Imagination is more
important than knowledge. Knowledge is
limited. Imagination encircles the world.
—Albert Einstein
7
Try as I might, I could no longer deny
the fact that the three deaths we had been investigating weren’t
simple cases of virulent diseases. Somehow, someone was using
infectious agents to kill women. Brunette women, in their early
thirties—two out of three residing near a park.
Debbie Richardson, Hannah Grant, and
Laura Miller.
Why those victims? Why that mode of
killing?
We were still a long way from answering
either of those questions.
I shared my discovery that two of the
three victims lived on properties bordering a park. I hadn’t known
Miller’s identity, so I hadn’t had a chance to locate her home yet.
The chief verified that she lived near the same park that Debbie
Richardson did. JT shared the names of Richardson’s ex-fiancé and
her place of work, hoping we might discover a link tying her to the
other victims, besides the park. None of the victims worked
together. As a matter of fact, the other two victims, a medical
sales rep and a librarian, worked in different towns. However, they
lived within a half mile of each other. That, we all agreed, was
significant.
When it was Brittany’s turn, she gave
us the lowdown on Trey Chapman: “The juvenile record includes one
conviction of petty larceny. That’s it. Don’t ask me how I found
that out.” She grinned. “He’s currently unemployed. Hasn’t kept a
job for more than six months in the last three years. Tends to take
jobs at places frequented by wealthy, single women, like spas,
restaurants, and retail stores. I get the feeling he’s a leech, a
pretty boy who hooks up with rich women and lives off them, but I
doubt he’s a killer.” She punched a few keys on her laptop. “I also
did some digging into Deborah Richardson’s ex-husband. He’s
squeaky-clean, hasn’t even had a traffic ticket in the past five
years. He has his own accounting firm, which is running in the
black. Outside of the messy divorce, which, on closer examination,
wasn’t so messy—he voluntarily gave his ex-wife the home and
custody of their daughter—there’s no reason to suspect him of any
crime.”
Chief nodded. “Good work. I’ll let you
get back to it.”
“Thanks, Chief.” Brittany excused
herself.
Chief Peyton motioned to Fischer.
“Fischer, what do you have on Laura Miller?”
“She was a sales rep for a medical
supply firm. She owned the house she lived in, but shared it with a
longtime friend and her friend’s daughter. She lived a relatively
quiet lifestyle when she wasn’t traveling for work. She spent her
spare time at home, writing. She was working on a novel. She hadn’t
dated anyone recently, hadn’t been acting different, and hasn’t
traveled anywhere south of the Virginia–North Carolina border. Her
roommate noticed nothing out of the ordinary before her death. And
she hadn’t appeared sick.”
Just like Debbie
Richardson.
Gabe was the only one who didn’t have
anything to report. Whatever he’d been doing yesterday, it hadn’t
been working on our case.
“All right. Let’s take a look at our
unsub,” Chief Peyton said, moving to the whiteboard and uncapping a
black dry-erase marker. “What do we know about him or
her?”
“Do we know from the DNA his or her
gender?” I asked.
“At this point, no.” Chief Peyton wrote
a capital G and a question
mark.
“His or her mode of killing is
disease,” I stated.
“He bites his victims, leaving marks
that are not characteristic of a human bite,” JT added, pointing to
the close up of one of the victim’s neck wounds. “We see only
canine punctures. No incisors. And no lower-teeth
marks.”
“He must have some seriously long
canines,” Gabe said. “Could be wearing fake fangs.”
Could be. But why?
“Is he delusional?” I
asked.
Chief Peyton shook her head. “I doubt
it. The killings don’t appear to be that of a disorganized killer.
However, we don’t have an MO yet. All we have is a victim
type—female in her thirties, brunette, and living close to a park
or school. But we don’t know yet how he approaches or overcomes his
victim, what tools he uses in his killing, or the time and place
the crimes occurred.”
“What about a signature?” I asked. “Are
the bites a signature? Could he be killing to bite, rather than
biting to kill?”
Chief Peyton nodded. “It’s a
possibility.”
Tapping his pencil against his
notebook, Fischer added, “The unsub doesn’t kill right away. He
relinquishes control after the attack, risking the victim
identifying him. That’s the action of a confident
killer—”
“Or a disorganized one,” I added.
“Psychotic killers don’t fear being caught, because they don’t
realize what they’ve done is wrong.”
“True. We have a lot of work to do.”
