I smile. “And what do you know about good wives?”
This slight to my mother should offend him, anger him, but his grin only stretches wider. He looks bizarrely pleased with my response, and for a split second, my confidence drops.
“You don’t like me much, do you?” he asks.
The sheer idiocy of this question strikes me momentarily speechless.
Only a moment though, then I reply, “I’m not much for the company of killers.”
I haven’t even annoyed him. His brown eyes are cold while mine must be alight with barely contained loathing.
“Funny, that’s not what I heard,” he answers evenly.
I remain unimpressed, but I’m not sure how to take that. I have the uncomfortable feeling he knows something I don’t, and the last thing I want is for him to know that.
“Come on,” he says, almost brightly. “Let’s eat.”
Liam
It’s been a week since they started tailing her.
I haven’t been able to get near her. Haven’t been able to reach out at all. I’m sure she has no idea, but red flags are going up around every lobe in my brain. Are they watching her, or watching for me?
After a week, I’ve pegged the weak link. Two of the guys they have on her are pretty good, but the third fucks around on his phone a lot. He gets the night shift, so it’s boring for him anyway, but if I’m going in, that’s when.
I shouldn’t try. It’s reckless and dangerous and frankly stupid.
At the end of the day, my belief that I’m better than them, and some concern for her that I don’t want to deal with, drive me to do the stupid thing. I do it as smartly as I can, parking on the street behind her house and cutting through a neighbor’s yard. I’m thankful they don’t have a motion light and it goes smoothly, but I don’t know how I’m going to get in quietly. The kid watching her is out front, and she just turned on the bathroom light a couple of minutes ago. I can’t get in the bathroom. Window’s too high and on the side of the house. I can’t go in either door, because they’re on the front and side of the house—again, kid’ll see me. I can’t bust out a window, because that’s not subtle and they may hear me.
I also don’t know if they have the house bugged. I’m not going to take the time to search it; I’m just going to assume the answer is yes and be doubly safe.
I want to kiss the fuck out of her when I get to the back window and find it unlocked. It’s not hard to pop out the screen without a lot of noise, and a minute later I’m inside.
The shower’s running. I stifle a groan at the prospect of finding her naked. I don’t want to find her naked, ready to step into the shower. That’s fucking mean.
This is so much easier than I imagined it being. I make it to the bathroom door and turn the knob, opening it as quietly as I can.
Her back is to me and she is, in fact, naked except for her panties and about to step into the steamy shower.
I don’t want to scare her, but more than that, I don’t want to alert the guy watching her that anything is happening. So just as she goes to shimmy out of her panties, I lunge forward and grab her, clapping a hand over her mouth and pulling her back against the hard plane of my body.
She struggles and tries to scream, but before she can I’m whispering in her ear. “It’s me.”
She stills. Her chest works hard, and I’m sort of crushing her right breast with my arm.
I give her a minute to calm down. I feel her relax against me, her left hand coming to rest on the arm gripping her hard across the chest. She doesn’t know why I’m here, sneaking into her house and grabbing her, but she doesn’t question it. Doesn’t worry that I’d ever be here to hurt her.
My hand still covers her mouth but I let go of the grip I have on her. I let her turn around, backed up against the wall in the small space, and she doesn’t even try to cover herself.
I resist the urge to look and use my free hand to bring a finger to my lips, warning her to be quiet.
Her eyes grow wider but she nods, and I move my hand away from her mouth. She’s silent, waiting for my direction. It sort of kills me how much she trusts me.
As if to hint how much she shouldn’t trust me, my gaze finally drops. Now that I know she’ll be quiet, I can look at her.
Time slows down for us, because I’m a fucking idiot.
She takes a breath when my gaze hits her tits, and before I can think better of it, my hands are drawn to them, covering them, thumbing the pebbled nipples. A breath rushes out of her and she closes her eyes, resting her head back against the wall.