“Just after midnight,” he murmured, gently stroking her back. She could feel the sweat on her back as his hand moved up and down. “I guess I was having a nightmare,” she said. “I’m totally soaked with sweat.”
“Do you want to shower?”
She considered it and sighed. “Well, I’d feel better,” she said, “but it seems like an awful lot of effort right now.”
“Then wait till morning,” he said, “unless it will help you get to sleep again.”
She looked at him, as she considered it, then frowned. “Haven’t you been to bed yet?”
He just grinned. “Nope. I just got back.”
“Back from where?” She stared at him, as memories swam into her head. “What did you find?”
“Did I say I found anything?”
She snorted at that. “I’m not a fool. You seem way too happy.”
“It’s not that I’m happy,” he said, “but the guy who attacked and threatened you is dead.”
She stared at him, her mouth dropping. In a whisper, she asked, “Did you kill him?”
He shook his head gently. “No,” he said. “I didn’t have to. Somebody else did.”
“Wow,” she said in shock. “I knew he was an asshole. I guess it makes sense that somebody else would have gotten pissed off at him.”
“Guys like that cultivate the wrong people,” he said. “Water finds its own depth, and, in this case, I don’t know if it was because he failed or because he was off doing his own thing, but I found his body in a back alley.”
“You found it on your own?” She was trying to process what he said, but her mind was still murky. “What were you doing out there anyway?”
“While we were screening camera footage, we tracked one guy, presumably a Russian who hired your kidnappers, and saw him disappear into one area, which looked like apartments, and then into another warehouse area, but we never could pick him up coming out again. So I went to the apartment building, and, while I was out, I found somebody else—probably a middleman in this scenario—that I ended up playing a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with,” he said calmly. “As it turned out, I headed back to the warehouse area where this Russian guy had disappeared, and me and my new friend found your pervert’s dead body instead.”
“So your new friend didn’t kill him either?”
“Not from what I could tell. Unless he doubled back around to make it look like it wasn’t him.”
“I don’t trust anybody anymore,” she said. “It could have been him. It could have been anybody.”
“Exactly,” he said cheerfully. “The bottom line is that your perv’s not coming after you now.”
“And this other guy you met?”
“The jury is still out on him,” he said. “We’re not exactly sure what he was up to.”
“Why he was there, you mean?”
“Why he was there, why he was looking for this guy, and what he was planning on doing when he found him.”
“Do we care what he was planning on doing when he found him?”
“I’m not sure, do you?”
“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “It just seems like all of this is such a mess.” As the news slowly filtered through her brain, she asked, “Do you think I’m safe now then?”
He gave her a half smile. “If we knew why he was killed, maybe.”
She glared at him. “Sounds like you’re just looking for excuses to not let me go back home.’
“Not at all,” he said, and there was enough sincerity in his voice that she relaxed. “But I do think we need to be sure we don’t just take it at face value and just assume you’re out of danger.”
“Do you think the people who went after my father are still involved?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” he said. “If you think about it, he’s even more vulnerable right now at the hospital.”
She shook her head. “How are they?”
“Your father is deteriorating,” he said gently.
Her gaze widened, as she assimilated the words, almost like a blow. “I need to go to the hospital then,” she said immediately.
“And I can pave the way, if that’s what you want,” he said.
She nodded, swung her legs around the side of the bed, and stood. A little more secure than last time, she said, “I’ll just use the bathroom, and then we can go.” After she used the facilities, she washed her face, trying to clear her head. Her father’s deteriorating condition wasn’t something she really wanted to deal with right now. She was a confused bag of emotions over his actions and subsequent reconciliation with her mom. The thought that her mom could be dying was something she couldn’t deal with either. With her arms wrapped around her chest, she stepped back out. “Can we just go now?”
He nodded slowly. “Sure, but he might be asleep.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I still need to see him, just in case. I need to see him,” she reiterated.
He studied her features for a long moment, and then, with a soft smile, he said, “Fine. Let’s go.”
She followed him out of the apartment and down to a vehicle that was already running, unsurprised to see Hudson in the driver’s seat. She slipped into the back as usual and watched as the city blocks swept by. “He didn’t seem to be that badly hurt.”
“No, but apparently he has a bad heart. The doctors didn’t find that out until now.”
“So are you saying he’s had a heart attack?”
“Yes, something about closed arteries in his heart and some kind of constriction.”
Once at the hospital, she raced inside to ask where her father was. When she felt a warm steadying hand on her shoulder, she realized that information was something Baylor had already sourced. She grabbed his hand, and, with their fingers linked, he turned to lead her down the hallway, after giving the receptionist a smile.
“We know where we’re going, thank you.”
As soon as they turned one corner and then on to the next, he
