A perfectly wonderful stranger…
I couldn’t sleep. I was too wired to close my eyes and drift off into nothing. My mind raced and I knew that rest wouldn’t come.
I grabbed the robe from the foot of my bed and got up, walking into the kitchen, not bothering to turn on the light. Darkness was better suited for my purposes. I sat down at the table and fired up my laptop.
My mind still too full of Mason, I brought up the search engine and typed his name.
A few minutes later I was surfing through a pile of useless information. Nothing pertinent. Nothing that I wanted to know. I had already pored over all of the surface stuff. I had done my homework. I knew I was dealing with a celebrated FBI agent. Intelligent. Talented.
Dangerous.
I hesitated to violate him completely. The basics had gotten me to this point. But tonight we had entered a new phase. If this was going to work, I had to remember what I was doing.
Getting close.
And that meant it was time to dig deeper. To knowmore.
Twenty minutes later I had access to his credit card statements, and I scrolled through pages and pages of purchases that revealed much about the man I had spent the evening with.
He ate out a lot, spending very little money on groceries. I knew he didn’t know how to cook, given that he had burned the popcorn he made us.
He frequented a bar on the other side of town at least twice a week. He typically spent between ten and twenty-five dollars. After looking at the bar’s menu online, I deduced he’d eat dinner and drink a beer. Only one. I had noticed that he ordered just the one at dinner as well. He was a controlled man. He knew his limits.
My stomach clenched again.
He was in control. Most of the time. But I had found the crack in his veneer tonight.
The knot in my belly dissolved into a heat that spread outward at the memory of touching him. Of his touching me.
It had taken everything in me to remember to not lose myself. Because it would be easy to do.
Too easy.
I pored over the tiny, seemingly insignificant details of his life. The breadcrumbs he left as he went about living.
Mason Kohler was a man of contradictions.
He paid for an annual subscription to a tech magazine. He spent money at the shooting range several times a month. He liked to shop at camping stores and his last Amazon shipment had included a trouser press and a crate of energy drinks.
He was an alpha male in so many ways.
Then there were the vet visits. Several of them. Purchases of specialty cat food. Even though he called his cat an asshole, it was obvious Mason loved him. Doted on him.
He sent flowers to an address in northern Virginia for every major holiday. He also donated $200 a month to a cancer research fund with the memo “in memory of Dillon Kohler.”
He had lost someone.
Someone close to him.
I remembered the man in the photographs. The boy in the basketball jersey.
More digging revealed an obituary for a young man whose picture revealed him to be the same person in the pictures I had seen earlier.
He looked a lot like Mason.
Only with longer hair and a less burdened smile.
Dillon Kohler was Mason’s younger brother. He had died last year from a brain tumor.
