“Are you going?” Rod countered.
“No, but I probably should,” Jules admitted. “We... could go together. You could move to LA. Come work for me. Troubleshooters Incorporated. We have offices in San Diego and Sarasota, Florida. I’ll be in charge of a new LA branch. Dig around for info about them, see if it’s something you can get behind.”
Rod laughed his disbelief. “Fuck you, going all Jules Cassidy on me.”
“What does that mean?” Jules asked.
“I tell you this dark shit, and you fucking offer me a job. You seriously want me?”
“I want you even more because you told me thatdark shit.”
On the other end of the line, he could hear Rod breathing. “I’m sorry, I gotta go,” he finally whispered. “But thank you. Really. I’ll, um, I’ll think about it.”
“I love you, man,” Jules whispered back. “I’m sorry it took me this long to call.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Present Day
Palm Springs, California
Mission Day Three
Mick left the bathroom wearing the shorts and T-shirt that Rod, the larger of the two men, had lent him since Kevin, the smaller man, had put Mick’s blood-soaked shirt and jeans into the wash.
Emily was sitting on the living room sofa, legs curled up beneath her, hair down around her shoulders, dressed in a pair of comfortable-looking sky-blue pajamas that could’ve come out of her very own dresser drawer. She was reading a book that she’d no doubt pulled from one of Rod’s many bookshelves—or maybe they were the dead wife’s shelves. Connie. Lotta romance novels, Mick noticed as he passed them. As well as histories and autobiographies.
Emily had chosen Michelle Obama’s memoir, but as hecame into the room, she closed it with one finger between the pages to keep her place. It was a short-term, temporary bookmark—a signal that she hoped to go back to her reading ASAP.
That she hoped whatever Mick was approaching to say would be brief.
As he sat down in the easy chair across from her, the pile of blankets on the other end of the sofa stirred, and he realized it was just one blanket over there—almost completely covering Kevin, the cheerful nurse.
Who yawned hugely. “Sorry. Yesterday’s shift included a little forced overtime, which is always so much fun. I was there for twenty hours and I’m still catching up.” He yawned again, and told Mick, “There’s a grilled cheese with your name on it in the kitchen.”
“I’m good,” Mick said. In truth his stomach was still churning. When he thought about how close Emily had come to being killed, he got lightheaded. More than once, as Kevin was cleaning out his wound, he’d had to put his head down between his knees.
Kevin had made noise about blood loss taking a physical toll, but Mick knew that his dizziness was from his pure, unbridled terror that Emily had nearly died.
“You want to split it with me?” Kevin asked Em, but she shook her head, too. “You... want me to give you some privacy?”
“Yes, please,” Mick said, as Emily said, “No!”
“Sorry, I was asking Emily,” Kevin told Mick without a hint of apology in his tone despite his words.
It was clear Kevin wasn’t budging, so Mick just jumped in. “As soon as we get home, I’ll get you those files,” he told Em. “It’s everything I found out after I got out of prison. It’s pretty comprehensive.”
“I know I said I wanted to see it,” Emily said quietly. “The video and everything, but... I don’t think I do.”
“Okay,” Mick said, although it was a struggle to get the word out. He’d promised himself that he would say that—okay—to everything and anything Emily wanted from him or of him—at least until the threat to her life was over. But if she never looked at those files... Okay.Okay. He took a breath in, exhaled. Okay. He tried to make it okay. “Do you...” he started. Tried again. “Do you have any questions for me?”
“I do not,” she said. But then she looked down at the book in her lap, opened it, no doubt to memorize the page number, and then set it aside. “Actually I do. You really met with my grandfather?”
Mick nodded. “I went to see him a couple of times. One of them was... Well, you were there. Shooting baskets in your driveway. Singing along with your boombox.”
Something shifted in her eyes. “That was you?”
He nodded again. “You asked me if I worked for your grandfather.”
