Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ethan had long passed worried and had worked himself up into a state of panic. Cady should have been home hours ago, and he couldn’t imagine her being so irresponsible as to spend the entire day shopping, not when she knew what was out there. Something had to have intercepted her, and with each passing hour, a more disturbing scenario popped into his head.
Twice he’d tried to use his vision to track her down, but all he got was static. The protection amulet he’d tucked into her pocket obscured his vision and he tried to take some solace in the thought that she’d be hidden from Q as well. As the sun dipped out of the sky, he decided to risk going out after her, even though he had no way to track her. Strapping on his knives and guns, Ethan girded himself for battle.
Maybe he could stop by and see Gobi. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? He might be able to help him get a line on not only Cady, but also the subject. It was at least a place to start. Ethan threw open the door, nearly colliding with Cady in the hallway, arms full of a half dozen shopping bags. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, dragging her bodily into the apartment. After slamming the door shut, he pulled her into his embrace, heedless of the bags that fell around their feet, still half in a panic even at feeling her warm and alive in his arms.
“I’ve been out walking,” she replied, her voice muffled by his chest.
“Walking.” He pulled back to stare at her, willing her to explain. “This whole time?”
“No, only for the last hour or so. I had to make sure I gave the cops the slip before I came back here.”
“Why do you think the cops were following you?”
“Because that’s exactly what I would have done if I was them. Let me go, but then trailed me from the coffee shop, to see if I’d lead them back to you.”
“I think maybe you’d better start at the beginning.” Ethan let go of her and she picked up a couple of plastic bags, setting them on the counter.
“Okay, but I’m gonna make something to eat while I talk if you don’t mind, I’m super hungry. You must by starving by now too. Do you want anything?”
“I want you to tell me why the cops are even in this equation.” His eyes darted to the door, and he set the locks while she messed around with the coffee pot.
“I might have made the teensiest little mistake,” she winced, and the story started to spill out. It was hard not to blame her for the rookie mistake, but he could understand why she’d called and left the message for her brother. They’d both underestimated the police’s involvement so far, and he wouldn’t make that slip-up again. She wouldn’t like it, but Ethan resolved not to let her out of his sight again.
The intel the police had amassed on him troubled him more deeply. He’d been unaware that they’d linked some of his past identities together. There was no way he’d be able to keep that from the Company, in fact, he was surprised they hadn’t alerted him to it in the first place. It could be handled, especially if the connections had only been made by a few people. Ethan decided to consider it a blessing in disguise, the better to fix it before it got out of hand. It shouldn’t prove too difficult, unless this Detective Lucas turned out to be a crusader. If so… then he’d have to take steps.
“So, did I do the right thing? Or should I not have come back here at all?” Cady was asking him, and he drew away from his internal thoughts to reply.
“No, you did the right thing.” The twists and turns she’d related to him on her journey back to the safe house were dizzying to behold, and he was fairly confident she’d eluded any tail the police had on her.
“Good, I was worried,” she breathed a sigh of relief.
“What is all this?” he asked, watching her process in the kitchen with interest.
“Ah, well I had planned to stop somewhere for takeout on the way back, but I decided it was safer not to wait around in the open. So, this is the best I can do for a hot meal.” She’d made mugs of instant chicken noodle soup with the first batch of hot water from the coffee pot. On plates she’d spread out a layer of tortilla chips and warmed up a jar of Cheez Whiz in the hot water carafe until it poured like liquid gold. Thick blobs of jarred salsa followed. “We can do chili dogs like this too, but I didn’t get any hot dogs today. Good thing too, or they would have gone bad in the sun. Are you hungry?”
Suddenly ravenous, but not for food, he could only nod mutely as she set the spread out on the small coffee table. He would have been content with the bag of chips and some beef jerky, but she’d made them a hot meal. How had he ended up so lucky?
His eyes followed her through the room as she went back for napkins and sodas, clucking over the fact that they were warmer than she liked. With everything that was going on around them, she was constantly surprising him with how normal she was.
Normal and innocent and sweet and beautiful and… and…
“What?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.
For once Ethan felt like there might be more to life than the hunt, and it was at once both scary and liberating. He pictured them in a different apartment, bigger, nicer. He had money enough to provide them both a comfortable life, she wouldn’t have to go back to letting men drool over her for a living. He’d have to work of course, and there would be dangers, but he could protect her.
What would it be like to come home to her fussing over him? To have someone to bandage up his hurts and scold him for taking chances? To share meals with and watch movies. To talk. The concept had become foreign to him, but Ethan realized he enjoyed talking to her, even when it was mostly listening to her chatter.
Shit. He loved her. It took him a while to recognize it, but he loved her. He wasn’t lucky, he was cursed. “Nothing, let’s eat.”