Rory pressed her lips together, still hesitating. “Who is your safe person, Gideon? You nearly died for Javier. He said it wasn’t the first time. I don’t understand what happened the other night when you tore those wounds open, but I know it had something to do with me and my nightmare. I think you sent those birds to wake me up.”
That sounded ridiculous, but looking at him with his strange, focused, raptor-like stare, she could imagine him ruling birds of prey. But then, she had a very vivid imagination.
“I heard you call out to me,” she confessed. “In my dream, Iheard you call my name. That’s what woke me. I was standing on the very edge of the ledge, and I was surrounded by owls. They were flying at me, and I jumped back to the patio. Had I not awakened, I would have fallen three stories.”
“It isn’t a good idea for you to sleep outside, Rory. Not when you’re having nightmares.”
“No, you’re right. But you sent those birds to me, and that contributed to tearing open those wounds.” She made it a statement and watched to see if she could read his expression. It didn’t change at all.
“Red, come sit down next to me, where you feel safe, and tell me what’s been going on.”
His voice dropped into that soft velvety lure she’d heard him use that was so difficult to resist. She realized shewantedto go to him. She wanted to tell him everything. She’d come to him needing to see him, to know he was alive and well, but once she was there, the feeling had been growing in her all along that she wanted to tell him about Tinsdale and her apartment being broken into. She’d been reluctant to tell Javier, but it felt entirely different with Gideon.
Rory crossed the distance to that long couch and sank down beside him, turning so she was facing him. She drew her legs up and pulled one of the lighter throws over her. She even ignored the fact that Gideon didn’t answer her about whether he was responsible for sending the owls to her. She hadn’t really expected him to answer the question, but she had hoped he would.
There were so many things she wanted to know about him. His childhood. His teenage years. What he did now. They had time to learn about one another if she was just courageous enough.
11
I don’t even know where to start. Nothing makes sense to me. It doesn’t to my friends either. We talked about it. All of us. Well, I didn’t tell them everything.” Rory knew she was rambling again. Talking too fast. Not making sense.
Gideon didn’t interrupt her. He allowed her to find her way. She took a deep breath and let it out. “You know there was a detective killed at my apartment building. His name was Peter Ramsey. There were four men living at the apartments who acted like they didn’t know one another, but they did. My friends and I would see them together in the workout room or the laundry room. We thought it was silly that they would pretend to be strangers.”
Rory rubbed her hands on her thighs. She had to start somewhere, and she needed to give him a picture of what it was like at the apartments. “We saw them every day, but we didn’t interact with them other than to say hello. None of us were comfortable being alone with them. In any case, a couple of days after thedetective was killed, Dustin Bartlet, one of the men, turned up dead in his apartment. We thought suicide.”
“You sound as if you’re questioning the suicide verdict.”
She hesitated. “I can’t speak about that, not even to you. But it might not have been.”
“Red. Who would I tell? Do you think this place is bugged?”
Rory sighed. “It’s one thing to tell you my secrets, but I’m uncomfortable telling you any of my friends’ secrets. It isn’t necessary, and it has nothing to do with what I’m telling you.”
“Go ahead, sweetheart. We’ll talk about relationships and what the expectation for ours is to be later,” he said.
She hesitated. She was doing the best she could. She thought it was very reasonable not to break a friend’s confidence. Janice hadn’t given the name of her friend, but she’d made it clear that if anyone found out she’d been given the information, her friend could be fired. She asked they not repeat it.
“The point is, I think Dustin was murdered. Then Ret was murdered, and his body was in the garbage chute. That leaves Harvey Matters and Jarrod Flawson alive, and both have disappeared. No one knows where they are. The police seem to be looking for Harvey and Jarrod. A few nights ago, when you were hurt, I took an extra shift at the bar to help out. A man came in and introduced himself as Scott Tinsdale. At first, he hit on me and acted like he wanted to take me out. I told him I was with someone.”
Gideon looked pleased. “I’m happy to hear that.”
“A couple of your friends were in the bar that same night. I was really worried about you because I couldn’t feel you when I reached out to you. At first, I wasn’t paying as much attention as I might have been to the man. Eventually, I started noticing that he wasn’t looking at any of the other women. He watched the exits. He paidattention to my conversations to the point I was sure he was trying to record them. He made me very uneasy.”
“Why didn’t you reach out to one of my friends?”
“I don’t know them. I did ask them to check on you.”
“Yes, and you most likely saved my life,” he conceded. “The bleeding was slow but steady. Thank you for reaching out to them. I know that made you uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t mind since it was on your behalf.”
“But not on your own? Even for your own safety?”
She didn’t have a way to tell him why. She was uneasy around strangers. She knew they would have insisted on walking her home, and she would have been just as awkward with them as she was with Tinsdale. She preferred to rely on herself.
“I didn’t have to close that night, so when I was certain Tinsdale had left, I started home. The fog was thick, and I was extremely worried about you. In fact, I was thinking more about you than about him and where he might be. I should have been more alert. The closer I got to home, the more uneasy I felt, and I thought it was because of you. Then he came out of the fog, and I realized my radar had been going off, and I’d put my warning system down to the wrong thing.”
That envelope in the inside pocket of her jacket was so hot that she swore she felt it burning her skin right through the material of her blouse. What if she was doing the wrong thing, and telling Gideon would get him killed?