Chief Peyton pointed at the clock. “And not a lot of time to get it
done. We have just over two hours to figure out who the unsub is
and stop him, or another woman is going to die.” She pointed at
Fischer. “Fischer, I want you and Wagner to go through the
coroner’s reports for all three victims with a fine-tooth comb.
Look for any clues that might lead us to a crime scene. Trace
evidence, fibers, that kind of thing.” She pointed at JT. “JT, I
want you and Skye to retrace the steps of all three victims on the
day they died. Where did they go? Who did they talk
to?”
“But there’s no way they could have
been infected the same day they died,” I piped in. “The diseases
were too far progressed. Take Laura Miller, for example. The
incubation period for malaria is seven days, minimum, meaning she
was infected at least a week before she
died... .” The significance of that fact sent a chill racing up my
spine.
The next victim was probably already
infected. She just didn’t know it yet. There was a ticking time
bomb set to go off inside her body.
How could we stop a killer who could be
as much as a week ahead of us? And was there any chance we could
save his next victim?
“That may be true. They may have been
infected days, or weeks, before they died. But what about the fresh
bite marks? Not to mention, the foreign DNA sample that was found
on all three victims?” the chief asked. “They couldn’t have
possibly picked that up a week before their death.”
Which meant what? The unsub was going
back to visit his victims after they collapsed? Why?
Every member looked sober as we
gathered our things and headed toward the door. Somebody nudged me
as I was leaving the room. I twisted to look over my shoulder. As I
suspected, it had been Gabe.
“What?” I snapped, worrying I’d hold up
JT. We had important things to do. Now was not the time for silly
schoolyard games. When Gabe didn’t say anything right away, I
motioned toward JT’s cubicle. “JT’s waiting. We have a lot to
do.”
“Yeah. I know. This won’t take long.”
He grabbed my elbow—he actually had the nerve to touch me—and
pulled me off to one side. I glared at his hand and clamped my lips
shut. “Look, I know you’re mad about the BAU, but I wanted you to
know I had nothing to do with that.” He honestly expected me to
believe that pile of dog poo?
“Okay, whatever.” I jerked my arm out
of his grasp and tried to muscle my way past him. He was such a
freaking huge ox. Why was he blocking the way? “Gabe.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“No. Of course, I don’t. But that
doesn’t matter. None of this does. Right now, what matters is JT,
who’s standing over there by the elevators, twiddling his thumbs,
wondering why I’m wasting time having a tête-à-tête with
you.”
Looking almost pathetic, Gabe shrugged.
“You’re right. Good luck, Sloan.” He stepped aside to let me pass,
and I scampered to my cubby, crammed my Netbook into the case,
slung the strap over my shoulder, and headed for the elevators. I
gave JT an I’m-sorry smile and checked the elevator call button to
see if he’d already pressed it. Yep, it was glowing
red.
“Which victim do you want to check out
first?” I asked, catching my breath after the mini sprint I’d done
to catch up to him.
“I was thinking about that.” The
elevator door slid open and JT motioned for me to go in first. “All
three fit the same profile, so I don’t think it matters. But I
think we’ll go with Laura Miller.”
JT drove, leaving me free to think. Now
that the case had taken a sharp left, into Life-or-Deathville, I
wanted to do my best to help. Nobody would hear any smart-ass
comments about the Clock of Doom from this girl again.
I flipped to the copy of Fischer’s
notes. He’d made a copy for every member of the team and left them
on the table. “This guy’s thorough,” I said, impressed. “He
included a minute-by-minute breakdown of Miller’s final
day.”
“That’ll make it easier. I’m assuming
we need to start at her house.”
“Yup.” I reread the itinerary. “Damn, I
wore the wrong shoes this morning.”
“Why’s that? I don’t see anything wrong
with them.”
I glanced down at the butt-ugly, cheap
vinyl pumps. The man was no judge of shoe quality. “Our victim ran
over five miles that morning.”
He sniggered. “Ah, I see.”
I stared down at my feet. Five miles in
those shoes, and I’d be crippled for weeks. “I have an
idea.”
“What’s that?” He flipped the turn
signal and glanced over his shoulder, inching onto the
freeway.
“You jog the route, and I’ll follow you
in the car.”
“Sure. We can do that.” He pointed at
the gearshift. “You do know how to drive a stick, don’t
you?”
Shit. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
“Um, the answer to that would be no.”
“I’ll let you give it a try when we
exit.”
