“Sorry, Mace. I was kind of busy.”
“You never heard of a damned text message?”
I shrugged. He was right. I’d been totally distracted by the big detective. Is that what he was? Or was he an agent?
Either way, I’d been distracted by the big guy in the suit.
I shivered, wrapping my arms around my chest. It had gotten really cold. Mornings often were this close to the water.
Mason cursed and sat me down at the kitchen table. He plopped a bowl of oatmeal down in front of me and started cutting slices of banana into it.
“Eat.”
He left and came back with a blanket. He wrapped it around my shoulders.
“We can talk later. Unless you want to tell me something now?”
He was staring at me, the look in his eyes intense. No one was as loyal as Mason. And he cared about me. He was literally my only ‘person.’
Alive, anyway.
I shrugged. I had the sudden urge to tell him everything. To unburden myself. But that would only put his life in danger.
So I held my tongue.
“I didn’t have much to tell them.”
“Were they mean to you? I’ll kill DeWitt if he-“
I shook my head vehemently.
“Connor? He was… nice.”
Mason stared at me, his mouth slightly open.
“DeWitt? Nice?”
“Yeah. He brought me coffee and a sandwich and stuff. He even loaned me his jacket so I wouldn’t be cold.”
Mason sat back in his chair, a strange look on his face. Then, unexpectedly, he started laughing.
Not just laughing. Guffawing.
I’m not sure I’d ever heard him laugh that hard in all the years I’d known him. He reached down and scratched Besos behind the ear as the scruffy dog looked back and forth between us, whining. I knew he wanted to lick my bowl clean.
Besos was a weird dog. He really loved oatmeal. Probably because he’d lived on the streets as a stray for so long. He’d learned to survive. He’d take whatever he could get.
I knew the feeling.
“What?”
“Nothing, Casey. He’s just the biggest hard-ass I’ve ever met. The man doesn’t ‘do’ nice.”
“He doesn’t? That’s weird.”
“I think Connor might have a little crush.”
I spooned more oatmeal into my mouth. The food was so good and so warm, I could have eaten a bathtub full. It was kind of like that first night. I’d sat right here, soaking wet and gorging myself on Mason’s homemade stew. Even with the sandwich earlier, I was starving.
Facing down Dante and the FBI in one night could do that to a girl.
Maybe that’s why it took a few seconds for Mason’s word to register.
“Huh?”
“Connor. He doesn’t do nice. He must have it bad if he was that friendly.”
I rolled my eyes. Mason had been warning me for years that I was going to get male attention. More than I’d want most likely. He’d told me not to trust men. He’d taught me how to defend myself too.
So far, it hadn’t been an issue.
Mason kind of made sure of it.
“I doubt it. He was just doing his job.”
“Oh trust me, he thought you were a peach. Too bad for Connor, he’s never gonna get a taste.”
He reached forward and gently tugged on my nose. I wrinkled it up and he laughed again.
“Come on, kid. You better take a hot shower and get into bed.”
Mason had a way of being parental without rubbing me the wrong way. He wasn’t bossy, so much as the voice of mature reason. I nodded and headed to the shower, my mind pleasantly numb.
But when I slid under the covers ten minutes later I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I twirled my wet hair around a finger and snuggled lower into the soft sheets.
Mason thought the suit had a crush on me.
But when I closed my eyes, all I could see was blood.
Connor
“You should get some sleep.”
I rubbed my eyes and shrugged. Sheila had a point. I’d come in after dropping off the girl and started right in on my report.
And digging. Lots of digging.
Not all of it pertaining to the murdered biker either.
There was a certain little waitress who was lodged in my brain, keeping me going. I wanted to get to the bottom of who, and what, she really was.
But Sheil was right. I needed to stay sharp. I gave her a smile.
“Yes, Ma.”
She rolled her eyes and made a rude hand gesture. There she was. Sheila McCafferty was one hell of an agent. She’d been around the block, though she wasn’t quite an old-timer.
Still, she’d been around way before me.
From the get-go she’d been rude and compassionate at the same time. Like a tired woman that can’t help but love her redheaded stepchildren, no matter how many times they tracked mud through the kitchen.
She was as likely to make you homemade soup for lunch as to slap you upside the head for doing something stupid. And she was more likely to zing you if she liked you. I knew, because I’d always been one of her favorites.