Page 26 of Nora
He bet Jonah had asked. Collin, too, for that matter. “What do you have to do? You’re here for three weeks. The dogs are all doing well. You don’t have another well-check until tomorrow…”
She looked up at him through her thick black lashes. “Believe it or not, this isn’t a vacation for me, Lucian. I was asked at the last minute to step in. I had to call in all sorts of favors from colleagues to fill in for me. I have reports to read, labs to review, and notes from those generous colleagues to keep up on. Everyone back home is already doing more than enough to cover for me. I’m not going to keep dumping things on them because I want to go out and have a glass of wine or two.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The lights from the residence hall came into view, and by the time they reached the door, he was properly chastened. “You’re right, I apologize.”
She froze, her hand on the door. “I beg your pardon?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I apologize. Again. I should probably apologize for more than just assuming you were whiling your time away here, but let’s take things one at a time.”
She studied him for a bit, then smiled and shook her head. “You are a piece of work, Lucian Salvitto,” she said, opening the door.
A blessed blast of warm air hit them, and he unzipped his jacket. Together, they climbed the stairs and walked toward their rooms. Her hand was on her door when he stopped her. “Are you going down to dinner?”
Not knowing where she’d been during lunch had made him feel twitchy. Yes, she was capable of taking care of herself, but she was being sneaky and ambiguous. And he wasn’t a man who liked uncertainty.
She nodded. “I missed lunch, so yes, I’ll be there.”
He didn’t acknowledge the relief he felt in knowing that at least for the next few hours he’d know where she was. Maybe not what she was doing behind closed doors, but at least he’d know where she was.
“Cencio is bringing more wine out tonight.”
She smiled. “At this rate, he’s going to go through his case by tomorrow.”
Lucian didn’t quite meet her smile, but he thought about it. “His brother is an exporter. The first case was to get us started. Rest assured more is on the way.”
At that, Nora laughed. The only real laugh he’d elicited from her since seeing her for the first time a few days ago. “Then I’ll definitely be down.”
His gaze took in her face. The hint of a dimple she had in her left cheek. The amusement in her eyes. Her full pink lips, and her thick black hair, tumbling over her shoulders. She’d been a beautiful girl, and she’d grown into a stunning woman.
That thought drew Lucian up short and with a sharp nod, he turned and walked into his room. The door closed behind him and for a moment, he simply stood in the small hallway that led to the rest of the room. Why was he suddenly aware of how very attractive Nora was? In the many times he’d seen her since that summer in Capri, he hadn’t been blind to her beauty. But his notice had always felt more like an observation of fact than anything else. Of course, for several of those years, he’d been married. Then in mourning. Even so, something had just changed. In one infinitesimal moment in time, something had changed. She’d gone from being empirically attractive to beingattractive.
And he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
* * *
Nora hurried into her room and dumped her bag on her bed as she started stripping out of her outer layers. She felt raw and exposed after that weird moment in the hall, and she needed to focus on something else. Thankfully, Miller had sent her the reports from the ME along with the preliminary findings. There wasn’t a lack of things to do in the two hours before dinner.
Deciding a hot shower was in order first, she turned on the water, undressed, and pinned her hair up. Stepping under the hot flow a few minutes later, Nora let out a long sigh. Shelovedhot showers. Even in the summer, she loved hot showers. The first sting of heat that slowly subsided into a comforting warmth relaxed her. She didn’t question why she needed help relaxing right now. Instead, she focused on the feel of the water hitting her shoulders, then sliding down her body. She focused on the warmth of the ceramic tile under her feet. She focused on the heat soaking into her bones.
Twenty minutes later, she pulled her cashmere robe around her body and took a seat on her bed under the duvet. Pulling her computer onto her lap, she opened the files and began reading the ME’s report. Based on temperature calculations, the time of death had narrowed to be between five and six-thirty. Bruising on the victim’s neck indicated that he’d been subdued from behind in a chokehold and dragged off the trail. He’d then been stabbed once in the right side, nicking an artery and puncturing a lung. He’d bled out in less than ten minutes.
Nora considered that timeline. The freezing point of human blood was about twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures that morning had dipped into the low teens. Had that impacted the time it took for the man to die? She tapped the edge of her keyboard as she pondered the question. It wasn’t really a question for an intelligence agent. Ask her about the flow of information or weapons or how much certain state secrets sold for, and she’d be right on it. But whether or not outdoor temperature would impact the time it took for a man to bleed out? She hadn’t a clue. Nor did she know if it was relevant.
Making a face at her computer, she cursed Franklin for putting her on this assignment. It would have been much better suited for an actual detective or law enforcement officer. When no brilliant ideas came to her, she switched to Ben’s report, which proved much easier for her to analyze.
The victim was Michael Kelly. Sixty-three years old and a resident of the monastery. He’d lived in the community for ten years and prior to that, he’d been a teacher at a Catholic boys’ school in upstate New York. An advocate of “healthy body, healthy mind,” he ran every day unless the temperatures dropped below ten degrees.
His fellow monks, including the abbot, had no clue who might have wanted him dead and seemed adamant that it was random. It was entirely possible thatMichael Kelly,as a victim, was random. The killing itself wasn’t arbitrary, though. No, the killer—whoever he or she was—had a plan.
Nora leaned back against her pillows and rolled two questions over in her mind. The first was whether the killer could be a woman. The second was how the killer picked his or her victims.
Given what she’d seen that morning, and the size of a few of the prior victims, Nora was leaning toward the killer being a man. It wasn’t that she thought a woman couldn’t have committed the crime, but more that the specific women on the program couldn’t have. Between their body types and their personalities, she didn’t see it.
The second question was much harder, though. The participants had only been in town for two days, hardly time to get to know anyone. And where Michael Kelly had been running wasn’t well-traveled enough that the killer could assume he’d find a victim. So how did he know Michael Kelly, or someone like him, would be traveling that path at that time?
Only one potential answer came to mind. Picking up her phone, she dialed a new number. “Miller,” Detective Ben Miller answered.
“It’s Nora,” she said. “Have you checked the victim’s electronics?”