“No, that’s okay.” My toes cramped at
just the thought of hiking five miles in pumps with man-made uppers
and absolutely no arch support. But there was no way I was going to
drive JT’s car. I’d tried driving a stick once. It had been a car
I’d found on a used-car lot. A fierce little beast, a Mazda
something-or-other, red. I wanted to buy that car so bad. It took
me at least ten minutes to get it off the lot when I’d tried taking
it for a test drive. Then I stalled it in the middle of an
intersection as I was trying to make a left turn. There was a
Frito-Lay truck barreling at me at about a hundred, or so it
seemed. The ending was pretty predictable. The truck won. The Mazda
wasn’t so fierce after that.
I vowed never again to attempt to drive
a car with a standard transmission.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive.” I sighed and wiggled my
toes in my shoes, enjoying them while they could still move without
causing agony. All too soon, we rolled up to what I assumed was
Laura Miller’s house. It was nothing special, a carbon copy of the
other Colonials on the street. Vinyl siding. Faux-brick facing.
Along the front of the house was a weedy flower garden. The
petunias were looking a little neglected.
“I’m hoping the victim’s husband will
know the exact route his wife took.” JT switched off the car and
climbed out.
I followed him up the front
walk.
I glanced at my cell phone. “It’s after
nine. What if Mr. Miller left for work already?”
“I called him this morning. He said
he’d wait for us.” On the porch now, JT rapped on the
off-white–painted front door.
“Smart move.”
The door swung open and a
pleasant-looking man greeted us with a weak smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Miller. I’m Agent
Thomas.” JT flashed his badge. “This is Miss Skye.”
I offered the man my hand. “I’m sorry
for your loss.”
He shook it. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with
us.” When Miller stepped to the side to let us in, JT headed
inside. As usual, I followed. We entered into a living room with
beige carpet and walls. The house’s interior wasn’t any different
from the exterior. Relatively neat, while at the same time showing
a few signs of neglect, including a pretty hefty coat of dust on
the bookshelves lining one wall of the living room.
“How can I help you, Agent Thomas?”
Miller asked.
“We’d like to confirm the information
you gave to Agent Fischer, regarding your wife’s activities the day
she died.”
“Sure. Like I told the other agent, my
wife took her morning jog and then went to work. She liked to stop
at Einstein Brothers for a bagel and coffee on her way into work.
That was probably her last stop before ... before ...” He scrubbed
his face with his palm, glanced at a family portrait sitting on the
fireplace mantel, and sighed.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said after glancing
at the photo. “I realize this must be hard for you. We’d like to
try to find some answers for you ... and your daughter. Can you
tell me if your wife ran the same route every
morning?”
“Yes, she did. She took Trotter up to
Clarksville Pike, then came back down to Great Star Drive and back
home. It’s about six miles, round-trip.”
Six miles was worse than five. I wasn’t
looking forward to this. Maybe JT would can that silly notion of
walking it. Really, if we drove, we’d still get some idea of what
our victim saw. And I’d avoid getting blisters.
“Did she ever mention someone was
following her? Was she uneasy about jogging in the last week or
so?” I asked.
Miller didn’t hesitate to answer. “No.
Not at all. She would’ve told me if there’d been anything like that
going on.”
“What about unexplained injuries?
Bruises? Scrapes?” JT asked.
This time, Miller took a moment before
responding. “No, I don’t remember seeing anything like
that.”
“And you’re absolutely certain she ran
the exact same route every morning, including the day she
collapsed?” I asked.
Miller nodded. “Yes. I’m
positive.”
That seemed odd to me. If I’d been
accosted by some strange man while I was out for my morning jog—not
that I had to worry about that happening, because I am so
not a jogger—you wouldn’t see me running
down the same street again.
Unless I didn’t remember.
“And finally,” I asked, noticing JT was
staring at his notebook, deep in thought, “were you home the
morning she collapsed, when she returned from her
jog?”
Miller nodded. “Yes. I leave for work
after my wife does—did.”
“And again, you noticed no injuries? No
scrapes or bruises?” I asked.
“Nothing. I saw her ... er ... get
dressed after her shower.” Miller hesitated, looking a little
uneasy. I got a feeling I knew why, and it had nothing to do with
our case.”Um, I would’ve noticed anything unusual that
morning.”
I got his drift.
After thanking Mr. Miller, we headed
back to the car. JT tucked his notebook into his pocket. “Okay,
let’s start walking.”
