“Meet back here in two hours?” Philly asked, also rising. “I need food before we start. And my computer,” he added. Philly always needed food.
“We’ll need lunch by then,” Stone said. “Why don’t we meet in the kitchen, make sandwiches, then we can eat as we review.”
Monk and Philly both nodded before heading out.
“Does that work for you?” Stone asked Juliana, realizing he hadn’t consulted her.
She nodded, already closing out the web page for the police lieutenant. “I know a lot of research techniques, but only on public pages,” she said. “Do you have access to any others? If so, we could divide things up that way.”
He shook his head as his thoughts strayed to Leo Gallardo. The HICC cyber expert—and Joey’s boyfriend—had helped them with Charley’s mine mystery, but he’d been on vacation at the time. Now that he was back at work, Stone didn’t think he’d have the time to help. Although he would if asked. So would Ava Warwick, one of Leo’s colleagues. Before marriage and kids, she liked to visit Rita C’s, the bar the Falcons owned, and avail herself of their wide selection of whiskey. Both Leo and Ava were rock-solid people. But people with lives of their own. He’d keep them in mind if they couldn’t find a way forward, but otherwise, they were on their own.
“Let’s see what we find and go from there,” he suggested, nodding to her computer. “It’s not much of a plan…”
“But sometimes you need to get the lay of the land before you form a plan,” she said, sounding eerily like one of his lieutenants from his army days. It wasn’t uncommon for his team to receive sparse orders with a single objective and no intel or info to guide them. When that happened, they always started one way.
“One thing at a time,” he said.
She smiled, the dimple in her left cheek flashing. Without a word, she shifted her computer so he could see the screen and began typing away.
Two hours later, Stone leaned back, stretching his arms overhead. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought they’d find all the information they—mostly Juliana—had by only digging into the right public sites. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she knew a lot of research techniques.
“Time for a break and lunch,” he said, glancing at the notes he’d jotted down. Juliana had started an electronic file as well, but he liked having a written log of a few key items.
When she didn’t respond, he looked up. Her gaze darted over his face, and two tiny lines formed between her brows.
“What?” he asked.
Surprising him, she reached out and rubbed her thumb over the space between his own eyebrows—well, as best she could with the bridge of his glasses in the way.
“You have a headache,” she said.
He did. The glasses helped, but they didn’t fix the problem. Hard to fix a problem when no one knew what caused it.
He shrugged, a little uncomfortable. Not with her hands on him, but with her concern. He didn’t want her to worry about him—not ever, but especially not now when she had other things to think about.
“It’s fine,” he said.
She lowered her hand, resting it on his shoulder. “Can I try something? I don’t think it’s going to magically make a headache go away, but it might help a little.”
“Does it mean you’ll keep touching me?” he asked.
She grinned. “Actually, yes.”
“Then, yes,” he said, turning her grin into a laugh. He eyed her as she rose. He tried to follow her movements when shecircled behind him, but she set her hands on either side of his head and kept him facing forward.
“Can you take your glasses off?” She sounded almost regretful asking, and he wondered if she liked the sight of him in his readers. It seemed cliché for a librarian to find that attractive, and Juliana was anything but a cliché, but he’d take more notice of her reaction next time he put them on.
After setting his glasses on the table, Juliana slid her hands into his hair. Less than five seconds later, everything other than the feel of her touching him faded. Her thumbs found his temples, and she pressed and massaged the small space, slowing her ministrations each time she found a tight bundle of muscles or nerves. After that, her fingers dug into his scalp, pressing and releasing pressure points. He didn’t bother smothering the moan that climbed his throat. He had no idea his head had so many nerve endings or whatever they were.
He almost protested when she withdrew her fingers, but then she began making tiny circles on the ridge of his brow, and the protest turned into another moan. He was a machine; he had done shit to and with his body that very few people could even fathom. He knew every muscle, every shift, every way his body moved. How had he never known about the pressure points Juliana now found with ease?
“I used to get migraines,” she said, her soft voice floating down as she stood over him. “A…friend used to do this for me.”
He had the distinct impression thatfriendwasn’t the word she’d intended to use, and he wondered if she’d learned her magic from another man. He forced his eyes open and looked up at her, the tilt of his head bringing him in contact with her breasts. She looked down in question but didn’t move away or stop.
“A former boyfriend?” The words were out before he could stop them. “Sorry, it’s none of my business,” he said. It wasn’tas though he thought she hadn’thadboyfriends. And if she had learned this magic from one, he was glad they were the sort to take care of her. But a primal part of him hated it.
She smiled. “No, not a former boyfriend. Someone who worked for my family,” she said, leaving it at that. “Like I said, it’s probably not going to make it go away completely, but it often helped me.”