grace would still be next door. If he slept with her, he would not be able to avoid her afterwards, and the thought was just what he needed to quell the insistent rise of his cock.
“I’m bored,” she proclaimed. “Tell me about your family.”
“Why?”
“I’m making conversation. I told you about my family, now you tell me about yours.”
“Not much to tell. My mom lives in Southern California with my stepdad. My real father died when I was ten.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The men in my family are not known for living past the ripe old age of fifty.”
“Why’s that?”
“Just seems to be the way things happen. Never the same cause, so it’s not like it’s hereditary or anything.
We’ve got ordinary heart attacks, cancer, that sort of thing.
But we’ve also got a drowning, a freak skiing accident, and an autoimmune disease.
I, myself, am planning on going down in a blaze of glory. ”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“You’d better get busy. Pick your poison. Is it motorcycles, drag racing, cliff jumping, extreme sports?”
“All of the above, except drag racing. I should try that.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“And what about you? What would your blaze of glory look like?”
She laughed. “Let’s see, there’s bingo. I’m big into bingo.”
“You are not.”
“Every Thursday night. John thought it would be nice if I got involved more in the church activities. I probably won’t be doing that anymore.
” She sighed softly. “I sold cards, walked around and checked bingos for accuracy, that sort of thing. You would not believe how many of these people call bingo when they don’t really have it. ”
“Okay, we’ll call that charity work. What do you do for fun?”
“I don’t have any. I mean, not like you do.
I like to read, watch movies. Hiking is a lot of fun, though I don’t seem to do it much anymore.
Work is where I get my excitement. My own little adrenaline rush.
In the ER, I get to take care of all the idiots who get hurt riding motorcycles, cliff jumping, enduring extreme sports. ”
It was his turn to laugh. She was witty, a real smart mouth, and he liked it. “Better watch yourself, princess, or one of those hikes might have a cliff at the end of it and you’ll need somebody like me to help you out.”
“Were you close with Joni and Luke?” Grace asked.
His hand clenched the steering wheel more tightly. “Not anymore.”
“But you were once?”
“Yeah. I fixed them up. Luke was my cousin, and Joni was my friend since we were young. We went to the same college. She was going through a hard time with an ex-boyfriend, had to get a restraining order and all that shit. I figured dating a cop might kill two birds with one stone.”
“You took care of her.” She hummed softly. “What did you study in school?”
“Women.”
She clucked her tongue. “Of course you did.”
“History. Joni was the smart one. I told you she was a scientist. Published a bunch of research articles about fertility.”
“So I’ve been learning. She was quite prolific.” Toby cried, and Grace unbuckled, climbing into the backseat. “Why did you stop speaking to them?”
“I never said I stopped speaking to them.”
“But you did, didn’t you? I’m very good at reading people, too. Something happened that ended the friendship. It’s been eating you up since you first got to the hospital. You’re guiltier than a dog covered in ice cream cake.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Nothing that dramatic.”
“So tell me.”
He hesitated. “I did a couple of tours in the Navy SEALs. We didn’t have as much in common after that.”
“You didn’t have anything in common before, either. She was a science nerd, right? And you wanted to go into the military. So tell me what really happened. Were you jealous of her relationship with your cousin?”
“No.”
“Were you two ever an item?”
He laughed. “The closest thing we had to a relationship was one of those if I get to be forty and I haven’t found Mrs. Right deals.”
“I have one of those with a gay go-go dancer named Vincent.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s a long story. So what, did the SEALs mess with your head or something?”
“Of course it messed with my head. What do you think?” He cursed under his breath. He heard the rage in his voice, the barely concealed wounds he pretended weren’t there.
This often came up in conversation when people learned he’d been in the military. He was proud of his service and would do it again in a heartbeat, but freedom wasn’t free. The final days of his last tour were easily the darkest of his life.
“You want the truth?” He couldn’t believe he was saying this.
“Fine. Here it is. Every guy in my unit died when we came under fire in Afghanistan. Every guy but me.” Nothing good came from sharing this with other people.
Only those who were there could ever really understand, but he was compelled to continue.
“Good men, men with families who deserved to see them again, men who stood for something bigger than I’ve ever believed in. Okay?”
“You should have been the one to die.”
He twisted around. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“No, I mean that’s how you feel. Like you were the one who should have died instead of them.”
“Fucking ridiculous conversation, that’s what this is.”
