Page 20 of Tell Me Why
Tina couldn’t figure that part out, yet.
If Isabella was so old and therefore so powerful, and had a protector in Keon who was evenmoreold and powerful, and she and Tell were on their way to go find and help her, what danger could shereallybe in, from people figuring out where she was?
“Won’t we get there before midday?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“We’ll lock ourselves in at dawn, with them out here, and they’ll go when we get in. We’ll sleep here, where we’re safe for the day, and then there will be the house waiting for us that I rented last night.”
“Are we hiding from everyone else?” Tina asked. “Trying to make sure they don’t know where we are?”
Tell nodded.
“I took it under one of Hunter’s shell companies as a corporate retreat,” Tell said. “It’s not foolproof, but it ought to get us in quietly for a while.”
Tina settled over her drink - the bartender was quite skilled, actually, and kept them coming as one emptied out - considering.
“I wish we knew more what we were going into,” she said, and Tell shrugged.
“This is how we find out,” he said. “Lurking around online is all well and good, and lucky you it works as well as it does as frequently as it does, but actually going and putting your nose in to see what you’re going to find is always going to be the last word in detective work. Everything online can be massaged to deceive you.”
“But we could have found someone who wouldtellus what was going on,” Tina said, and he laughed gently.
“Maybe for the lightweight cases,” he said. “And that’s most of them, rightly so, but wherethese peopleare involved… At the end of all of this, we may never know what was going on.” He lifted his eyes to look at her. “You should actually probably prepare yourself for that. Ourjobisn’t to root out a story and understand it. It’s just to deliver a message.”
“And you’re going to walk away, if we’re able to justdothat?” Tina asked. He considered, then shrugged, smiling with a phantom of amused guilt.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “This is close enough tomyterritory thatmaybeI’ll hang out to make sure that all of the important questions are answered to my satisfaction. Maybe not.”
She nodded.
The sun was coming, and she was feeling sluggish. He nodded, seeing it on her.
“Go on,” he said, motioning with his head. “I’ll get everything closed up and follow after a bit. It would take metal cutting tools to go through the side of that container, and considerably more to get through the door, after I close it. Rest comfortably.”
She rose and squeezed his shoulder on the way past, wondering to herself what life he must have had that that was what he thought about, going to bed in a place that wasn’t his home.
She was just going to bed.
She took a moment to be grateful for that.
Maybe Tell had a few valid points about things.
She was just going to bed.
She heardTell come in and both heard andfeltthe locking mechanisms settle into place as he secured the second container.
There were three bedrooms in the frontmost container, one that was the full width of the car at the very front end, and two longer ones that were narrow enough to have a hallway sneak along beside them. Tina could tell by smell that Tell had claimed the frontmost one, so she picked one of the other two, going in to find a bed that nearly filled it, with a small counter at the front where she had running water and a selection of toiletries that she would most likely use in the evening with gratitude. They would, from the look of them, be more expensive than what she bought for herself, and sometimes she found that such things were actuallybetterthan what she routinely used.
It didn’t mean she would upgrade at home. She let Tell pay for a lot of her lifestyle because it was of such an insignificant cost to him, and because they were partners in things that kind of transcended a work relationship, but she didn’t live like she had his wealth at her disposal, and had no intention of letting that become her normal. Even if it was true enough that she kind of did have that kind of money available to her, these days.
Both Tell and Hunter found her fledgling autonomy amusing, and they would tease her for it, but she thought that both of them understood it, and Hunter only occasionally did things intentionally to subvert it. Even then, it was just a part of the teasing. Calling attention to it adversarially was still recognizing that it was important.
She wondered where he was.
Things had been good, here lately.
He kept himself away from her a lot, but they’d rescued Tell, and there had been a sense of… something. That he’d stepped out of his life and into hers, and she’d stepped out of her life into his, and there had been this cozy little understanding there in the middle where it was just the two of them and not even Tell belonged there. He looked at her and he saw something that no one else did orcould, and she had the same privilege with him.
He wasn’t really any less evasive than he’d ever been, playful and catty and ever ready to poke something just to see if it would bother her, and then poke it again harder if itdid, but it didn’t feel like she was deceiving herself into believing that he was actuallytherefor her, not just leading her on for the glee of it. She had proof. Sheknewhim. She’d stopped questioning whether this was a massive, self-delusional mistake and just enjoyed him when he was there.
