Page 80 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
So Becka’s smart, did great on her tests, aced her psych eval, and poses no physical danger to me. But she’s also an orphan who may or may not have a creepy brother she may or may not resent and who talked about me to strangers to an extent that the HR rep knew instantly who I was calling about.
Yeah, not convinced this puts her in the clear.
If Ava was a cop, she’d have nothing. But she wasn’t a cop, which was the advantage of being a pilot instead of a police officer: she didn’t need much more than her intuition to look into something.
She’d lay it out for Tom, see what he thought. Maybe after some kissing. Well, no. This was important. Before the kissing, then. But thenimmediatelyafter she laid out the Becka speculation, on to the kissing.
Always good to have your priorities straight,she figured.Right?
Forty-One
Mall of America
South Street Dining Area
Bloomington, MN
She could see at once meeting at the food court had been a bad idea. Tom looked tense, which given his line of work was alarming. What could freak out a guy who carved up corpses for a living? A rubber glove shortage? A zombie apocalypse? (To be fair, that last would upset her, too.)
He didn’t even notice her until she was almost on top of him (figuratively). “Hey,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “It’s great to see you.” It was. He was in khakis, loafers, and a black polo that set off his build and eyes to wonderful effect. Ava knew she had it bad when she thought how sexy he looked when the decidedly unsexy mall lighting hit his shaved skull. “Are you all right?”
“It’s dinnertime,” he replied in a low voice, brown eyes almost black in their intensity. “It’s… very crowded. Hard tofocus. And I should be with you more. I can’t keep you safe if I’m not with you.”
She squeezed his hand, turned at once
“Ava, please don’t g—oh.”
and started leading him through the food court and back to the entrance to the Radisson Blu a few hundred feet away.
“I’m not going anywhere. Well, I am, but you’re coming with me. What, you thought I’d run because you’re stressed?” she chided him.
“It’s been known to happen. Not with you. Others.”
“Every day, you have to wade through the worst people do to each other; it’s literally your job description. I’m impressed you’re not stressed everyday. The reason I wanted to meet here is because I’m lazy—my hotel is here—and because I like the Mall of America.”
“Why?”
“Because Danielle never came here—utterly refused—and because my folks only went a couple of times. Called it a marketing monstrosity. It’s one of the places in this benighted state that doesn’t remind me of murder.”
“Oh.”
“But it’s fine if you need to leave. We’ll grab dinner at the hotel. In my room if you want—it’s nice and quiet and oh my God, people have been murdered in the Mall of America. That’s what that look on your face means.”
The tension around his eyes had eased, and he looked down and grinned. “Well. Yes.”
“In unusual ways, or you probably wouldn’t have remembered. The mall’s not even in your bailiwick. It’s Hennepin County, not Ramsey. Let’s go somewhere quiet where I can have a steak and you can tell me about murder.”What have I become?
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she could sense the weight of feeling behind his words but, because she was an immature idiot, shrugged and looked away. Which is why she didn’t notice her would-be muggers until it was close to too late.
She’d led him outside rather than taking the skyway, and they were skirting the edge of the parking ramp when opportunistic thieves made their presence known with, “Give it up.”
Oh, swell. This is on me. Tom’s probably still freaked out; I should’ve been paying attention for both of us. An unpleasant experience is nigh. Nigh, I say!
She knew the best and safest option was to meekly hand over her purse
“Man said give it the fuckup.”
no matter how much she wanted to arm-wrestle them for it. Still, they were both big—almost as tall as Tom. More worrying, they didn’t seem especially nervous or edgy—she had the impression they’d done this before. The one on the left was wearing a knitted cap pulled low, which also should have tipped her off, and had one hand stuffed into his pocket