She was quiet for several miles after that, just long enough for him to feel like a real shit for unloading on her like he had.
“Finish your story,” she said. “What happened between you and Joni?”
He sighed, thinking of the similarities between Joni and Grace. “She wanted me to talk about it. To get help. She wouldn’t back off.”
“So you cut her out of your life.”
He nodded. “I cut everyone out of my life. My wife, my friends. Everybody.” A sudden wave of emotion crested over him at the finality of those words.
Regret for what he’d done, for what he’d allowed himself to lose.
He was glad Grace was in the backseat so she couldn’t see his tight features.
When he spoke, his voice was strangled. “They expected me to be a man I wasn’t anymore. ”
She put her hand on his shoulder, surprising him. “I’m sorry. This must be really hard for you.”
He shrugged off her touch, forcing some normalcy into his tone. “Life’s a bitch, princess. Then you die.” He tilted the rearview mirror and met her stare, seeing the hurt the moment he put it there. “How are the boys doing?”
“Fine.”
His eyes went back to the road and he clenched the wheel more tightly. He never should have opened Pandora’s box. He should have kept his secrets to himself, and he chastised himself for sharing. “It’s not something I like to talk about, Grace.”
“I can tell.”
She was pissed. They were still more a ways away from where Joni and Luke had lived, the time stretching out before him like taffy. “I really appreciate you doing this.” He looked for her eyes in the mirror, but she didn’t meet his gaze.
“Uh-huh.”
He flipped the mirror back to its original position, the headlights of the car behind him catching his attention.
They were square and wide-set, and he was sure they’d been there for quite a while.
He made a mental note to keep an eye on it, grateful HERO Force was also on their tail.
“I’m not sure what I’d do if I had to handle the twins on my own. ”
“I think you’d be fine.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. They don’t talk back, and they have zero knowledge of acceptable behavior.”
He frowned. Definitely angry. His cell phone rang through the speakers, and he saw it was Moto. Grace climbed into the front seat as he answered it. “You’re on speaker. What do you got?”
“More info from the license plate on the stolen van from the hit-and-run. It was registered to a seventy-eight-year-old man who’s been institutionalized the past two years with Alzheimer’s.”
“Who reported it stolen?”
“Rodney Hamilton. Bogus address, didn’t give any ID. But get this—the nephew of our Alzheimer’s patient is Dr. Rick Fleming, CEO of Lamont Scientific where Joni worked. Even more interesting, Joni filed a restraining order against Fleming back in 2016. Seems they had a romantic relationship.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Brett, now recognizing the name. “He’s her crazy ex-boyfriend. Why the hell was she working for the guy who stalked her?”
“I found an article in Fertility magazine where Joni mentions her past relationship with Fleming. She said Lamont Scientific was at the forefront of fertility research, and she’d always respected Fleming’s mind.
She said they made a great team, if not a great couple, and she was happy to be working with him again.
Some shit about discovering new frontiers in molecular fertility. ”
“Send me that article, and see what you can find out about Fleming. I want to know everything, from his address right down to what brand of underwear he wears, Moto.”
“You got it.”
Toby hiccuped as Brett hung up. “It had to be Fleming. He had access to the van that killed her. Remember the videotape? It looked like the driver was crying. If he had feelings for Joni, a history, that makes sense.”
Grace shook her head. “Why would he kill someone he cared about?”
“And try to kill the twins.” Brett’s mind was racing. “There has to be a reason. I’ve got ten bucks says the answer can be found at Lamont Scientific. We need to get into her lab. Find out what she was working on.”
Grace pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll keep reading her published research. See what I can learn.”
Brett pressed harder on the accelerator and shook his head. “Why would Joni work for that bastard? Why would Luke let her? They knew Fleming was a goddamn sociopath. How could they let someone like that back into their lives on purpose?”
“She must have had a reason.”
Toby hiccuped again. Brett scowled, a new possibility crystalizing in his mind. “The babies.”
“What about them?”
“Joni and Luke were struggling with infertility. What if Fleming’s work gave them a chance to start a family? What if Lamont Scientific was doing work no one else was doing?”
“That would give them a good reason to put up with Fleming.”
He shook his head, foreboding brewing in his belly. He remembered the fear in Joni’s voice when she spoke about Fleming. How desperate must she have been to do this? “There’s no such thing as a good reason to invite evil into your life.”