“Yes, you.” She laughed despite herself. “Back to our argument.”
Luke visibly objected to her use ofargument, but she pressed on.
“I agree that people are a mixture of good and bad, but most people aren’t murderers. Murder is intense. Murder is a crime of passion. A crime of greed, need, hatred. Some people go off the edge, and their motives are psychological and skewed—the serial killers, the psychopaths. But this doesn’t feel like that. This is too intentional. Too planned. Too specific. There’s a motive we can’t see—yet. But y’all have done something to tick somebody off.”
“I’d say we’ve done a little bit more than tick them off. People tick me off all the time. I don’t blow things up.” Luke leaned back against the bed, one arm behind his head, the other propped on a pillow. It had to be hurting.
“Have you had any pain medicine today?”
Luke cut his eyes in her direction. “Am I giving you the impression that I’m high on something?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his query. “No. I’m wondering if you need some ibuprofen. That little adventure we had this afternoon? You’re going to feel it soon, if you don’t already.”
“Oh, I’m feeling it. But I don’t have any new holes.” He turned onto his side to face her, eyes wide.
“Holes.” They both said the word at the same time, and they both smiled at the shared joke.
“Gil will be impossible. He has aholein hishead. He will declare victory for all time.” Luke checked his watch, all humor fading from his expression. “Don’t you think they should have given us another update by now?”
“It hasn’t been that long.” Faith glanced at the time on her iPad. “But I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”
“Yeah.” Luke closed his eyes. Faith scanned through her notes, looking for something, anything, to give her some direction about where to look next.
“Have you ever?” Luke’s question was murmured. Sleepy.
“Ever what?”
“Run a marathon?”
“I hate running. I do just enough to pass my physical fitness.”
“Too bad rowing isn’t part of the physical. You’d kill it.” Luke’s speech was slurring in his fatigue.
“Yes, I would.”
“Why don’t you like running?” He was fading now.
“It’s hard to run on water.” Luke’s eyes were closed, but his mouth twisted up into a small smile at her remark. “And I don’t need to run to stay in shape. Rowing is more fun, and it gets the job done.”
“It definitely does.”
Faith couldn’t decide how to take that. But a soft snore from Luke told her that regardless of how he meant it, he was out cold.
She took a moment to study him. His lean body was swallowed in the too-large scrubs, but she’d seen the abs hidden under that shirt. When he woke, she’d have to ask him what he did for exercise besides running. Whatever it was, he did a lot of it.
The hand of his injured arm twitched on the sheet. It sported several deep gouges, one with three stitches, and was covered in purple and green bruises. His dark hair was trimmed short around his ears, but there was enough on top that it fell across his forehead in a way she knew he would brush to the side when he woke. His nose was straight, and his eyelashes were so long they should be a criminal offense.
If her life and heart ever had room for a man, Luke Powell would be the type of man she would want to come home to. A little snarky. A little funny. Confident. Calm. And when he said her name in his deep voice, she felt safe.
A good man in a storm. That was Luke.
Enough drooling over a man she couldn’t have. She flexed her fingers. They were stiff and sore from wrestling the steering wheel on the way to the hospital. She swiveled her head in a slow circle, first in one direction, then in the other.
After a few slow revolutions, she tapped her pencil and began to note everything that had happened in the past week. On Tuesday, she’d listed the cases the RAIC office had worked in the past year.She had left out cases Gil and Tessa worked separately from the others, but now she added them as well.
If she were Tessa Reed, she’d be scared out of her mind right now.
Faith created a new note. She listed each attack. The agent involved. The location. The type of attack. She started with Thad Baker. Car bomb. Restaurant. Two people killed. Six others injured, one seriously.
