That’s all she got. Nocek raised an eyebrow in her direction, and she responded by giving him a warm hug. “I’ll see you soon. We’ll have dinner.”
“I would like that very much,” he said, and she sensed the sadness in him. Nocek was a widower, not fully used to going home alone in the evenings. On a day like today, after all the hoopla, the fear and adrenaline, having only ghosts to talk to could be hard.
She squeezed his arm and said, “Call me if you need anything,” then followed a glowering Fletcher from the room.
The longest day she’d had since she left Nashville was finally drawing to a close.
Chapter 10
The streets were still eerily deserted, the dark skies interrupted by the scream of jets. Fletcher was silent until they hit M Street. Sam knew better than to try and drag information out of him; he’d share when he was ready. They got stuck at the light at Wisconsin, and he finally started talking.
“Leighton’s chief of staff is giving me the runaround,” he grumbled.
Sam smiled. “Isn’t that his job?”
Fletcher glanced at her, saw the amusement etched on her face. It provoked a smile of his own, and he relaxed a bit.
“Yeah, I suppose it is. Fingerprints on the inhaler belong to him. That matches his statement that when he came into the office and saw the congressman down, he retrieved the inhaler and gave it to his boss.”
“Okay. So where’s the issue?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m tired as hell. I’m getting put on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
“That’s good, right? You’ll be able to see this through to the end.”
“Maybe. We’ll see. They might have me running around town with my dick in my hand.”
She cleared her throat, trying to hide the laugh.
“Sorry, Sam. That was crude of me.”
“You’re fine, Fletch. The image was priceless.”
He laughed with her then, and the light turned. He took a right, then a left, and she was at her door a moment later. There was a pause, awkward and three beats too long. He looked like he wanted to say something important, but refrained. Instead, he shook it off and said, “Get some sleep. You did good today.”
“Thanks, Fletch. You, too. Call me if you need anything else, okay? And if they get the results back on the toxin, let me know.”
“Will do. Last round of calls got it down to two or three, with ricin still leading the pack.”
“If that’s true, we’re damn lucky there are only three people dead.”
“You said it, sister.”
He watched her go up the stairs, waited until the door was unlocked to drive away.
She caught the blue glow of the clock on the microwave. It was nearly two in the morning.
Exhaustion suddenly paraded through her body, and she sagged a bit. She wanted a shower and bed. She took the stairs carefully, quietly.
She found Xander crashed out cold on top of the covers. Just the sight of him caused a little thrum in her stomach. She stopped in the doorway and watched him, marveling at the fact that he belonged to her.
With a soldier’s unerring ability to sense a threat, he opened his eyes, and she saw he already had one hand tucked under his pillow, where she knew he kept a loaded weapon. Only one of many stashed throughout the house.
“It’s me,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
He rolled up in one smooth motion, both hands free.
“I’m glad you’re home. We need to talk.”
*
He gave her fifteen minutes to S-cubed—military jargon for shit, shower and shave—and met her in the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee and her laptop glowing on the table. She took one look at him and went to the liquor cabinet, fetched a bottle of Lagavulin. She splashed some in both their cups, then tucked her damp hair behind her ears and settled in, recognizing Xander in full operational mode. He might as well have had his uniform on and a rifle strapped to his chest.
Loaded for bear.
He sat across from her, took a deep drink from his cup. Xander made seriously good tea, but he was a first-class coffee maker. A connoisseur. Sam was amused when the first thing he did was buy her a Bunn, claiming it was one of the finest coffeemakers in the world. She found that ironic, considering he often made his coffee by throwing the grounds in a pan of water and heating it over the fire. He took personal affront at Starbucks and the like, instead preferred to grind his own beans, which he imported from a friend in Colombia. She wasn’t entirely sure that was legal, but she could hardly complain—the coffee it made was out of this world.
“There’s a message from GW on the answering machine. I heard them leave it. School’s closed for the rest of the week.”
“Not surprising. I assume they are going to have people combing that Metro stop and the surrounds for a few days to make sure things are safe.”
They sipped their coffee. Finally, Xander set down his cup.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”