Page 100 of Live for Me

“He’s dead now anyway,” Indy added. “Nevada killed him.”

“What? That’s only been like — what? Six or seven months ago that we saw him?”

“That’s kind of why I thought she’d be the easiest to get to,” Memphis said. “She hasn’t been doing this long. And I don’t imagine she everwantedto be doing this in the first place. He was married. She was having an affair with him. Whatever happened between them, I think she killed him. I think the President knew it went that way, and I would guess he blackmailed her into working for him.”

“Hm. Who would’ve guessed that a homicidal nurse would be so widely sought after?”

“It’s still a risk,” Memphis said. “Bringing them in when they’re so new. And so cranky.”

“Still a risk,” Indy repeated and laughed. “Bringing her here whenthisis so new.” He stared at her while he nodded toward me. “If you don’t want her here, we’ll just move on to someone else. You don’t have to look for a reason,” he said and laughed again. I watched Memphis turn pink while she reached for her computer to turn it back to herself again.

“I’ve got something to deal with today,” I said and walked around the island to where she was sitting. “Just wait a couple minutes and you two can sit here and talk shit about Nevada until you decide what to do about her without having to worry about saying what you’re really thinking in front of me.”

“I’m not jeal—,” she tried to say when she turned in her chair to face me. I interrupted her words by leaning down to kiss her. She shocked the shit out of me when both her hands went right to my chest. I expected her to push me away and freak out since Indy was here to watch. Instead, her lips even parted to invite me deeper.

I ended up being the one who had to break away from that kiss.

“Don’t play that game with me unless you want me to take you back upstairs to finish what you started earlier, angel.”

“Can I come too?” Indy asked. “I’ll just sit quietly in the corner. You won’t even know I’m there after you hear that beep from my phone that says we’re recording.”

The pink flush crept right back up to Memphis’ face while I lowered my forehead down to hers.

“I’ll see you guys later today. Stay out of trouble.”

She grabbed my wrist as soon as I tried to back away. “What are you doing?”

I winked at her and continued backing away.

“Don’t do that. You know I’m an overthinker. If you don’t give me an answer, I’ll come up with one for you and it’ll be terrible,” she said quickly, and I could only laugh. “That’s terrifying, Utah. The last time you had a secret errand, you came back here with the most embarrassing collection of smut anyone has ever seen.”

“I still want to know what was in the box,” Indy said.

“Me too. What was in that box, sugar?” I asked.

“Fuck off,” she said and pushed me the rest of the way back that time. “Go be an asshole somewhere else for the day.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

memphis

Itried like mad to stay busy while he was gone. I didn’t want to spend even a single second thinking about the endless number of other embarrassing things from my past or my home that he could be retrieving. Utah would be the kind of man to go find present day millimeter peter to bring him here and make him apologize to me for turning down my dance invitation and making me feel like a fool all those years ago.

Indy and I covered almost every possible way things could play out if we allowed Nevada and Salem inside our little ring of misfit corn children. We didn’t respond to Salem in any fashion, just in case there was something else that neither of us had considered yet. We both agreed we were better off giving it another day of just fucking thinking it through before we made any moves. There was too much at risk now to allow just anyone on this side of things all because I was in a hurry to makesomethinghappen. Instead, we started considering the next sets of teams to recruit.

Then we moved on to comparing the United States Marshalls and the missing children and women from a narrowed down portion of Tennessee. We considered sending Utah out after a Marshall or two, rather than worrying about the other Executioners. We both wondered what Utah might be able to achieve single-handedly if we just pointed him in the right direction and told him to ruin somebody. The man who couldn’t be killed might not even need a whole team of former Executioners behind him to achieve what I asked of him. That led to a very inappropriate discussion about the limits to which I might be able to get Utah to go depending on when I timed the requests.

That was the best thing about Indy. He could focus every bit as hard as I did and was the best sounding board I’d ever had when it came to tossing these ideas back and forth about where this goal might move next. He also knew that what we were doing was heavy and painful and it hurt the deepest part of my heart. He was somehow very aware that I needed his absurd immaturity to chime in and derail the actual work every so often.

When we decided to take a break from it all, it took some significant effort on my part to avoid tracking Utah’s phone just to find out what he was doing. I closed myself back in my room and stared at that frustrating little box that came back with Utah the last time he’d done this. I forced myself to change into my own clothes to occupy my hands instead of tracking the frustratingly thoughtful man. That left me smiling to myself like a moron while I pulled up his contact in my phone just to try to come up with something to text him.

But I didn’t actually have anything to say to him.

I wasn’t sure when I’d regressed to behaving like a high school girl with a crush, but it had definitely happened.

A knock on the door kept me from being a dumbass anyway.

“It’s open, Indy,” I said and continued to stare at the picture of us that Utah had taken at that orchard. He’d opened the front facing camera on his phone, grabbed me from behind, held it out in front of my face so the image was almost entirely of me with just this little sliver of his head in the picture. The little sliver where he was kissing my temple while I laughed and called him an idiot.

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