Action

Jack folded his arms in an attempt, Davina assumed, to look less like someone who had been rescued.

“I thought you were a police officer again?” she said.

He ignored her, so she reached out her toe and jabbed him in the back of his knee.

“Hey, I thought you had your job back.”

He scowled at her.

“I was going to talk to you about that, but you went all mental and started reading your movie out loud to me.”

Huh?

“So what’s going on?”

Jack stared at the ceiling for a moment.

“This isn’t the time or place. We’ll talk later.”

He pointed at the ambulance crew who were loading Derek onto a stretcher. He was drooling. Davina felt nauseous.

“Am I going to get charged with assault?” she asked Andy, since Jack was just a civilian.

“No, you were defending yourself.”

“And rescuing Jack,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”

Andy grinned widely.

“You don’t need to worry, we’ll never, ever forget that.”

“What about the pee in the kitchen?” Davina wanted to know. “Will the CSI guys clean it up for me? Marianne will be mad if she sees it and I can’t face that right now.”

Jack let out a long, heavy sigh.

“CSI is a TV show,” he told her. “An American TV show.”

Her shoulders slumped.

“So no one’s cleaning up the mess?”

Andy made a choking noise and covered his mouth.

“I’ll see what I can organise,” Jack told her.

“But you’re not police,” she pointed out before turning to Andy. “Can you do something?”

“Absolutely,” he said as though struggling to keep a straight face.

As they walked away Davina thought she heard Andy say, “she’s a keeper,” but she wasn’t sure if she heard right.

After hours of answering endless questions Davina started to yawn. Jack placed a shawl around her shoulders and stroked her hair. She wanted to pull him to her, curl up against him and close her eyes. Instead she smiled at the promises she found deep in his eyes.

“Later,” he whispered.

She tucked her feet beneath her and snuggled into the old chair while Jack went to talk to yet more police officers. It didn’t take long before she’d used up all her extra adrenalin and she felt her eyelids become heavy. Feeling content and safe, Davina drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN