Taking a breather, Morgan rose from the table and took his bowl to the sink before Krys had a chance to do the same.
She turned in her chair to see what he was doing. It was a very small thing—cleaning up after himself—but she was impressed. “Someone certainly raised you right,” she commented with approval.
“My mom died when I was a kid and my dad was always working. When he wasn’t, I think he was a little overwhelmed, having so many kids to take care of. To show our gratitude, we all kind of pitched in. It wasn’t anything we talked about, it was just something that we did.”
“How many kids make up an ‘all’?” she asked, picking up on the term he had used.
It suddenly occurred to him that somehow, they were no longer talking about what he had initially wanted to discuss.
“Just how did we get off topic like this?” he asked.
He found the smile that she flashed at him dazzling and it went straight to his gut.
“It’s called conversation,” she told him breezily, “but don’t worry, we can pick up where we left off.”
Morgan shook his head as he laughed. “You’re definitely not your typical victim, I’ll give you that.”
Krys looked a little bemused. “Is that a compliment?”
She had a way of drawing things out of him that he had no intentions of volunteering. He decided to play it close to the vest. “I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, at least you’re honest.”
“To a fault,” he underscored, remembering his breakup. Joyce hated the fact that he didn’t sugarcoat things. “Some people find that off-putting.”
“Obviously those people haven’t had to endure the disappointment of being lied to time and again until they weren’t sure what to believe and what not to believe.” Her eyes met his. “Honesty, even brutal honesty, is far more preferable to having to deal with a liar.”
And then, for no apparent reason at all, Krys seemed to transform right before his eyes, her serious demeanor vanishing in the wake of a wide, disarming smile. “Dessert?” she asked cheerfully.
“What about it?” he asked, caught off guard.
“Would you like some?”
Okay, he needed to stop her before this went in another direction entirely. “What I’d like,” he informed her, “is to continue getting as much information about those missing sources of yours and about the possible whereabouts of this Bluebeard character as you can come up with.”
She realized that she had allowed the threat of a killer to temporarily make her forget something very, very important. She was obligated to protect her sources, the ones who had given her information they didn’t want getting traced back to them.
“I’ll tell you everything I’m free to share with you,” she told him.
Morgan knew what that meant. “Wait a second. You’re going to hold back?”
She should have led with that from the very beginning, Krys upbraided herself. “I can’t give you the names of all my sources,” she said with an apologetic note in her voice. “It was hard enough getting these people to trust me enough to talk to me. If word gets around that I just gave up their names to the police, no one will ever trust me again. And I mean ever. I might as well stop being a journalist right now.”
Didn’t she realize that one of these people she was protecting might very well be the one who was trying to kill her?
“Well, the cold hard truth of it is, if you’re dead, there’ll be no need to trust you, now, will there?” he asked her.
She frowned at Morgan. “You must really be an awful lot of fun at parties,” she said sarcastically.
“Just rephrasing what you told me,” he pointed out. “Look, thanks for the chicken soup,” he told her, getting back up to his feet again. “I’ll read your series on Bluebeard and see if perhaps I can get my cousin in the computer lab section to see if she can track down this guy’s whereabouts. She’s very good at finding people. And, until I can find whoever is behind this, I will have a patrol car drive by your house every half hour to make sure that you’re safe.”
He’d already told her that, but maybe he thought she needed reinforcement. At any rate, she merely nodded rather than pointing out that he was repeating himself.
“Thanks,” she said, walking him to her door. Having a patrol car go by would be good, if she was going to stay home, but that wasn’t feasible right now. “Maybe I overreacted,” Krys told him, trying to get him to relent when it came to the patrol car going by at regular intervals.
“Someone shot at you and when they couldn’t seem to kill you, they tried to run you over with a van. That is not overreacting. I’d say you were damn lucky that whoever is behind this missed you, but luck has a habit of running out at the most inopportune times.” He turned in the doorway to look at her. For all her bravado, she suddenly seemed very vulnerable to him. “Promise me that you won’t take any unnecessary chances and that you’ll stay put.”
“One doesn’t necessarily mean the other,” she said evasively.
“All right, then I opt for the second one. I want you to stay put,” he told her with emphasis.
“Funny, I was leaning toward the first one myself,” she cracked. Krys could see that the detective was about to tell her just what he thought of that choice. She was quick to back up her selection. “Look, I still have people to interview. I haven’t finished the articles yet and I’ve got a deadline.”
“Emphasis on the word ‘dead,’” Morgan pointed out darkly.
“No,” she contradicted him. “Emphasis on the fact that I haven’t finished the articles yet and I gave the editor my word. I’m not about to go back on that.”
Morgan sighed, clearly
