He paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. “It’s how I work.”
It was probably how he had to work with his job. All right. I got that. “So none of this explains why dead bodies have been left for me.”
“Nope.” Aiden shook his head. “None of that is Barensky’s M.O. The disaster last night is exactly what I expect from him.” Aiden finished his pancakes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the two cases weren’t related. That somebody was dropping bodies on you as some sort of tribute.”
“Tribute?” A chill clacked down my back. Oh, I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Yeah. Both Sasha and Bev messed with you.”
I finished my breakfast. “There’s only one person in the world who’d think that was a tribute,” I whispered.
Aiden placed his hand over mine. “It isn’t Jareth Davey. We lost him in California, but he’s not back here. I have watches on everything, and he’s not here. This isn’t him.”
Someday Jareth and I were going to end things between us. He should’ve left town years ago after being found not guilty of kidnapping me, and he should’ve never looked back. Instead, the nutjob sent me cards twice a year. “I feel like he’s going to make a move.”
“Me, too,” Aiden said. “It’s time, but this isn’t him. When he makes that move, I’ll take him down. Fast and hard. I promise. Plus, I’m trying to find him first. Before he can even think about it.”
I shivered. “Okay. We agree it isn’t Jareth. So who is it? The whole situation is so weird and doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Sasha and Bev are both connected to the Barensky case, and you’re connected to me, so it has to somehow flow. But I don’t see how.” He took my plate and moved it to the dishwasher.
“Then it has to be Barensky. He came to my office to check you out, to check us out, and also left the bodies.” It was the only thing that made sense, and I hated calling Sasha and Bev ‘bodies,’ but it was the only way not to completely freak out about this.
Aiden turned around, and frustration cut lines at the sides of his generous mouth. Finally. Some emotion. “I’m telling you that I’ve met Barensky and I’ve studied him. I know what kind of explosives he prefers and why he can’t help but start the fires. He couldn’t kill the way those women were killed, and it doesn’t make sense that he’d hire somebody else to do it. If he’d wanted them dead, he would’ve made a show of it. Period.”
I scratched a healing cut on my hand. “We’re missing something.”
“Yes, we are.”
We needed to figure it out before another body dropped. “What now?”
“Now you take a rest.” He tossed the dishtowel onto the counter.
I was feeling much better after eating his excellent pancakes. “I’m not tired. If you didn’t have to babysit me, what would you be doing?”
He studied me. “I’d be working this case at my office.”
The cute house in Spokane. “Let’s do that. I can get some work done at the same time. Or we could just go to our respective places of work.”
“No. You’re with me until we find out what’s happening.” He ducked his head to study my eyes. “Are you sure you can go to Spokane?”
“Yeah.” My head really didn’t hurt much. Hopefully it was because my concussion was very mild and not because I was becoming so accustomed to getting a concussion. Didn’t the brain just give up from so many bruises at some point? “Maybe I should start wearing a helmet all the time.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought about that.” He leaned over and traced my jaw with his thumb. “We’ll go work out of my office for a few hours, but if your head starts to hurt or you get dizzy, you promise to tell me. Deal?”
I smiled. “Deal.”
Chapter 34
Iliked Aiden’s office building even more when I was working in it. While a storm had been taking Idaho, it was still sunny and pleasant in Spokane. I took over a small part of his office while he worked in the computer room with Drag and Saber. It turned out that Detective Grant Pierce had some juice because protective detail had been waiting for my sisters at their homes. I made a mental note to bake him a huckleberry pie as a thank you once I got back into my house.
An agent named Chelli Wilson had dropped by to say hi, and now she was upstairs in her office. She’d been young and calm, and I’d liked her immediately. Apparently she was the munition expert for the team.
My phone rang and I answered it immediately upon seeing it was my Nana O’Shea. “Hi, Nana.”
“Did you get blown up last night?” Her Irish brogue was far more pronounced than Aiden’s.
“No, Nana. I’m fine. Honest.”
