Debra Webb - Colby Velocity

Now that was a stroke of luck. “You obviously do.”

“I definitely do.” She shot Rocky a triumphant smile. “He recently moved it, but he gave me the location last night. Just in case.”

“He was aware on some level that the threat might go beyond a reputation assassination?” In Rocky’s opinion the idea that the victim felt he was in physical danger put a slightly different slant on the case.

“He didn’t say as much, but I got that impression. Yoni wasn’t one to break protocol. He played by the rules.” She gave Rocky another of those pointed looks. “All the rules.”

Rocky studied her eyes, the certainty there, and the determined set of her jaw. “Once in a great while a true innocent is mowed down in a scenario like this, but only once in a great while. I’d wager your friend has at least one secret that’ll surprise you.” He didn’t have to spell out the glaring fact that Sayar did not want to go to the police.

Another of those long, awkward pauses lapsed with her staring directly into his eyes.

“Maybe,” she admitted.

“If I’m right, you owe me lunch.” A long-awaited lunch, he didn’t mention.

Her assessing gaze narrowed slightly. “You’re on.”

He grinned, leaned into the headrest. Lunch was a given. Rocky had never met a man or woman, dead or alive, who didn’t have at least one secret. Yoni Sayar surely had his.

“If you’re wrong,” Kendra said, cutting into his victorious musing, “you have to wear a suit to the office every day for a week.”

Surprised, he looked her straight in the eye. “Something wrong with what I wear?” He was a jeans and boots kind of guy. Sure he wore the requisite button-down shirt and sports jacket, but never suits. Well, almost never. Occasionally he had no choice.

She shook her head. “Nothing a little polish and silk won’t take care of.”

“Ha-ha.” He pretended to be annoyed but deep down he was kind of happy that she’d bothered to observe what he wore. She sure hadn’t given the first indication that she’d looked at him long enough to notice. “Nice to know you care.”

“Appearances are everything, Rocky,” she said, surveying the entrance to the airfield as the driver made the turn. “At the Colby Agency appearances are extremely important.”

His anticipation flattened. Her attention was related to business.

Like always.

Kendra waited through the lengthy hold. When Castille’s secretary returned to the line, Kendra didn’t give her time to pass along the no she knew the senator had likely given. “I have to talk to him, Jean. It’s urgent, as I’m sure you know.”

Rocky lounged on the other side of the booth they’d claimed once the lunch crowd started to dwindle, his expression resigned to the idea that she was butting her head against a brick wall. But he had to hand it to her; she didn’t give up easily.

“Kendra, I wish I could help you,” Jean offered, her voice hushed. She wouldn’t want to be overheard consorting with the enemy.

“I understand that an appointment is out of the question,” Kendra put in before the woman who’d worked with the senator his entire senatorial career could continue, “but if you can give me some hint of his schedule for this afternoon I’ll catch him on the run.” Kendra had some idea of Castille’s daily agenda. Two years as his personal aide had provided significant insight into his usual activities. But it had been three years.

Things changed. So did people.

“What about his three o’clock at the club?” she prodded. During Kendra’s tenure as his aide, Castille hadn’t missed a Wednesday afternoon sit-down with the boys at the club. The Summit catered to high-level D.C. politicians and businessmen, providing classic luxury along with a three hundred percent markup on beverages. Membership was required for entrance, but the sidewalk outside was fair game as long as one wasn’t a reporter. If any of the old staff remained, she might just get inside. But she wasn’t betting on it.

“I can’t confirm that he’ll make that standing appointment today, considering what’s happened,” Jean advised, her tone somber.

That was all Kendra needed. “Thanks, Jean. I owe you.” Kendra closed her cell phone and gazed triumphantly at the man waiting across the table. “I can catch him around three.” The club was barely twenty minutes away. Arriving ahead of schedule wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it might work to her advantage.

“I’m impressed. The secretary must remember you more fondly than her boss does.”

Jean Brody had no children of her own. The sixty-year-old and Kendra had bonded very closely, but even that bond had never breached the woman’s loyalty to the senator. What she had given today was a confirmation of something Kendra already knew. It was their mutual respect that kept Jean off Kendra’s list of persons to interrogate. As well as the knowledge that no amount of persuasion would prompt the secretary to speak ill against Castille. She was a rare breed.

“You could say that, yes,” Kendra said in answer to her partner’s assessment.

Rocky made an agreeable sound and resumed his monitoring of the street outside the wall of plate glass that ran the length of the diner’s storefront. He was slightly out of his element but he hadn’t let that cloud his attitude.

Kendra studied the man seated across the table from her. She didn’t yet have a complete handle on his thought process regarding the case of her connection to the players. That he continued to act cooperatively went a long way in easing her concern about working with him. Not that he was a bad guy, he absolutely wasn’t. But he was a former Equalizer and the merger with the Colby Agency had been a difficult pill to swallow to some extent for Jim Colby’s entire team. Most of the bumps were behind them now.

That her attention, despite the current situation, settled on the usual details about him annoyed her, but it was what it was. An unexpected attraction that could not be allowed to proliferate.

Rocky was tall, heavily muscled. Coal-black hair and unsettlingly vivid blue eyes. Everything about him somehow refuted his background. Reared and educated in Tampa by medical professional parents, he dressed like a cowboy—sans the requisite hat. From the first time she’d met him she’d fully expected the man to drawl out a “yes, ma’am” to match that swagger of a champion that attracted the eye of every female he encountered—including Kendra’s. When he walked into a room he owned it, insofar as female interest was concerned.

As if she’d made the statement out loud, her partner swung his gaze back to her.

She rerouted her thoughts. “I left a voice mail for Wayne Burton.” Keep going with the details. Rocky had been in the restroom when she’d made that call. “He’s a contact in D.C.’s homicide division I reached out to on occasion … before.” Before she’d recognized the writing on the wall and the hard cold fact that she was not cut out for this world. And before she’d tried a relationship with him that couldn’t have fit in a million years. “I’m hoping he’ll agree to brief us on the path the investigation is taking at this point.”

Those startlingly blue eyes searched hers a moment as if looking for the motive behind her words. “A reliable enough contact you have reason to believe he would go out on a limb to give you a break in a potentially sensitive and high-profile case?”

Rocky wasn’t asking about reliability. What he had actually asked was had she slept with Wayne Burton. His eyes confirmed her analysis. “Yes,” she said, unashamed. Wayne was reliable and she had slept with him. But that was history. History Leland Rockford had no need to know. She hadn’t communicated with Wayne in three years … other than the occasional e-mail.