Page 61 of The Hacker
He wanted to slide onto the seat beside her and break through this strange distance between them. But he knew Tully was right. “Goodbye, darlin’. I’ll miss you.”
That got her to look up. “Right back at you,” she said in that smart-mouth Jersey girl way he found so beguiling. But there was a sadness in her eyes.
She reached for the handle and tugged at it so he had to close the door.
When the sedan pulled onto the half-empty avenue, a strange panic squeezed the air from his lungs. He tried to tell himself that it was his apprehension about entrusting her safety to other people when it should be his job.
But as the car swerved around a taxi, his body swayed with it. Because when Dawn had climbed into the back of that sedan, she’d taken some part of him with her.
Chapter 14
Dawn stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, waiting for her alarm to go off so she could stop trying to sleep. The sheets and blankets were a mess, tangled by her wrestling match with the churning nausea that Leland’s easy relinquishment of their relationship had left in her gut.
She knew their separation made sense from a security standpoint, but couldn’t Leland have raised at least one objection? All he’d talked about was her safety. There was no sign of the desolation that had swept through her when Tully decreed they couldn’t see each other any longer.
At the rooftop pool, she’d felt so close to him. The sense of intimacy had lured her into telling him the sordid truth about why she was the way she was. Maybe it had been too much for him to cope with. Too messy and too emotionally demanding.
Maybe he couldn’t deal with that on top of mourning for his mother. She should cut him some slack for that.
Natalie had warned her about what kind of man Leland was. Dawn had stupidly thought she’d gotten past the workaholic and found the lonely person inside, the one who longed for a connection.
She let out a bitter laugh. At least Leland’s desertion kept her mind off the danger she might be facing from Vicky and Ramón.
As soon as she thought of her boss as a bad guy, her stomach roiled with another wave of nausea. That betrayal went nearly as deep as Leland’s. How could the man who had coaxed her into believing she could have a normal life turn around and sell implements of death on the black market? It just didn’t compute.
That last word reminded her of Leland, hollowing out her chest with loneliness. She groaned and slammed her fist into the pillow next to her. It was time to drive away the heebie-jeebies with the one thing she had learned could save her: intense, strenuous, violent exercise. So what if she wasn’t due at the gym for another two hours? She needed to sweat.
An hour later, she was propped up against a weight bench, her gray workout shirt plastered to her body by sweat, her rubbery legs stretched out on the floor, while she chugged the second bottle of water since she’d arrived. She nearly choked as she tried to swallow and catch her breath at the same time.
She wasn’t sure sprints on the treadmill, pounding the heavy bag, and practicing tae kwon do moves had done anything to fill the void Leland’s absence had opened up, but they’d sure worked the tension out of her body. Mostly because her muscles were too exhausted to tense up.
“You’re here early.”
Dawn started as Vicky’s slightly nasal voice came from behind her. The other woman walked around the bench and stood close enough that Dawn had to tilt back her head to look her in the eyes. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Vicky scanned down Dawn’s perspiring body with a look of distaste. “I hope you’re going to clean up before your first client arrives.”
Dawn knew she shouldn’t poke a rattlesnake with a sharp stick but Vicky pissed her off. Dawn had never been anything other than professional at the gym. “Actually, I thought it might inspire my clients to work harder if they saw how much their trainer sweats.”
“At least don’t get in the pool without showering.”
Dawn had considered a relaxing float in the pool, but when she’d looked at the glassy expanse of blue, all she could see was the powerful ripple of Leland’s shoulder muscles as he stretched out his arms to pull himself swiftly through the water. “No worries. Swimming wasn’t on my agenda this morning.”
“So did your client find his cell phone?”
It turned out her muscles weren’t too exhausted to tense up after all. She pushed up from the floor to stand, deciding that Vicky had too much of a psychological advantage towering over her like that. “Yeah. It was in his car. It had fallen down between the seat and the center console. He had the darned thing on mute so he couldn’t call it.”
“You’d think he would have looked in his car first.”
“You’d think.” Dawn shrugged and swiped her sweat towel over her face. “I’m going to shower so I can look good for my first client.”
Vicky didn’t acknowledge the dig. “I hear you got pretty chummy with him.”
“Who? You mean Lee Wellmont?” All her stress-busting exercise had been for nothing. Now every nerve in her body was on screaming red alert. She had no idea where Vicky was going with this. “There’s no rule against hanging out with clients.”
“No, but I hear you were pretty hot and heavy at Carmella’s.”
“Hot and heavy?” They’d barely spent any time there. “We just had dinner.” Actually, only antipasto.
