“I’m beyond using one. I need one. Badly. Whiskey, if there is any.”
He returned with two glasses and set one in front of me. I pickedit up and drank.
“Thanks. You’re a godsend, and if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it.”
“Of course you will.” He smirked and pulled a chair around, on which he sat backwards like he had yesterday.
I motioned to his folded arms across the top and his spread legs. “Is that a guy’s chair equivalent of wearing a ball cap the wrong way?”
“How is it I never tire of you giving me shit?”
“It’s because I’m sexy.”
The look in his eyes turned to heat. “As fuck,” he said barely above a whisper.
He was still in the same clothes he’d been wearing all day, and there was a crease across his forehead from leaning on his hand while working. He looked tired yet was still the hottest man I’d ever met.
“How’s the knee?”
“Functional.”
“You took the brace off.”
“Because it’s been on for too long, and the muscle underneath it is screaming.”
“Want me to look at it?”
“You’re an orthopedist now.”
“There are a lot of things you haven’t discovered about me yet.”
I took another sip of whiskey. “Tell me something that has nothing to do with the bombings.”
He thought about it. “Kingston and I worked a ranch in Sonoma one summer to earn extra cash. He got kicked by a horse on the third day, and I had to do his share for a week.”
“What was the horse’s name?”
“Biscuit.”
“Your brother was taken out by a horse named Biscuit?”
“He’ll deny it, but my parents would confirm it.”
“That’s about your brother. Tell me something about you.”
“I followed him around like a puppy dog. I still do. If Kingston does it, Bishop follows.”
I rested my good arm on the table and my chin in my hand. “Interesting.”
“How so? Seems pretty boring, if you ask me.”
“I don’t see you that way at all.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know methat well.”
“Well enough, Blackjack. The man who built an organizational architecture for a private intelligence operation in ten minutes told me he follows his brother around.”
He didn’t answer immediately. “Kingston would’ve gotten there.”
