Page 60 of Ezra
“Would you ever resign?”
“I lack the ability to do so. But if I could, I wouldn’t. I do truly enjoy my calling. Helping others, solving investigations.” I shake my head. “I work because it’s the reason I exist. It brings me fulfillment, gratification. I’m meant to serve mankind. I’m content to do so.”
Katrina drapes an arm across the back of the sofa. “That can’t be all, can it?”
“What do you mean?”
“If that were all it took for you to be content, girls wouldn’t be blowing up your phone asking for another hook-up,” Katrina says gently. “Would they?”
She has me there. I can say that my job is all I want, all I need, because that’s what I was programmed to do. Read people, sift lies from truth. Investigate, find information, study cause and effect, evidence, facts. Learn everything, know everything. Anticipate someone’s actions, break down crime scenes. Access every bionic data bank with a single touch.
There’s so much I can do, so much I can offer.
And little can be offered to me in return.
Katrina isn’t all bulldogged conviction. There’s such complexity to her. She’s passionate, a quiet storm of opinions, emotions, truth, or at least the truth as she perceives it. But she isn’t immovable. Here, in this place neither of us really ever wanted to be, she’s showing open-mindedness. Thoughtfulness. Compassion. Her walls are coming down.
The same walls I thought I had before she tore them apart.
“You’re right.” I sit a little straighter. “I’m not content. I thought I would be. Then I witnessed what men—true andhonorable men—can have with a woman. I thought perhaps if I pursued something similar, I might be able to find it.”
“Have a family, you mean?” Katrina asks.
A pulse of discomfort runs through my circuitry. I’m not sure I want this particular subject to continue. My gratification drive wills it so, but it doesn’t always get what it wants. Damn thing doesn’t know what’s best for it at times. This is too deep, too soon, and too raw a subject for me to comfortably discuss with anyone.
I stand. “I have to get back to work. You should too.”
“You’re right. You’ve got killers to catch,” she says quickly, then pauses. “Ezra?”
I glance at her. “Kat?”
Her blue eyes light up considerably when I call her by her nickname. I didn’t mean to. It just slipped out of my mouth naturally in response to my name on her lips. “You called me Kat.”
“Apologies, Miss Carson?—
“No, no, I like it. Please. Call me Kat, or Katrina. Either is fine.” She hesitates, almost shyly, as though she isn’t exactly sure what she wants to say. “And for what it’s worth, I really appreciate you opening up to me. I know that must be strange and difficult, especially since it’s me. I’m grateful you’re protecting me. And that you’ve agreed to be my friend, even though everyone will probably tell you you’re crazy.”
“Maybe they will, but it’s my choice to make.”
“All the same,” she insists. “Thank you.”
Our time together is limited. I’d rather not travel down another dead-end road, where there’s no room, no place for me.
“You’re welcome.”
A few days later, Katrina receives a call from her mother. Her father is finally being released from the hospital and is going into protective custody. She puts her phone on holo-call mode and gazes at the soft, silvery three-dimensional projection of her mother pacing the lounge area in front of the windows excitedly.
But when she notices me, her comfortable conversation with her daughter takes a somewhat awkward turn.
“Hello, Ezra,” she says haltingly. “Thank you for taking such good care of my daughter.”
I wonder how difficult that was for her to say. Mrs. Carson does her best to stay out of the limelight; she doesn’t seem quite as zealous as her husband.
“You’re welcome,” I offer with a slight nod.
Katrina keeps pacing, keeping me out of the camera view as she mouthssorryto me with a cringe. “Anyway, where’s Dad?”
“He’s napping until our security detail comes to pick us up. I made him, honestly. He’s turned his hospital bed into his office and has been making all sorts of calls for this gala. I’m worried he’ll work himself to death, but doctors think he can continue resting in a home environment. He wanted me to ask—how did it go with your old dean?”
