Page 104 of Nowhere to Hide
“I’ll be checking in with Kendrick every other day. I’ve got a contact for you over there. Nina Kendrick is running point on the research. She’s digging into your files.”
“Jesus, Jordan. Those were for your eyes only.”
“Yeah, well you want help, you want the best. That’s Nina. She’s head of the cybersecurity arm of The Kendrick Group. She’s got people who excel at reading data. It would be better to go to the FBI. They have better databases to look and see if this has happened in another city or state, but she’ll do what she can.”
“Feds,” Stone practically spit out the word. “Yeah, if I went over my captain’s head he’d literally cut out my heart and feed it to me.”
“And they probably wouldn’t take the call anyway. There’s a hierarchy for that bullshit too.”
“Agreed. Just make sure you keep her safe.”
“On it.”
“Okay, I’ll check in on that mask, but I doubt it’ll go anywhere. There’s probably thousands of them out there.”
“Yeah, but at least there’s something to go on.”
“Yeah. Send me a photo of it.”
“On it.”
We hung up and I headed back up to the captain’s chair. We were well out of the way, without a boat or a cloud in the sky. I dragged in a deep lungful of sea air.
Kissing Cilla wasn’t smart, but I didn’t regret it.
I was a head-case in every way and she was better off without me, but fuck.
Touching her—tasting her—never made me feel more alive.
Because you have to start living again, pal.
I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was Milligan or me on that one.
I couldn’t hide forever.
Walking back into the tower didn’t feel as wrong as I was expecting. The anger was still so damn close to the surface though. I wasn’t sure how I could protect her without fucking things up royally.
I didn’t want to scare the shit out of her, nor was I sure I could hold back from touching her.
Not after her taste infused my system so completely.
One taste?
Was it just because she looked at me like I was a goddamn hero?
I wasn’t. Far from it on every level, but damn did I want to be.
And that was probably the scariest part of all of this. I wanted to be a better man for her. I wanted to be the man who could support her through this and I was the worst one for the job.
But I was the one here.
I grabbed the mask with its twisted teeth and brought it in with me. I snapped a few photos with my iPad and sent them off to Stone in an email. If I was a better man, I’d take her in and have them swab her scratches. There might be some DNA in the wounds, but I couldn’t put her in that kind of danger.
It was more important to keep her away from this piece of shit than building the case to put him behind bars.
She was quiet on the couch. The last bit of sun was sizzling into the sea. It was a clear night. I could probably make a good dent in the travel out of Boston tonight, but it was safer to do it in the morning. Safer because I had her to worry about.
For a number of reasons.
