He swore under his breath and looked out the windshield again. He could have read the tow warning sign a hundred times during the amount of time he stared at it. She didn’t break his concentration.
When at last he turned back to her, he said, “You’ll have to do it without me.”
“Trapper—”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not giving up until I have a face-to-face with The Major.”
“Up to you if you want to try, but I’m having no part of it.” He slid on his sunglasses and started the car’s engine. “I hope you take rejection well. The Major won’t let you get your foot in the door before running you off. Have a nice life, Kerra.”
She had thought that hearing about the bombing from the viewpoint of a five-year-old survivor would have softened him. There had been a few moments when she felt that she’d struck a human chord, snagged a sensitive thread in his caustic soul, but apparently not.
He wasn’t even angry and edgy as he’d been last night. He was cool and indifferent. Further argument would only provide him more opportunities to be ornery and insulting, and she’d be damned before giving him that satisfaction.
“I wish I could say that it’s been a pleasure, Mr. Trapper. But all you’ve been is crude, rude, and a waste of precious time. Thanks for nothing.” She yanked the handle of the car door and pushed it open.
“One thing, though,” he said.
She turned back. “What?”
“If I had it to do over, I’d kiss you like you wanted me to.”
“Go to hell.” She slammed the car door, crossed the street, and didn’t look back.
She stormed through the entrance of her building and made a beeline for the resident concierge. The smiling young woman asked how she could be of service.
Kerra requested that her car be brought from the garage. “An hour from now.”
“What’d you get?”
“What happened to ‘Hello, how are you? I’m sorry for butting in on your honeymoon.’”
“I’m not in the best of moods, Carson, so cut the crap.”
Trapper had watched Kerra jog across the street and disappear through the glassy entrance of her apartment building. He then drove away, but only covered a couple of blocks before pulling into an empty loading zone and punching in his friend’s number.
Last night the favor he’d asked of Carson was to use every available resource to run a background check on Kerra Bailey.
“I didn’t get anything you couldn’t have gotten on your own,” Carson complained.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Like I haven’t?”
“And I have to go through legal channels to get information.”
“If you start nitpicking, then—”
“I repeat. What did you get?”
“I emailed it all about thirty minutes ago.”
“Thanks, but I’m driving,” Trapper lied. “Can you give me the bullet points?”
Carson huffed in exasperation but began. “When she was five years old, she was adopted by her aunt and uncle.”
“Do you know what happened to her real parents?”