Page 50 of Cast in Shadow
“I’ll show you. That way, you can bring me coffee and breakfast in bed tomorrow morning.”
“Who says I’m going to be here in the morning?” he grumbled. Of course he was going to be there in the morning. He was going to be wherever she was until he figured out whatever this was between them.
She laughed. The sound was like a balm to his soul. He pushed aside the doubts and decided to live in the moment.
The lesson in expensive coffee machine operation took a while. He kept getting distracted, and when he did, he distracted her as well. She didn’t seem to mind.
“So, what’s your deal?” Zeke asked later, once they’d managed to make coffee, take a shower, and sit down to breakfast. “How does a socially conscious hacker who rents condemned apartments and works in bars afford a place like this?”
“Who says it’s mine?”
“Isn’t it?”
She smiled serenely and sipped her coffee. Instead of answering, she asked a question of her own. “Why is a highly skilled former special operative drifting across the country, working as a tattooist and moonlighting as a mercenary?”
When he said nothing, she said, “I guess we both have our secrets, don’t we?”
Well, she had him there.
“Tell me why you want to go back to Parryville.”
“I wasn’t the only one looking into the paper mill’s illegal activities. Apparently, the FBI was too. Same general topic—illegal toxic dumping—but from a different angle. They were investigating allegations of ties to organized crime, particularly in the area of waste disposal.”
It seemed like one hell of a coincidence that the FBI just happened to be in Parryville at the same time as the elusive Robin Hood, but that was him. He didn’t believe in coincidences, and he sure as hell didn’t trust the feds.
Aggie continued. “A second-shift supervisor by the name of Sam Higgins was tapped as an informant to aid in the investigation, but something went wrong. Sam disappeared the night I was abducted.”
He frowned. “You think your abduction had something to do with that?”
“It doesn’t make sense otherwise. If the FBI was working with Sam and keeping an eye on him, then they know the last time Sam was seen was when he walked me home that night.”
An uncomfortable feeling tightened his chest. “You and Higgins. You had a thing?”
He tried to keep his voice level, so he didn’t sound like a jealous, possessive asshole. Judging by the way her eyes flashed, he hadn’t pulled it off.
“No. We went out a few times, but it was nothing serious. I was very clear that I wasn’t looking for anything other than a friend.”
Zeke snorted. “Yeah? What was he looking for?”
She smiled, as if his reaction pleased her. “Sometimes, he came into the bar after his shift, looking like he carried the world on his shoulders. I lent a sympathetic—and somewhat opportunistic—ear.”
“He gave you inside intel on what was going on at the mill,” he guessed.
She nodded. “Unintentionally, yes.”
It was as if a lightbulb had gone on in his head. He’d been racking his brain, trying to figure out why a woman who could afford a place like this would choose to continually reinvent herself and live like a pauper.
“That’s why you do it. The shitty apartments, the minimum wage jobs. For the inside intel.”
“In part,” she agreed. “Online research can get me pretty far, but it doesn’t always tell the whole story. Only people can do that. The people who are involved, and the people who are affected.”
“In part, you said. What’s the rest of it?”
“Restless person syndrome,” she said with a slight curl of her lips. “This chalet is my anchor. My home base, if you will. But I can’t stay here for more than a couple of weeks without feeling suffocated. I can’t be just one person, doing just one thing day in and day out. I need to travel to different places, and have new experiences.”
That was something he understood completely. “You have a nomadic soul.”
“Nomadic soul. I like that. It sounds better than RPS.”
