“Stay.”
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
I lent Kobe a pair of gym shorts, and we took turns cleaning up in the bathroom. We lounged on the couch, sipping one lastdrink and chatting about safer topics. My love for cycling and the races I’d been part of in the past. My transfer to Ottawa and the differences in working in a teaching facility. My recent fascination with the evolution of the plague and the nonfiction books I’d been reading on the topic.
Kobe was not a reader.
He shared more about his little brother, Émeric, and the time they spent together. I understood better why he volunteered. If Kobe’s life growing up was as terrible as he proclaimed, giving a child opportunities he never had would mean a lot to him.
Eventually, we made it to bed.
Kissing turned into an exchange of hand jobs. Again, Kobe didn’t press for more.
Nighttime tended to bring with it all the ghosts from the past, so I was more distracted that time, and I thought he recognized it.
Kobe slept like the dead. Two orgasms and he was out like a light in no time. I lived the life of an insomniac and spent the following hours contemplating new intimacy and the path laid out before us.
To say I wasn’t terrified would be a lie. Kobe had openly shared many parts of himself—about his past, about his present, about his likes and dislikes. Certain aspects of his life had been clearly difficult to express, but he’d let me in. He’d shown me his vulnerable side.
I felt comfortable around Kobe. He wasn’t like other men. Every facet of his personality intrigued me, even the unfiltered side he was so sure would drive me away.
My grief and reluctance to talk about the past hadn’t scared him off. He accepted me without question. I felt no pressure or expectation.
Kobe, somehow, made everything easier.
I didn’t know what the future might bring, but Kobe gave me the confidence I’d been lacking to continue on this path. He struck passion into my heart. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that things would work out perfectly and smoothly. I anticipated bumps in the road, but the point was, Kobe was a man who understood me. A man with passion. Heart.
Kobe gave me hope, and I desperately needed hope in my life after so much destruction.
19
Kobe
“What you’re suggesting ispreposterous.” Fatemeh Kordestani’s heels clicked on the vinyl floor as she marched ahead, her long strides outpacing me. The woman was determined to leave me in the dust, and I had to jog to keep up with her.
When I’d arrived in the bullpen that morning—slipping in late since I stayed at Dominique’s and had trouble leaving his almost naked body alone when my alarm went off—Rue informed me that she had scheduled meetings that morning, and I was to chase down Navid Kordestani’s ex-wife again. Since I was the one suggesting his indiscretions might have gone deeper than being a disrespectful doctor and teacher, I was the one to suffer Fatemeh’s wrath.
I tracked down the thoracic specialist at Hôpital Montfort, where she was doing a weekend rotation and following up with a few surgical patients. I caught her ten minutes after she arrived, the moment she finished consulting with a nurse about hermorning schedule. To say she was unhappy to see me was the understatement of the century.
Fatemeh refused to take five seconds to discuss my concerns in private, so I’d been forced to race after her, explaining my suspicions about her ex-husband while she clipped down the hall toward an area I wouldn’t be permitted to enter. For that reason, I’d forgone professionalism—not that it was my forte.
“It’s not preposterous. He wouldn’t be the first man to have an affinity for young girls. How can you be so sure?”
Fatemeh halted so abruptly I nearly crashed into her. Spinning to face me, her fashionable scarf swung, tassels bouncing against her blouse, hair nearly whipping against my face. She glared down her nose. Her heels gave her an extra inch and a half of height. “My ex-husband was a lot of things, Detective, but he wasnota pedophile.”
The cordoned-off area where she planned to escape was less than twenty feet away. The door was clearly markedHospital Personnel Onlyand the instant she barreled through it, the interview would be over.
Before she ran off, I tried a new angle. “Listen to me. Navid was on the committee that voted to decide if a student named Jesse Vargas was to be expelled for drug use. The same student who had a reputation for making inappropriate advances on women. Rumor has it, your husband voted in favor of letting Jesse continue to study at the university.
“I don’t know if you’re following the news, but Jesse Vargas is one of our victims, killed in the same fashion, by the same person as Navid. I believe there is a connection between this student and your ex-husband. They knew each other. Navid tried to save him from expulsion. Why? Who was this student to him? How were they connected?”
Fatemeh studied me for a long time, her momentum seemingly forgotten. The disgust on her face wasn’t hidden. “Oh,I remember the uproar that was Jesse Vargas.” The name came out like a bad taste on her tongue. “I have a colleague with a daughter who was in his program. If my husband voted for him to remain at school, I knew nothing of it. So far as I understand, the votes were private. I find it worrisome that the police deal in rumors. Besides, that all happened after our divorce. We weren’t chummy. I only spoke with Navid when he was late paying my alimony.”
“Riiight. Needed your money.”
“It was my due, and Navid had a nasty habit of forgetting to pay me. I warned him.”
“Was the inheritanceyour dueas well?”
