Page 85 of Tough Justice

Deck racked the barbell then looked at the clock on the wall. Ten o’clock. He grabbed a towel then wiped his face, wondering what Tori was doing right now. Was she working or getting ready for bed?

Thinking of her in bed brought back memories of being there with her, buried deeply inside her body as he—

“Dammit.” He whipped the towel across the room, where it hit the wall and slid to the floor.

Thor snorted, turning his head left and right as he searched the room for threats.

“Sorry, Thor.” His dog had been asleep, in REM cycle, judging by the way his eyes had been flicking back and forth beneath his lids. “Go back to sleep.” With an annoyed groan, Thor lowered his head between his paws.

Deck knew what his problem was. Not only had he made a train wreck of his relationship with Tori, he was in love. That was the problem, one of them, anyway. He couldn’t force her to accept who and what he was. That was a decision she had to make on her own, and she’d already made it. His behavior that night in the park had only exacerbated her fears.

He grabbed a set of dumbbells and sat on the edge of the weight bench. If the situation had been reversed and she’d been the one in the kind of pain he’d been in, not to mention potentially doing more damage to herself, he’d have done anything to ease her misery. Anything.

And yet he’d been a complete dick when she’d tried to do the same.

Curling his fingers tightly around the weight, he lifted it, isolating his biceps.

Since the day Marianne died, he’d programmed himself into a rigid, unmovable robot where opioids—hell, any drugs—were concerned, and he’d done it to the point of irrationality. To the point where he’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to him. Tori.

Looked like he really did have a comfort zone after all, and loving her was way outside that zone.

Unable to concentrate on more reps, he racked the dumbbell and picked up his phone. He had to talk with her, to tell her what a colossal bonehead he was and convince her to give him another chance. Groveling would probably be necessary. A lot of groveling.

In time, he felt confident he could help her work through whatever remained of her DEA animosity. Getting past the dangerous-job thing was a whole other animal. That was something she’d have to come to grips with, and she’d made it clear it was a game-stopper. But he was a federal agent. He could convince anyone to—

No. He couldn’t do that to her. Manipulating her wasn’t fair. She had to want to be with him of her own free will. Enough to not only step outside her comfort zone but to smash it into smithereens.

The phone was still on vibrate, and he’d missed a call. When he saw who the caller was, he froze, staring at the screen in disbelief. Tori had called about twenty minutes ago and left a message. His face was so covered in sweat, he cued it up and put it on speaker. Hearing her voice in his house made him smile. As he listened to the rest of the message, his smile vanished.

Dr. Neil Shibowsky? He remembered the guy. Shibowsky had seemed like he was in a hurry to get out of Leslie Batista’s room that day.

He hit redial. A thousand questions pounded the inside of his skull, including why Tori had been cut off in mid-sentence and hadn’t called him back. “Tori, it’s Deck,” he said when his call went right to voicemail. “I got your message. Call me back, no matter what time it is.”

He raced to his bedroom, stripping off his workout clothes along the way. After cuing up Sammie at the Task Force desk, he wedged his phone between his chin and shoulder, flinging open the closet door.

Sammie answered after two rings. “What’s up, Deck?”

“Sorry about the late hour.” He yanked a shirt from a hanger. “I need you to run a complete background for me on Dr. Neil Shibowsky. Works at North Metro Hospital.” As he described the man he’d met, he realized something else. That was the same description he’d gotten from Alonzo Jones, the dealer whose daughter Tori had saved.

“Sure thing,” Sammie said. “When do you need this?”

“Yesterday.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Jostling woke Tori. She tried opening her eyes, but they felt crusted shut. “Where am I?” she mumbled.

“In your car,” someone said. A man’s voice. She couldn’t tell whose. Her head felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, and his voice sounded as if he were speaking to her from under water.

“How did I get in my car?” The last thing she remembered was standing beside her car, not being in it. In fact, she couldn’t remember why she’d been outside in the first place. Shouldn’t she be at work? Her brain was still so cloudy, she couldn’t make sense of anything.

“You fainted, so I put you in the passenger seat,” the man said.

She still couldn’t focus her eyes, and her muscles felt about as firm as jelly, but the events in the ER that night came crashing back. The suspicions she’d had about Neil, Ethan, and Wil. About David Landry and his brother. Even Suzie and her fiancé, Hector. And Neil—he’d stopped her from leaving, grabbed her, and insisted on following her outside if she wouldn’t speak to him. His grip had been tight. Too tight. She’d fled.

Had he followed her anyway?

With frantic, clumsy movements, she dug her hands into her coat pockets, searching for her phone and not finding it. It had been in her hand when she’d been leaving a message for Deck. Both her pockets were empty. Her kidnapper had taken the vial of potassium chloride.