I gave JT a look, the kind that said,
“Are you crazy?”
He chuckled and opened the car door.
“I’m with you. We’ll drive the route first.”
“Thank God!” I climbed in, buckled
myself up, and watched out the open window as JT followed the
victim’s jogging route. Once we got outside of the subdivision, the
roads were two-lane highways cutting through lightly wooded
landscapes. Here and there were sprinkled ranch homes, tucked
between patches of forest. The traffic was very light. “It would be
easy enough to surprise a jogger out here.”
“Sure would.” He turned left onto
Clarksville Pike, and I pointed at a landmark I recognized. “Take a
look, that’s the park Richardson lives behind. Oh, it’s a school,
not just a park.”
“Interesting.”
We drove past the River Hill Garden
Center and the cemetery. I tried to spot Debbie Richardson’s house
from the road, but I couldn’t. “I don’t believe for a minute that
it’s a coincidence Laura Miller was jogging every morning less than
a quarter of a mile from Debbie Richardson’s house. Do
you?”
“Nope.”
“The unsub could’ve stumbled upon her
anywhere along her route, infected her with the malaria, and nobody
would have heard her cries for help. Then he could have released
her. And if he gave her an amnesic, she wouldn’t remember being
attacked. Thus, she wouldn’t be afraid. That must be how it went.
It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
JT chewed on his lower lip as he
steered the car onto Great Star Drive, which took us back into the
subdivision. “Maybe. But how do you explain the fact that she
showered after she jogged? A shower should’ve washed away the
unsub’s DNA.”
“Huh. Good point. He must’ve waited
until after she showered.” When JT pulled up in front of the
Millers’ house again, I looked at him. “Now what?”
“We head to Einstein Brothers
Bagels.”
“Okay. I could use a shot of caffeine
... and maybe an everything bagel while we’re there. Or maybe one
of those egg sandwiches, with spinach, mushroom, and Swiss cheese.
Ever had one?”
“No.” He navigated the car back onto
Great Star Drive, heading back to I-95, which would take us into
the heart of Baltimore. It was a quick drive, thank God, just under
a half hour. I was salivating for egg, spinach, and Swiss cheese
already. I’d need a drool bib if it took any longer.
“They’re insanely good,” I told him.
“You have to try one.”
He scrunched his nose. “Not a fan of
eggs. Nope.”
“Your loss.”
By the time we rolled up in front of
the Einstein Bros. Bagels store, my stomach was making all kinds of
embarrassing noises. If not for the radio—JT loved to listen to
talk radio—I would have died of embarrassment long before we’d
reached our destination.
I hurried inside. The smell of coffee
and toasted bagels made my stomach rumble louder. I wrapped my arms
around my waist and took my place in line, behind a woman dressed
from head to toe in black. In front of her was a man dressed
similarly. I checked my watch. It was after eleven. It was no
wonder I was starving. I glanced behind me, expecting to find JT.
He was nowhere to be found.
I placed my order and agonized over the
wait. Finally I had my little bag and paper cup in hand—I’d opted
for an iced tea instead of coffee. I strolled outside.
I looked in the general direction of
JT’s car. No JT. I looked left. I looked right. Still no JT. I went
to the car and set the tea on the hood, after taking a slurp. I
partially unwrapped my sandwich so I could take a bite. Half of it
was gone before I realized I’d eaten any of it. Then it was all
nearly gone.
Still no JT.
I tried the door. Unlocked? Where did
he go?
After washing down the last bite of
sandwich with some tea, I put my cup in the car’s cup holder and
wandered around one side of the building.
I found JT in back, Dumpster diving.
The life of an FBI agent is oh, so glamorous.
“Did you find something?” I asked the
only part of his anatomy I could see—his butt.
“No.” With one hand flattened over the
back of his head, he stood up, turned around, crunched his way to
the edge, and climbed out. “I don’t know how I got in there. One
minute I was checking the back of the building—I thought I saw
someone running back here—and the next, I woke up, feeling like my
head had been flattened in a sheet metal press, and smelling like
month-old meat.”
“Oh, my gosh, you’re kidding.” I took a
cautious look around. I wouldn’t want to end up getting clobbered
on the head and thrown in the trash too.
“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
Standing somewhat unsteadily, he picked bits of crumpled napkin,
mushy bagel, and unidentifiable ick from his clothes.
Evidently, JT’s personality got ugly
after a knock on the melon. I didn’t hold it against him. Mine
would too.
