Knight practically growled. The guy had a real impatient streak. “Can we stay on task here, Dr. Talley?”
Dr. Talley grabbed her bag, then promised yet another waitress they’d talk later, then stood. “Well, then. Time to get this party started. I want answers. I’ve waited fourteen years to find out what happened to Monica Beise’s family. No time like the present to get started. Then I’ll get Knight here back to the inn so he can tuck himself in for his nine o’clock bedtime. He apparently gets cranky as the sun goes down.”
8
Dr. Miranda Talley was going to be a real pain in his ass. The sunny cheer already grated.
Knight finished his dinner without a word, letting her and Gunderson talk quietly. Gunderson was showing Dr. Talley photos of a pretty, blond baby girl. Talley was cooing, leaning against Gunderson’s shoulder. Like she’d sat there three thousand times before. No doubt she had. He wasn’t stupid. Gunderson and Talley had slept together. It was in the way they looked at each other.
Knight studied her over the top of his hamburger and fries, trying to figure out if that was true.
Shame hit him. He knew he was being an ass. He hadn’t missed the looks both Gunderson and Dr. Talley had sent his way. So he wasn’t exactly friendly, himself. He wasn’t here to make friends.
Making friends with people he worked with had nearly gotten him killed once before.
But as he watched Miranda surrounded by people who obviously cared about her, the envy hit him. The pain. Knight had never had any biological family—he’d grown up in foster care in Portland—and he’d once had a great deal of friends. None that he was extremely close to, but enough that he hadn’t felt alone in life. Not then.
Before the shooting.
People had tried to get close to him since, but he knew the truth—his personality had changed. He remembered the man he’d been before the shooting. Theoretically. Most of the memories were there. Like something from a movie. Or through a filter.
A few of the memories were missing, too.
Doctors said it was a miracle he was back to work and fully functional at this point already. Sometimes, he didn’t feel like he was. Sometimes, he felt like a carbon copy of who he used to be, minus the personality that had made him who he was back then.
Most of his so-called friends avoided him now.
Knight couldn’t blame them. He had been an ass at times.
He was still trying to decide if he wanted to change that yet or not. Knight wasn’t exactly leaning that way.
All he had was the job. He had no deep, lasting connections. From anywhere. And that was his own fault. But he had his job. Knight was going to focus on the job for a while. Everything else—like friends—could just wait.
He’d lost people in his life before. Left them behind with no hopes of ever reconnecting. He didn’t need that kind of connection to survive. He never had.
Not like Dr. Miranda Talley. She laughed again, surrounded by the people she cared about. The woman laughed too much. Was too happy to be in this job. Good thing they wouldn’t be on the same team. It would drive him nuts to be around that constant goody-goody cheer.
They weren’t on the same team now, either. He was just there to observe.
He’d have to remember that.
She finished and stood. Like good little puppets, he and Gunderson stood, as well.
“We’ll walk back to Grandma’s. Call me if you need to,” she said softly. The look she shot Gunderson had Knight fighting a smirk. Yeah, girl had it bad. No doubt they’d find their way into each other’s beds sometime soon. Probably right there in the Talley Inn.
He fingered the scar at his forehead.
He’d been gifted this little lifelong memento when her teammate Malachi Brockman had gotten caught up acting like a rabbit with the PAVAD medical examiner while a serial killer was on Brockman’s ass. All three of them could have died because of that.
Knight had come too close to just that.
Maybe after this, he’d take a small vacation. Forget all about the FBI for a while.
“If you’re finished here, Talley, I’d like to get back to the…inn. We have work to do, if you’ve not forgotten.” He almost winced and apologized when green eyes widened as she looked toward him. He’d been rougher than he intended, apparently. Had crossed the line into rudeness.
He’d have to work on that.
Her body stiffened. It was a nice body, long, tall, and curved just right. Before the shooting, he would have stared, seeing her like this. In jeans that fit just right and a shirt that hinted at the feminine curves beneath. He hadn’t seen her like this before—not that he remembered. Their paths hadn’t crossed that much. He didn’t think.
He’d been a bit consumed with his own team back then. And the missing memories would probably never return fully.
He had never dated women he worked with. He wanted his work separated from what little personal life he had.
His previous team had disbanded after two of his teammates, Jaynice Miller and Ian Ward, had been shot by a sniper targeting the FBI and PAVAD. It had taken several months for Jaynice and Ian to recover. Jaynice had taken medical retirement to spend time nursing her fiancé, who’d also been wounded in the shooting. It was a miracle they’d both survived. Ian was scheduled to return to the bureau within the next month. It would take him a long, long time to get back up to speed, but he insisted he wasn’t ready to retire. Ian claimed he still had a lot to offer the bureau.
Knight pushed the anger away again. Anger wasn’t productive.
Anger had been his Kryptonite since he’d been injured, and he understood that. Flying always
