J Ward - Crave

Isaac was hoping that it would get his past and his present redirected away from Grier. But, yeah, whatever: When she’d come back home, she’d been sporting a frown so deep it was as if she were squinting, and she’d had something in her hand that she was carrying with a tissue.

Like she didn’t want to get her handprints on it or smudge the ones that were there.

Then she’d removed the second mark he’d left on her lantern.

And… now the black sedan returned, oozing past her house, going up the street. Coming back. Parking.

“Fuck. Fuck…”

He wanted to break cover, march across the street, and knock on the window of that unmarked with the muzzle of his gun. Then he wanted to stare into the eyes of whoever it was while he pulled the trigger and turned the bastard’s frontal lobe into a milk shake.

He had a feeling who it was, too.

He hoped that bastard’s arm was feeling better.

Man, to hell with leaving Boston now; he wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure Grier was out of the line of fire… and yet, shit, he was the one who’d put the target on her chest.

He was chewing on that little slice of happiness when a Mercedes the size of a small house drove up to her front door. No nosing around and looking for a parking spot for that bad boy; the thing stopped at the curb and stayed there, the only concession to the illegality being its flashers.

The man who got out was over six feet tall and soldier trim. His gray hair was full and combed back from a side part, and even in the fleece and workout gear, he oozed money. And what do you know, he strode up and used the lion’s-head door knocker like he owned the place.

Grier’s father. Had to be.

The instant she opened up, he stepped inside, and then just like that, they were shut in together and he couldn’t see anything more.

Generally speaking, in a stakeout situation, you wanted to find a single perch and keep still. Moving around increased the likelihood of being spotted-especially in broad daylight in an area you weren’t familiar with, when people were already looking for you.

And in his case, it wasn’t just bad form to get eyeballed-it was suicide.

So as much as his body was screaming for him to get a move on, close in, change locales, he had to stay put.

Nightfall. He had to wait until nightfall, and even then, he needed to be careful. That security system of hers was a no-break sitch: His specialty was killing people, not disarming state-of-the-art wiring, so the chances of his getting in without triggering it were nil.

Assuming he even wanted inside where she lived. The issue was how to best protect her, and it was hard to know what was worse-her in there alone with him on the perimeter. Or him in there with her.

Dimly, he heard his stomach growl and the sound made him feel keenly the number of hours that had passed since he’d eaten last. But he shrugged that off, just as he had countless times in the field.

Mind over matter, mind over body… mind over everything.

He just wished like hell he knew what Grier and her pops were talking about.

Standing in her kitchen and staring at her father as he looked at her little lineup of what-the-hells, Grier had so many questions she didn’t know where to start.

One thing was certain: When her father reached out to pick up the business card, his hand was trembling ever so slightly. Which in anybody else was the equivalent of a full-blown epileptic seizure.

Alistair Childe was a warm man with a good soul, but he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Especially if it was an upset kind of thing. The only time she’d ever seen him cry had been at her brother’s funeral-which had been bizarre not just for the rarity of his tears but because the two hadn’t really gotten along.

“Who gave this to you?” he asked in a voice so thin it didn’t sound like him in the slightest.

Grier sat down on one of the stools at the island and wondered where to start. “I was assigned a public-defender case yesterday…”

The story was a quick tell, but it got a big reaction: “You let that man come over here?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, I did.”

“Into the house.”

“He’s a human, Dad. Not an animal.”

Her father all but fell onto the other stool and then he struggled to unzip the neck of his fleece. “Dear God…”

“I’ve resigned from the case, but I went to Isaac’s apartment just now-”

“What in the world made you go there?”

Okay, she was going to ignore that outraged tone. “And that was when I was given the card and told to call if I saw Isaac again. And I also got that Life Alert thing.” She shook her head. “I’d seen the man before. I swear… a long time ago.”

If her father had been pale before, now he turned the color of fog, not just blanching, but going opaque gray. “What did he look like?”

“He had a patch over his eye and he-”

She didn’t finish the description. Her father bolted up off the stool and then abruptly had to catch his balance on the counter.

“Father?” She grabbed his arm in alarm. “Are you all-”

She was not surprised when he just shook his head.

“Talk to me, please,” she said. “What is going on here?”

“I can’t… discuss it with you.”

Grier dropped her hold and stepped back. “Wrong answer,” she bit out. “Totally wrong answer.”

As she glared at him and all his resolute silence, she realized why she’d felt so oddly comfortable around Isaac: Her father was a ghost as well. Always had been. She’d literally grown up and now lived under the fear that at any moment he could disappear forever.

And her client had given off that exact same vibe.

“You’ve got to talk to me,” she said grimly.

“I can’t.” The eyes that looked at her were those of a stranger in familiar garb-as if someone had taken a mask of her father’s features and stepped in behind the surface dressing to stare outward. “Even if I could… I couldn’t bear to contaminate you with…”

He sagged as if bowing under a great mountain of weight.

Strange, she thought. There were definitely times as you got older when you began to see your parent as a person rather than Father or Mother. And this was one of them. The man in her kitchen was not the all-powerful lord of house and office… but someone who was caught in some kind of bear trap, the jaws of which were seen only by him.

“I need to go,” he said roughly. “Stay here and don’t let anyone in. Turn the security system on and do not answer the phone.”

As he went to leave, she blocked his way to the front hall. “Unless you tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to walk out that door the moment you leave and parade around Charles Street until I either get mowed down in traffic or am found by whatever you’re so afraid of. Do not push me on this. Because I will do it.”

There was a moment of glower-to-glower. And then he laughed harshly. “You are my daughter, aren’t you.”

“Through and through.”

He started walking, doing laps around the granite-topped island.

It was time, she thought. Time to get the answers to all those questions that she’d wanted to ask about him and what he did. Time to fill the voids of mystery and shadow with tangible answers that were long overdue.

God, as much as Isaac was a complication, he was almost like a blessing from above.

“Just talk, Dad. Don’t be a lawyer-don’t think everything through.”

He stopped on the far side of the cooktop and stared over at her. “My mind is the only thing I’ve got, my dear.”

After a moment, he returned to the stool he’d dropped onto earlier, and as he sat down, he rezipped the neck of his fleece-which was how she knew she was going to get the truth, or some measure of it: He was pulling himself back together, regaining who he was.