I brushed a piece of bagel off the back
of his shirt. “Sorry. Of course, it doesn’t look like you’re
kidding. Are you okay? Is your wallet missing? Your gun?” I reached
for him, offering some support if he needed it.
He rejected my offer with a shake of
the head. Which led to a staggering sway. “I’m fine.” He patted
himself down. “Wallet’s there. So is the gun.”
“How strange.” I circled around his
back and tried to get a peek at his head. His hair was matted down
and covered in something dark and sticky. Congealed tea? Melted
chocolate? Blood? “Maybe we should get you looked at.”
“No, I’m okay.” He shuffled toward the
side of the building. “Shit, my head hurts.” He glanced back at the
Dumpster. “What did you do?”
“Me? Nothing. What do you mean, what
did I do?”
“To my head. It hurts like a son of a
bitch.” Grimacing, he fingered the place where the sticky stuff
was. “Did you hit me with something?”
I was thinking ... concussion.
Definitely. Or ... had he been doped too?
I gently steered him toward the car.
“Let’s take a ride. You need to get checked out.” I had no idea
where the nearest hospital was.
Thank God for GPS.
It wasn’t easy convincing JT that he
needed to be the passenger, not the driver. He was one stubborn
man. But after about ten minutes of him repeating himself, and then
vomiting, he finally slumped into the passenger seat and belted
himself in. I took the driver’s seat. I rummaged through the
contents of his trunk and scored a plastic shopping bag. I handed
it to him, just in case he felt sick again. It took about five
minutes to adjust the mirrors, seat, and steering wheel. In that
time, JT tried, and failed, to convince me he wasn’t hurt. And
while I looked up the location of the closest emergency room, he
reminded me that I didn’t know how to drive a stick, and that there
was a killer running loose, and his next victim didn’t have much
time left.
There was no need to remind me of any
of those things, especially the last one. I was more than aware of
how fast time was flying and how little we were accomplishing.
Wasting hours upon hours in an emergency room was the last thing we
needed to do. But it was necessary. Vomiting after a head injury
was a bad sign in an adult.
I handed my phone to JT. “Here, you’re
the navigator. Tell me when I need to turn. I can’t hear the GPS
very well. Stupid phone doesn’t have a decent
speaker.”
“Okay.” His head bobbed to the side.
His eyes rolled around in their sockets. He was going to be as
useful as a toddler.
Before he dropped the phone, forcing me
to pull over to retrieve it from the floor, I snatched it from him
and set it in my lap. “Miss GPS” was my only company as I lurched
and sputtered JT’s car to the hospital. JT took a nap.
When we pulled up to the emergency
entry, I had to more or less drag him out of the vehicle. He put up
a fight. A security guard wheeled a cussing JT inside, while I
stalled the car twice in the driveway before bouncing it into a
parking spot. I called Chief Peyton before I headed inside, asked
what she wanted me to do—stay with JT or continue without him. She
told me there hadn’t been a new victim reported yet, so I should
stay with JT, so that’s what I did.
JT slept some more.
After JT was taken back to a room, I
opened the romance novel Katie had downloaded onto my phone. I
wasn’t a big novel reader, but what the hell? Katie had been
bugging me for months to read it. I couldn’t get a signal on my
laptop. And I was in the mood to be amused. Surely, The Viking King and the Maiden would amuse
me.
A nurse came to the waiting room to get
me just as I was opening my newly downloaded e-book. She escorted
me back to JT’s room and asked what the problem was.
Sporting a blue hospital gown, JT
looked at her with squinty eyes and snapped, “I told you, nothing’s
wrong.”
I said, “He was hit in the head and is
acting weird.”
She nodded, Velcroed a blood pressure
cuff around his arm, and squeezed the little bulb at the end of the
rubber tube to inflate it. “Do you remember what happened,
sir?”
“Yes.” JT looked at me. He looked at
her. “No.” He winced, fingered the back of his head. “Damn, my head
hurts. And I feel sick.”
“He threw up once already,” I
mentioned. “You might want to give him a pan.”
The nurse finished taking his blood
pressure before fetching a pink plastic basin from the cabinet.
Lucky for her, he didn’t need it before that. He made use of it
shortly after she handed it to him, though. I had to look away. It
felt wrong watching him lose his breakfast like that. It was a
private, shameful moment. Granted, he’d seen me toss my cookies at
the crime scene my first day on the job. But he was a man. Men were
supposed to be strong. And he was a strong man. But he sure didn’t
look it when he was vomiting.
