Page 28 of K-9 Confidential

She couldn’t stop her responding smile. Only it didn’t last. “I’ve been so focused on coming home, Erin’s death and just not dying, I didn’t think to ask if…this mess is keeping you from whomever you have waiting at home.” Nervous energy charged through her. She had no right to ask about his personal life. She’d given that up ten years ago when she’d cut herself off from him, but the words were there all the same. Tainted with hope and a little bit of desperation. “Though I’m hoping the kiss earlier was a good indication. If not, I hope she kills you and hides the body so not even Zeus can find it.”

Granger stared down at her, his hands on both her hips. Whether to keep her balanced or because he felt the same overwhelming need for physical contact that she did, Charlie didn’t know. “I’m not involved with anyone.”

“Were you?” She couldn’t force herself to look at him, to expose the answer she needed to hear, but it was cycling through her, out of control. “Ten years is a long time. I would understand if moving on with your life meant moving on with someone else. Forgetting about me.”

“I tried to forget about you. Several times with several different women.” Granger slipped his index finger beneath her chin, nudging her to look up at him. Her insides unraveled under his study. “But I’m only going to say this once, Charlie.”

Her brain latched onto every shift of his expression, ready to disengage at a moment’s notice. To protect herself from the rejection and the hurt.

“Nobody wanted to date me,” he said. “Because I was still in love with you.”

* * *

He held ontoher as they navigated through the oversized maze of the building.

“Black tile, black walls.” Charlie managed one slow step at a time. Brain injury had the ability to drop a person without provocation, not to mention a bullet to the calf, and he wasn’t willing to push her harder than necessary to talk to the son of a bitch who’d given up his daughters for a chance to show his patriotism. “This entire building is ready for a funeral.”

“Easier to clean up the blood we track in,” he said.

Her smile told him she wasn’t convinced, but there was a hint of truth to his answer. Socorro operatives charged into situations and engaged with threats that the US government couldn’t or wouldn’t risk anyone else for. That level of freedom and training came with costs. Mostly physical. Sometimes psychological.

They approached the elevator, and he hit the call button to take them down to the first floor. The shiny doors reflected their images. Her at his side, him ready to give his last breath for her. It was easy to imagine the years rolling by, of them as partners rather than resources for one another. The only one missing was Zeus. And he’d most likely gotten into another package of cookies while Granger paced the recovery wing. “You never told me what you’ve been doing while you were on the run. I’m guessing Charlie Acker hasn’t been your name for a long time.”

The doors parted, and Granger helped her into the car.

“No. It wasn’t.” She stared at the LED lights indicating the floor. “Living off the grid isn’t as romantic as it sounds. The night of the Alamo pipeline explosion, I went back to Vaughn. I got the money I’d been saving for years between jobs around town and the cash you’d given me for intel—nearly ten thousand dollars—and I took off in one of the neighbor’s cars.”

The elevator dropped, and Granger’s stomach shot higher in his torso. “I remember. The neighbor reported it stolen. I found that car outside of Boulder City, Nevada, two days later. Wiped clean. Couldn’t prove you’d been the one to take it though.”

“What good is all this survival information in my head unless I use it?” She pressed her temple to his arm as the descending numbers on the LED screen lit up. “I spent the first few years stockpiling safe houses. Food, water, money, weapons, ammunition. I moved from place to place and switched up my car every time I stopped. Sooner than I expected, I ran out of money. I had to start working. Just here and there. Nothing permanent, and nothing that required a background check.”

“I take it you’re well-versed in breakfast foods then.” The elevator pinged with their arrival, and the doors parted. He helped her over the threshold onto the first floor, doing everything in his power not to look at the spot where he’d nearly bled out from the gunshot wound three weeks ago. His shoulder was still sore, but putting eyes on where it’d happened intensified the pain. Granger didn’t come down to this level, and if he did, he was sure to take the stairs on the other side of the building. His shoulder seemed to sense his proximity to the garage, as it had two days ago. Trauma was a given in his line of work, but ignoring the aftereffects would tear him apart from the inside if he let it.

“I might be. Maybe one of these days, you’ll find out.” Charlie’s voice faded the longer he directed his attention to holding back the memories. “Granger?”

He rolled his shoulder back to counter the ache spreading down his arm. Damn it, his fingers were tingling. Going numb. He’d managed to keep himself in check since retreating back to Socorro by focusing on Charlie’s needs, but his brain wasn’t going to let him replace one gunfight with another and have him walk away unscathed. “Is that what you dug up at your safehouse the other day? Another cache you’d hidden?”

The attempt to focus himself failed.

Charlie centered herself in his vision. Brown eyes locked on him and refused to let him go. She followed him as he tried to turn away. “Granger, look at me. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing.” He shook his head, as though the simple action could erase the pressure building in his head. “The interrogation room is this way.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what just happened.” With one hand latched onto his arm, she hit the elevator call button just as the doors closed. “That asshole in Vaughn hit you pretty hard. Are you dizzy, nauseous? Dr. Piel said you guys come in here all the time with head injuries. She should take a look.”

His pulse pounded hard behind his ears. Too hard. He closed his eyes, at the mercy of his own mind. The last place he wanted to be. “Keep talking. I just…need to focus on something else.”

“Okay.” Charlie slid one hand along his shoulder as the elevator doors tried to close on them, and the pain seemed to recede with her touch. Which he knew was impossible. Physical contact didn’t change the sensitivity of pain receptors, but her touch was the distraction he needed. “Do you remember the night we met? How I almost shot you for walking onto my father’s property uninvited? I was in the backyard skinning the jackrabbits I’d shot that day. My rifle was right there, yet you walked straight up to me with your hands up. I was ready to pull the trigger, but you said the one thing that convinced me to put down the rifle.”

He gritted through the crushing loss of control determined to get the best of him. “I asked if you wanted some strawberry ice cream.”

“It sounded so ridiculous.” She smoothed circles into the back of his shoulder. Right where he needed her. “You told me you’d stopped into a diner on the way to Vaughn and ordered a strawberry shake, but they’d accidentally given you two. And you offered me one. Handed it to me and everything, and all I could think to myself was it was a good thing you’d come to me, because anyone else would’ve shot a stranger dead on the spot so late at night. Little did I know you’d been watching me for weeks by then.”

The pressure in his head was draining with every word from her sweet mouth. Keeping him in the here and now, tethering him to reality. He wasn’t back in the garage. He wasn’t the only one standing between his fellow operatives and theSangre por Sangrecartel. Charlie was there too. “I knew you liked strawberry milkshakes.”

“They’re still my favorite. Though I wasn’t able to find anything that compared to the one you gave me that night. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the shake I remember the most.” Charlie’s fingers dipped under the collar of his shirt, smoothing her fingers directly against the rise of scar tissue on the back of his left shoulder. Right where the bullet had been surgically removed. “Dr. Piel said that Socorro operatives have a dangerous job. I asked if you’d been to see for her anything other than a head injury in the past. She refused to tell me, but I’m guessing this isn’t a scar from when you had the chicken pox as a kid.”

Her other hand fanned the front of his collarbone, and Granger couldn’t help but straighten. He grabbed for her hand, afraid of what she’d find beneath his shirt. “Charlie.”

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