Deadly Past. Kris Rafferty

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СКАЧАТЬ move him, but quickly gave up when he didn’t budge an inch. “I’m giving the flash drive to Benton, along with the evidence in your trunk, and then I’ll confess everything.”

      “I’m involved,” Charlie said. “There’s no way to keep me out of this without lying, so just wait. Until we know more.”

      Her shoulders sagged. “You’re right. And I can’t lie. Look what I’ve done.” She pressed a palm to her forehead, looking ready to cry. “I’ve dragged you into this. After all you’ve been put through by my family…” Her words had Charlie’s teeth grinding. Would she ever look at him without thinking of the accident?

      Her cell phone rang. She retrieved it from her pocket and they both looked at it. “Benton,” she said, sounding worried.

      Charlie tilted her chin up with his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Just wait. Until we know more.”

      Cynthia hit “accept” and then put it on speakerphone. “Hi, Benton. I’m here with Charlie Foulkes. Sorry, I’ve been—”

      “I’ve got six executed Coppola syndicate WITSEC snitches on my hands,” Special Agent Jack Benton said. Charlie and Cynthia exchanged horrified looks. The vics were Coppola syndicate witnesses for the prosecution of a tightly closed case. This would reopen it. “And the U.S. Marshals are riding me, looking to cover their asses.”

      “On my way.” Cynthia had grown pale, and her hand holding the phone shook. Charlie understood why. The vics weren’t randomly killed. Their identities threatened the careers of everyone who had worked on the Coppola case, and this made Cynthia appear even guiltier than before.

      “No, Benton,” Charlie said, ignoring Cynthia’s instant glare. His patience was gone. “Charlie here. Sorry, but Cynthia isn’t going anywhere but to the emergency room. She’s got a head injury. You caught us on our way there.”

      Benton’s angry tone mellowed to worry. “She okay?”

      “Hopefully. We’ll know more after a CAT scan,” Charlie said. “She’s fighting me.”

      “Cynthia, get the test, and then get your ass to the crime scene,” Benton said. “You’ve both seen the news?”

      “Yes, but they said nothing about the victims being Coppola syndicate,” she said.

      “We’re keeping that quiet for now,” Benton said. “Your team of techs are here, Charlie.”

      “I called them as soon as I got your voice message,” he said. “They’ve kept me updated best they can, but I’m assuming they don’t know this is a syndicate hit, or they would have said something.” Like asked for hazard pay. “We’ll be there, too, just as soon as we get Cynthia sorted out.”

      “Be quick about it. This is no time for the B team.” Benton disconnected the line.

      Cynthia slipped her phone into her suit jacket pocket. “And so it begins.”

      “If you must,” Charlie sighed, resolved to the unavoidable delay, “take a quick shower, but try not to get the wound wet. Then we’ll head to the ER. If you check out fine, we’ll go straight to the crime scene afterward, but no matter what you decide, you must change. Arriving at the crime scene in this condition will create too many questions.”

      “You’re so bossy.” She said it with no heat, and just stood there, as if frozen with indecision. Charlie cupped her cheek.

      “Don’t think, Cynthia. Just do. You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe, right?” She covered his hand, pressing her cheek more fully into his palm. He could tell his words saddened her rather than comforted her, which had been his intent.

      “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered.

      Then she left him, tugging her shirt from her pants as she walked down the hall toward her bedroom. He was so distracted by what she’d said that for a second or two, he’d forgotten he’d told her to change, so the image of her unbuttoning her shirt confused him, even as it sent his imagination to uncharted places… Taboo places. When she’d disappeared from sight, he no longer needed visuals to feed his active imagination. It ran free. By the time Charlie heard the shower turn on, he needed one, too. A cold one.

      Chapter Three

      Why was Cynthia surprised to discover Charlie had friends in high places? Moments after arriving at Massachusetts General Hospital, her ass landed on a trauma room exam table. While others waited hours to be seen, Cynthia shot to the head of the line. Lucky her. The power of Charlie.

      She’d balked, of course, at the order to don a hospital johnny, and no perky, freckle-faced, hyper-kinetic nurse in moon and star designer scrubs was going to intimidate her into changing her mind. Charlie was never seeing Cynthia in a johnny. Just the idea of him in the room while she was practically naked on the exam table sent waves of mortification through her. Cynthia’s rebellion earned her a hostile preliminary exam, and by the time Nurse Ratched left—having poked, measured, and grimaced through Cynthia’s vital signs—it was clear she’d won the nurse’s “most difficult patient of the shift” award.

      Whatever. Charlie acted as if nothing was amiss, so Cynthia just went with it and didn’t complain. Though she’d wanted to. She’d wanted to complain a lot, because she was here, and every instinct she had told her to be at the crime scene, finding answers.

      Just back from radiology, having received her CAT scan from a handsome, flirting, brown-eyed technician, they awaited the test results. Charlie sat in the corner on a tiny chair, grimacing. He’d been grimacing ever since she’d flirted back with that sexy tech, but she couldn’t prove causation. His discontent could be from sitting on that tiny chair. It made him look like a G.I. Joe crammed into a dollhouse. He didn’t fit.

      Whatever had his panties in a bunch, he was ignoring her, so Cynthia pulled her iPhone from her suit jacket pocket. Charge was at twenty percent. Too much was going on to risk it dying again, so wasting it on Instagram didn’t seem sensible. She slipped it back in her pocket and then leaned for another entertainment magazine, grabbing it from the wall rack without falling off the table. No small feat. She pretended to read as she studiously did not swing her feet, despite an overwhelming urge to do just that.

      “This is such a colossal waste of time.” Cynthia flipped a page, unable to concentrate on the photos of lavishly dressed actresses attending red carpet events, while Charlie sat there, all silent, huge, sexy, and disgruntled. He was perfect, it was distracting, and he had a full charge on his phone. The man was carelessly scrolling, swiping up, looking at who knows what.

      Not for the first time, she wished she didn’t want him so much, but just looking at him made her girly parts clench. He was the smartest, bravest, kindest person she knew, and he made her laugh. He was her best friend, and wanting more from him was selfish and greedy.

      Wanting more would kill their friendship.

      In relationships, when one of the people involved feels indebted to the other, that debt colors everything. Even a kiss. She had no idea how far Charlie might go to appease his sense of obligation, and she had no intentions of exploring his limits, because when she kissed a man, she liked to know his tongue was in her mouth because he couldn’t help himself, instead of wondering if it was there because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

      He wasn’t her type, anyway. Slap a kilt СКАЧАТЬ