A doctor who looked like she was fresh
out of junior high came in a few minutes later. I didn’t think much
about it. I’d graduated a smidge early myself. But I did think
something about the timing of her arrival. I read seven words per
second. The fact that she came strolling in before I’d finished a
single paragraph suggested they were taking JT’s injury seriously.
This was a good thing. I didn’t like what I was seeing
either.
She greeted him with a cheery “Hello,
sir.”
He responded with a mumbled
“Hi.”
“What happened today? Why are you
here?” the doctor asked, skimming his chart.
“I dunno.” He closed his eyes. “I’m
tired. And I think I might hurl again.”
“Hmm.” She grabbed the little handheld
light from the wall and twisted the top to illuminate the little
bulb. “Open your eyes, please.” As she checked his pupils, she
asked, “Do you know what day it is today?”
“Thursday.”
It was Friday.
“Can you tell me who the president
is?”
“Obama.”
“Good.” She turned off her light.
“Where does your head hurt?”
“Back here.” Grimacing, he touched the
lump on the back of his head.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“You tell me, can you?” he
answered.
The doctor gently pried his hand away.
“Can you sit up, so I can take a look?”
“Yeah.” He slumped
forward.
She gently palpated his scalp, stopping
when JT let out a yelp. “You have quite a lump there. Do you
remember how you got it?”
“ No.”
She looked at me.
“I found him in a garbage Dumpster,
behind an Einstein Brothers Bagels shop. He said somebody clocked
him.”
She gathered up some supplies—gauze and
alcohol to clean the wound. “Was he knocked
unconscious?”
JT ouched as she dabbed his scalp with
a soaked gauze wad.
I answered, “I can’t say for sure,
because he was awake when I found him. But it’s possible. Or, I
worry he might have been drugged. We’re working a case. Can’t say
more. Either way, I don’t know what happened. I was inside, getting
a sandwich. It took a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She dropped the bloodstained
gauze in his pink pan and took a step back. “He’s probably okay,
but I’d like to get a CAT scan, just to make sure. And he should
probably have a tetanus shot too.”
I nodded my agreement. “Better to be
safe than sorry.” As soon as the doctor headed out, I went back to
reading.
JT went back to sleeping.
“Sloan Skye?” he slurred.
“Yeah, JT?” I scooted my chair closer
to his bed so he could see me.
“I like your name.”
“Thanks. I like it too.” Trying not to
chuckle—at the moment, it was kind of like talking to a younger
JT—I clicked the button on my phone, turning the page in my e-book.
So far, I was sort of liking The Viking King and
the Maiden. The vocabulary posed no challenges. The sentence
structure was simple, like second-grade simple. It was super easy
to comprehend. I hadn’t read a book that easy since kindergarten.
But the images the words painted were making me a little warm—in a
good way. I had never imagined I’d get into a man with big muscles,
small clothes, and a big ... sword, but there it was.
“Skye makes me think of angels,” JT
said.
“That’s nice, JT. Angels are good
things to think about when you’re in a hospital.”
“You’re an angel, Sloan.”
Urk.
Awkward.
My heart did a little pittery-pattery
thing in my chest. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that I’d been
sitting here reading a love story. I clicked the button, closing
the file.”Um, thanks, JT.”
“No, really. I think you’re
beautiful.”
Now, that wasn’t awkward. It was funny.
Me? Beautiful? No way. Evidently, after the mean phase, JT turned
extremely affectionate after a hard knock on the head. This side
was definitely more charming. But also more dangerous. “JT, as much
as I appreciate the compliment, I think your head must be hurt
worse than we both thought. You’re seeing things.”
“No, I’m not. I thought you were
gorgeous, and sexy, and fucking hot, since the first day we met. I
just didn’t know how to tell you, until now.”
I was speechless.
If JT wasn’t an FBI agent, and if he
wasn’t suffering from what I was beginning to suspect was a
life-threatening concussion, I might’ve pursued this. “Gorgeous”
was much more applicable to JT than me. And “sexy.” And “hot.” And
it sucked that I didn’t know if he genuinely meant what he was
saying or not. And it sucked even more that it didn’t matter,
because I couldn’t do anything about it, no matter how much I
wanted to.
And, boy, did I want to.
“Skye?”
“What, JT?” I braced myself for another
compliment.
“I’m going to hurl.”