“I wonder why.”
The restaurant was warm and pleasant, the plates passing by on waiters’ trays piled high with comfort food. Mac and cheese, meat loaf, mashed potatoes. Ethan supposed he should have been hungry, but he wasn’t.
“How’s your niece?” he asked.
They’d found her skipping on the steps of Juliet’s building. When she saw her aunt, she got a little weepy, which made Ethan more compliant when Juliet, tight-lipped, said to give her an hour.
“She’s camped out in front of the television watching an episode of The Vicar of Dibley.” At his puzzled look, Juliet added, “British comedy. Wendy gave me the DVD set for Christmas.”
“Just as well you didn’t invite me up.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I had a beer.”
“I had Thai food with Wendy before I left. She’s a vegan.”
“Orthodox vegetarian, right? No animal products at all.”
“Correct. She thinks she might eat eggs. She’s only been at it a few weeks. Her dog died—” Juliet caught herself. “Never mind.”
She ordered sparkling water with lime. Ethan resisted ordering another beer. The bartender obviously didn’t recognize her nor seemed to notice that she was armed, which probably meant she wasn’t one of the locals who frequented the place. She could have picked the joint for that reason, but Ethan suspected Deputy Longstreet wasn’t a regular anywhere in her neighborhood.
When her water arrived, she stared at it a moment. Her cheeks were flushed. With her fair skin, she flushed easily. The warm restaurant, the upset with her niece. Him. She had reasons to get a little pink in the cheeks.
“I’m glad you weren’t killed,” she said, still not looking at him.
“I never said that what I was doing was dangerous.”
She drank some of her water. “Did our mutual friend do anything illegal?” Friend didn’t exactly describe Bobby Tatro.
Ethan didn’t answer her. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t want to tell the truth.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Juliet said. “I’m not playing your game anymore.”
Ethan smelled the cigarette smoke on himself and decided he at least could have shaved before he’d beelined for the marshals. For Juliet.
Something was freaking wrong with him.
“Tatro and a handful of other bad operators grabbed a guy I could identify. I can’t go into who he is. It didn’t happen in this country.” Ethan spoke quietly, but he wasn’t concerned about anyone overhearing him. Who’d know what in hell he was talking about? They’d think he was describing a movie script or something. “Tatro cleared out before my team arrived. We never saw him.”
“Convenient. He was tipped off?”
“We weren’t there for answers. We were there to get our man.”
He noticed her throat as she sipped more of her water, the frost on the glass melting onto her fingers. She had slender fingers with blunt nails—some nicked—no doubt from the physical, hectic life she led, the work she did. When she looked at him, her blue eyes were wide and clear. “It’s odd, don’t you think, that Tatro chose a ‘guy’ you could identify?” She set the glass down hard but with control. “That’s a hell of a coincidence, Major.”
“I agree.” Brooker’s head hurt. He needed a shower, sleep. A pity the niece had turned up… He shut off that thought fast. “My guy’s safe. Your guy’s still on the loose.”
“If Tatro’s responsible for a kidnapping—”
“What kidnapping?”
Juliet glowered at him. “You just said he grabbed a guy you could identify. That sounds like kidnapping to me. I could take you in and get answers that way. Rivera would love it. He hasn’t liked you much since you took off on us in Tennessee.”
“I came back.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I have a lot of questions of my own,” Ethan said in a steady voice, knowing he could only tell her certain things. “If Bobby Tatro blames you for putting me on to him—”
“I can handle whatever Tatro throws my way. Including himself.”
The bartender skewered them with a suspicious, unfriendly glare. Ethan figured he and Juliet looked intense, wired tight and far from upscale. Perhaps they even looked a bit dangerous.
“Is he still out of the country?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What about the hostage you rescued? Does he know?”
“There’s your assumptions again. ‘Hostage.’ I never said my guy was held hostage.”
“Okay, we won’t go there. I told you I’d heard that Tatro got mixed up with vigilante mercenaries. That true?”
He shook his head. “Another place I can’t go.”
That obviously didn’t sit well with her. “No promises I’ll be keeping any of what you tell me to myself this time.”
“There were no promises last time.”