Page 49 of Defenseless
“What are you doing here?” Sabina asked, stepping back. She glanced up and saw Chad, Ethan, Ryan, and Colton standing a few feet away, smiling at the reunion.
“That one offered to fly me out,” she answered, gesturing to Chad. “I figured you could use a friendly face. Or maybe even a seasoned intelligence agent. I’ve been retired for a few years, but don’t think I’ve lost my edge.”
“Never,” Kara said, grabbing Gina’s hand and tugging her toward the boxes. Not wasting any time in putting the woman to work, she handed Gina a notebook from one of the open boxes.
Sabina watched as the two dived into the contents without missing a beat. She walked toward Chad as the others drifted off to pick up other tasks. “You called Gina?” she asked.
He smiled, and his dimple appeared. “I thought you and Kara might appreciate having her around.”
There was still a distance between them, but she could feel it dissolving by the hour. It would take some time to disappear completely. The important thing was, though, they were trying.
“Thank you,” she said, going up on her toes and kissing his cheek. His hand came out and curled around her waist as she moved. It remained there when she was back on her feet.
“How are you? Really?” he asked, his dark eyes holding hers. Filled with concern.
She lifted a hand and rested it on his arm. “I’m equal parts terrified and relieved. I didn’t think those two feelings could exist together, but they do. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but it feels good to be doing something. To be coming out of the shadows.” She paused. “Even if it took me a long time to get here.”
His fingers twitched against her waist as he held her gaze. Then he leaned down and whispered, “The important thing is, we’re here. Together. All of us.”
Involuntarily, her hand gripped his arm. He drew away slowly, his cheek brushing against hers. When he’d pulled back enough that she could see his eyes again, her stomach jumped at the heat she saw there. It had been a long time since she’d seen that in his eyes. So long that she’d wondered if she’d extinguished it altogether. If she had, she had every intention of trying to reignite it. But with the way he watched her now, she knew it wouldn’t take much to fan the spark into a flame. Even more thrilling, though, was the fact that he was letting her see it. That he wasn’t hiding it from her.
The memory of him curled up behind her that morning washed over her. She stepped away rather than give in to the urge to move her hand from his arm to his neck and pull him down into a long and deep kiss.
“Did Jason Kline say anything?” she asked as they approached Ethan, Gina, and the others who’d joined Kara at the boxes.
“Only as much as he felt needed to be said,” Colton answered. Sabina and Chad sank onto a couple of chairs, and she picked up the notebook she’d been going through earlier as he grabbed one of the hard disks. He popped it into an external drive Collin had found and started perusing the files.
“Kline claims they were hired to investigate a threat,” Colton said. “To whom the threat was made, he couldn’t say. Only that they’d been ordered to do the job and it was a legal hire.”
“What exactly was the job, though?” Sabina asked. Chad cast Colton a look before shifting his gaze to her.
“He claims they were there to reconnoiter,” Chad answered.
“But?” Sabina pressed.
“Their weapons say otherwise,” he said. “The one who was killed was carrying a very expensive, high-powered sniper rifle. A rifle that, incidentally, matched the one used during the ambush on your car. As for Kline himself, he had three weapons, all handguns, all with silencers. No one carries a silencer unless they plan on killing something, or someone, quietly.”
“Any ID on the one who died?” Gina asked.
Colton nodded, brought up a file on his phone, and handed the device to the woman. As her eyes scanned the information, Chad watched. He hadn’t bothered to look up Gina O’Rourke’s file before arranging to bring her to Mystery Lake. With a name like O’Rourke, he’d expected someone of Irish descent, like Sabina. He had not expected a five-foot-ten, whipcord lean Black woman, with a shock of gray hair that hugged her scalp in a cap of curls. She also didn’t appear to prescribe to the belief that women of a certain age needed to dress a certain way. Unless thatcertain waywas however the fuck she wanted to dress. Wearing ripped, skintight black jeans, a gray Ramones T-shirt, motorcycle boots, and a leather jacket, she looked as though she could have been out partying at CBGB during the height of its punk rock popularity.
“I don’t believe that the sins of the parents should be visited on the child, but that man’s father is the worst kind of prick,” Gina said, handing the phone back. “If he’s anything like his dad, it doesn’t surprise me that he’s the one who’s dead. The whole family is filled with arrogant pricks who think they are smarter than everyone. My guess is he tried to do something he thought was badass, but actually had about as much finesse as an actor playing a part?”
Ethan shrugged and nodded in confirmation. “Pretty much.”
“I’ve lost track of his dad, but I’d think about looking into him. Unless something’s changed in the past few years, his son would not have had the skill to handle the kind of rifle you talked about,” Gina said. “My guess is that his dad is involved in Sweet River and somehow managed to get his son a job. I don’t recall him having any ties to Jacobs, but they swim in the same cesspool, so it’s possible.”
“On it already,” Leo called out, making Sabina smile at her eager team. They might be working magic on their computers, but they were still listening.
An hour and four boxes later, Tess Jackson called with an update on her meeting with the Lexington Police. Predictably, George Jacobs had tried to stop the release of the evidence, arguing that the women formerly known as Bela and Nala Houseman needed to be interviewed and their identities confirmed before any evidence was released. Tess had anticipated that objection, though, and had presented notarized documents confirming their identities through fingerprints. When a technician matched those to ones on file from when the girls had worked as lifeguards in high school, there’d been no question that Sabina and Kara were who they said they were. And no question that they had rights to the evidence, especially their mother’s belongings. It hadn’t helped George’s argument that it was his name on the file that had closed the case all those years ago.
While Tess had overseen the packaging up of the evidence, George Jacobs had peppered her with questions about Sabina and Kara that revealed more than the fact that he was nosy. Since Kevin Jacobs already knew about the two women, George either wasn’t conspiring with his brother anymore or, if he was, he wasn’t being told everything.
After the update, Teague and Tucker popped into town and brought lunch back. The break was a welcome one, though short, and soon, they were all back to work.
It was close to dinner when Ryan returned, having left after lunch to check on things at the station. “Jason Kline was released this afternoon, and his bail hearing was just a bit ago. The Sweet River lawyer paid it, but he’s not allowed to leave the county, so we’ll be keeping an eye on him.”
“What’d you book him for?” Gina asked, not looking up from the laptop she was working on. A few hours earlier, she’d swapped with Chad and was now looking through the remaining hard disks.
