Page 67 of On the Chase
“I’d better get to the station, then,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. By the way Hugh smirked at her, she was pretty sure she’d failed. “Get some rest. I’ll be back tonight.” Glancing at the clock on the wall, she saw it was almost four in the afternoon. With a final squeeze, she released his hand and stood. Her abused muscles protested, although not as loudly as her ribs, and she held back a wince.
“Ribs hurt?” Hugh asked.
She made a face. “Is it that obvious?”
Instead of making his usual joke, he regarded her seriously. “Yeah, but just to me.”
That struck her as sweet, so she bent to give him yet another kiss. Otto cleared his throat from where he was still standing just inside the door, and she smiled against Hugh’s mouth before pulling back slightly.
“I should go.”
“Sure you don’t want Shankle to come here?” He stroked her cheek with his thumb.
Forcing herself to step back, she gave him a final smile. “Of course I do, but you need sleep, and I need to act like an adult. Therefore, I’m going to the station, Otto’s going to tell you something and hang out for a while…I assume?” She glanced at Otto for confirmation, and he gave a short nod. “And then you’re going to take drugs and sleep.”
He made a face. “No drugs.”
“Hugh.” Grace gave him her most serious face. “Your arm is broken. You need drugs.”
“They make me puke, and I’m close enough to losing my cookies without them.” His expression lightened as he teased, “You already asked me to hold back on the vomiting.”
She shrugged with a casualness she didn’t feel. “I won’t even be here, so hurl away.”
Hugh laughed and then stopped abruptly, wincing.
“Sorry.”
“You can’t help being funny.”
Although she was ready to fall right back into their easy back and forth, Grace knew she needed to leave. Delaying wasn’t making it any easier, but walking out of his room was incredibly hard. Just a short time ago, she hadn’t known if he was going to live. Even if he was going to be sleeping, she wanted to stay right there, holding his hand, watching him breathe, confirming with each lift of his chest that he hadn’t left her alone. Now was not the time to unleash her inner creeper, though.
She needed to go. Walking toward the door with feigned breeziness, she said over her shoulder, “See you later, alligator.” Immediately, she wanted to suck that back inside. Seriously? Was she five?
“Later, alligator?” Of course Hugh couldn’t just let it go. She felt equal parts evil glee and guilt when he laughed and then looked pained. “Okay. In a while, crocodile.”
Shooting Otto a quick smile of farewell, she slipped through the door but then stuck her head back into the room. “See you soon, you big baboon.” Without giving Hugh a chance to respond, she headed down the hall, the sound of his short-lived burst of laughter following her.
Chapter 18
“Ready?”
Agent Shankle was not what she expected. He was not the cookie-cutter, blue-suit-wearing, side-part-combing FBI agent that years of watching television and movies had prepared her for. He looked more like a bouncer for a seedy bar. Shankle was a big guy, with a barrel chest and acne-scarred skin. Although he didn’t have any official facial hair, his five-o’clock shadow would have made a pirate proud. There was a suit, but it was rumpled, as if he kept it wadded up in a drawer when he wasn’t forced to wear it. He looked like he’d be more at home wearing BDUs and a T-shirt as he constructed bombs in the basement of his bunker than he was wearing a wrinkled suit jacket in a police-station interview room. She would’ve assumed that Shankle was a criminal way before she’d have suspected innocuous-looking Agent Barrett was Truman.
Shankle cleared his throat, and Grace jumped a little. She realized that, while she’d been mentally redressing him—and giving him a few illegal hobbies—he’d been waiting for an answer. “Oh! Sorry. It’s been a long day. Yes, I’m ready.”
It was a lie. She wasn’t ready. She’d never been so un-ready in her life. Even when she’d called Corban Dabbs in eighth grade to ask him to a dance, her hands hadn’t shaken this hard.
Shankle clicked a few times on his laptop touch pad and then looked at her expectantly. She dialed the old-school landline phone that they’d hooked up to the laptop. If everything worked as it was supposed to, it would record her conversation with Noah and keep anyone on the other end from tracing it, while at the same time tracking Noah’s location.
Slowly, Grace dialed his number, a number she’d memorized right after he’d first given it to her. She’d had such a huge crush on him initially that she’d been illogically worried she was going to lose his number by dropping her phone in a puddle or something. Thinking back on him, though, he seemed like a pale shadow, just as inconsequential as the cartoon prince he resembled. Hugh filled her mind now with his teasing and stupid heroics and muscles, so there was no room for Noah anymore.
That’s probably a good thing, she thought semi-hysterically, listening to the phone ring on the other end.Family reunions would’ve been awkward.As she turned a nervous heave of laughter into a cough, the ringing stopped, and so did her breathing.
“Noah Jovanovic,” he said coolly. Instead of a rush of nostalgia, all she felt was fear. His voice brought back that terrible night in vivid detail—the blood, her terrified escape, Martin dragging her toward the front door. Her throat closed, and she couldn’t speak.
As Noah said his name again, this time impatiently, Shankle made impatient “talk!” gestures. With panic gripping her voice box, the words wouldn’t come. Why hadn’t she taken Hugh up on his offer to sit in on the interview? He gave her courage, and this wouldn’t have happened if he were there, holding her hand.
Shankle kicked her in the shin. It hurt. More than that, the kick was so juvenile, so Hugh-like, that it startled her out of her frozen fear, and she blurted out, “Noah?” Only then did she glare across the table at Shankle’s smug face.
